Today’s post offers an example of post-autonomous fiction, focusing on Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person”. The article is authored by Igor da Silva Livramento. He’s a fellow academic from UFSC, fellow author, fellow creative-writing advisor, and overall a great fellow. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. Check out his papers on Academia.edu, his music on Bandcamp, and his personal musings on his blog – in Portuguese, Spanish/Castilian, and English.
Having explained what on earth is post-autonomous fiction, this time we’ll see an example of it, focusing on some of its literary specifics. Our example will be a most fascinating story. It appeared on The New Yorker, on December 4th, 2017.
I’m referring to Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person”.
What’s so interesting is that the story got more views on a single week than any other one published on the magazine that year. That alone is impressive, but the reaction it got is also worthy of mention.
This reaction was due to a narration technique we’ll explore, and such a technique as applied there increased its post-autonomous status.
