‘Cat Person’ as Viral Fairy Tale

Thus far, the world has seen one short story go viral—Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person,” published in The New Yorker in 2017 and released as a movie this month. In a similar vein, Robert Kolker’s 2021 New York Times Magazine article “Who Was the Bad Art Friend?” spawned a viral fiction-world scandal. “Cat Person” was billed as a work of fiction; Kolker’s story involved a real-life feud between two writers, one of whom accused the other of stealing details from her life for use in a work of fiction. Taken together, these two literary episodes suggest the emergence of a new genre that blends true crime and fiction but also functions a lot like a very old genre: the fairy tale.