"I read the New Yorker short story “Cat Person” as I read most things these days: in the bathtub with a beer, after my daughter had gone to bed. I enjoyed it. It was eerie and resonant and it brought up unsettling memories. Then I went online and realized that there was a significant literary conversation on Twitter lamenting how Kristen Roupenian’s story — about a brief online relationship that turns bizarre, creepy, and upsetting in person and ends badly — was being read as an “essay” or a “piece” or an “article.” Some people just seemed bothered that fiction wasn’t getting its due credit during its viral moment. But many seemed indignant that the essay — a form troublesome for its femininity and popularity — was tainting the purity of literary fiction."
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