When I arrive to the ”Kattmänniska”, the sixth of the twelve stories in the collection with the same name, takes the physical forward to reading it.
To read about it, I mean.
At the end of 2017, during the height of the metoorörelse, published for the american Christian Roupenians ”Cat person” in The New Yorker. It is a short story about a young woman and an older guy, how they meet, sms flirts, goes on a date and end up in bed. And how quickly a mood between two people can change, and if försvarsmekanismerna you take to to it, when it happens, not have the energy to feel.
unknown, literary scholar born in 1981, was hugely acclaimed – featured, celebrated and mocked. Countless women, including myself, testified about how spooky it reminded of their own experiences. Others thought that the bad sex was hardly something to write home about. But the point was clear the first time, at least for me: it was no metoonovell, it was something far more complex (and, frankly, interesting) than that.
The female protagonist is not particularly likable, but painfully easy to recognize. The man she hits is no prince charming, but not evil – to read novellens last words, a text in which he is short and good writing ”Whore.”, as the punchline of a moral story that ”such are the men!” is to simplify things that may simply is difficult. Communication. Relationships. Sex.
Kristen Roupenian seems in his debut have made the effort to not write what is expected. The other stories revolve are certainly also around the moral dilemmas, ambiguous or even unclear situations, but they rarely go to read as a defense of all the world’s vulnerable women.
Kristina Lindquist: It takes courage of the women to dare to dating men
glaring lack of sympathetic characters, regardless of gender. In the initial story, ”the naughty boy”, turns a couple of his indolent, nydumpade friend to a sex slave. In the ”Sardinburken” goes a barnkalaslek terribly awry when the high-sensitivity the birthday girl realizes that her mother hates all of the guests. In ”the Guy in the pool” looking for a group of friends on a hen party, recreate their childhood most formative erotic movie scene, what the old male actor than think about the thing.
And in the ”Kattmänniskas” longest and best short story, ”A nice guy”, everything revolves around the flawless self-image and a dirtier reality. Ted, a jaded man without the ability to love, get a drinking glass thrown at even a disappointed girlfriend and thrown in the tank back to the neurotic, lovelorn young man he once was. How was he so indifferent? You can deliberately place himself in the dreaded vänzonen, and can you then ever get out? And from where will the desire to make the annoying women he keeps dating physically ill?
on a Philip Roth character, and Christian Roupenians approach to write out the ”good guy’s” perspective, similar to Henrik Bromanders depictions of manstyper in, among other things, ”Just a hug”. Ted is plagued by a bad conscience for what he does against his condescending high school girlfriend and imagines how a tribunal set him to task:
”When they screwed, made the Ted when ’exactly it is that could be required of him and nothing more’? He played so to say ’dead’, together with Rachel? He was polite, easy absent and withdrawn person he was with her the rest of the time?
Ehem. Thus. No.
How was he then?
…
How were you, Ted?
I was…
were You…?
I was… as well as…
Yes?
… shitty.”
It is cleverly portrayed and seamlessly translated by Amanda Svensson – and usually are allowed to novellkaraktärerna be just as complicated. Every now and then are written the reader a bit of clear on the nose, as in the in the and for fun – and in samtidslitteraturen unusual – the fairy tale ”the Mirror, the teams, and the old thigh bone” on a female Narcissus and her mysterious lover. Several of the stories unfolds something unexpected to pure skräckhistorierna, splatterartade and deeply unpleasant, but also at times well effektsökande.
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Kristen Roupenian, however, with their end of the year. Too often, she seems to have been a brilliant idea, but that manages to tie together, too many threads left loose, too much remains suspended. Maybe it’s the sense that I’ll have to think long about what that really was in the closed suitcase, which belongs to the woman who promptly want to be hit in the face with his clenched fist before intercourse in ”Death wish” but I’m not, I’m thinking: what dull. Maybe it went too quickly from the viral novell to förlagsutgivning.
So also becomes something that the main character in the ordvitsigt baptized the short story ”Scar you afraid” thinking, before she cut out the heart of the man she frambesvärjt with the help of a child trollformelsamling, into a sort of motto for the whole collection: ”It is always so here it ends, or how? You can’t get everything one’s heart desires, what would it be moral?”
the Question is how aware Kristen Roupenian is if that also applies to her writing.
