Comment by refulgentis
5 years ago
You're right, I can see it from that perspective. I find it somewhat zen in that it then becomes befuddling the author of this article injected herself into the Cat Person author's story...I do then give up & weep for the poor girl whose life this was who needs to be told she has no business injecting herself via a story about the story someone wrote about her life, this line of argument is far too meta for me for midnight EST. Cheers.
Do you weep for every member of John Updike's family? The same stuff happened to them!
The reality is, you don't; you never once thought about how Updike used his own relationships and those of his family and acquaintances as fodder. You care about this particular story for reasons other than principles. That's fine, but we should start by being honest about it.
I'm not sure what inconsistency you're pointing out; if I was related to John Updike I would not be happy if I ended up as a villain in one of his books. Wouldn't anyone not enjoy that?
As a relatively famous silicon valley person, it might actually happen to you some day, and although it would probably never happen to me I can imagine empathizing with you if you ever ended up as the bad guy in a short story.
I assume whomever bases a fictional character after me will at least get the detail right that I live in Chicago, not Silicon Valley.