All the times Sally Rooney was saner than Book Media.
It’s delightful, on the one hand, to have a feverish Book Event. I’m as excited as anyone that we’re doing midnight release parties for literary fiction in the year of our lord 2024. That said, we need to talk about the Rooneyverse.
This week, we’re getting a novel—Intermezzo—from Sally Rooney, the 33-year-old Irish wunderkind who’s alternately dissected and applauded for her finely tuned social novels. Predictably, the new book is getting a full-press media treatment. A fleet of our finest critical minds have already rushed to review the novel in the context of Rooney’s canon, her politics, and her own celebrity. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Breathless articles about Rooney as harbinger, host, and hype machine have proliferated. And as for the book itself? Critics insist with equal fervor that Rooney’s trying something new, or returning to form in a big way. Intermezzo is either a disappointing lesser work, or a huge step forward. Or, it’s suffering from category error. In any shakedown, it’s certainly not a normal novel.
Through all this whiplash-giving hullaballoo, Rooney herself has stayed doggedly chill, managing to convey an allergy re: media to the media with surprising tact. (If just the slightest bit of shade.)
Here are some of her finest dodges in print.
On the tyranny of youth.
“There is a huge cultural fixation with novelty and growth. Everything has to grow all the time. Get bigger, sell more and be different —novelty, reinvention. I don’t find that very interesting.”
On hobbies.
“What do I like to do? I feel like I’m so uninteresting…I’m just a random person, and I do all the things you would expect a writer would do: read, watch films, watch TV.”
On autofiction.
“Even if something happened to me that seemed extraordinarily dramatically interesting—which is in itself unlikely—it wouldn’t strike me as interesting material for a novel because there wouldn’t be any fictional characters in it. I don’t interest myself in that way and I could never write about a real person the way I write about my characters. Not only would it feel ethically dubious, I just literally wouldn’t know how to do it.”
“I don’t feel qualified to make blanket statements about people my age and younger, in Ireland or elsewhere. ”
On marketing.
“I don’t have any interest in marketing my books. And I certainly don’t answer interview questions with the intention of selling my book to readers.”
“I wouldn’t say that I enjoy publishing books. I enjoy writing them.”
“If I ever have to read back over an interview I’ve given, I always want the earth to swallow me.”
“Sometimes I say to myself, ‘Next time I write a book, I’m not going to publish it at all!’…just because I think I deserve a little treat.”
On having the last word.
“I feel like everything that I had to say went into the book, and I have nothing left to give that isn’t already in the text.”
While you wait for that library hold to come in, remember to do as the author would. Keep calm, touch grass, and keep your expectations on the planet.
