EDITORS: Ella Minty
exhibit | arts + lit
27 SEP 2021 | 16
Sally Rooney: fad or frenzy? Caitlin Barr discusses Sally Rooney’s new book
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OONEYMANIA’ has seized the nation again. Hordes of social media posts about the Irish writer’s new novel Beautiful World, Where Are You? have been proliferating in recent weeks, with both positive and negative reviews flooding in. But how has Sally Rooney captured the zeitgeist so successfully in the last few years? Why do we keep flocking back to her work? Rooney’s ability to lend beauty to the mundane moments of the millennial/Gen-Z experience is surely part of her appeal. She has been hailed as “a portraitist of her Millennial generation” by Caleb Crain in The Atlantic, and this certainly rings true in all three of her novels as well as her short stories so far. Her characters are full of contemporary anxieties like free market capitalism, the complexities of kinks and the availability of avocados. They communicate digitally far more successfully than face-to-face. Tote-bag wearing bisexuals have been finding themselves in Rooney’s pages since 2017. But her relationship with her generation isn’t cynical – she isn’t appealing to us because she knows her books will sell – she seems genuinely interested in capturing the cultural moment we find ourselves in, post-2008 crash and in the midst of a housing crisis. Rooney describes herself as a Marxist, and the themes of class, money and imperialism are prevalent in her work. At a time
when many young people are waking up to radical ideas (whether through infographics or more reliable means), Rooney both lauds and slyly mocks the left-wing views of her characters. For example, Marianne in Normal People says that ‘money is a social construct’ but has a house in Dublin paid for by her mother while her friends are forced to work throughout the year. Connell and Marianne’s relationship is somewhat defined by their different classes, and Connell’s apparent transgression of the expectations placed on him by his upbringing clashes dramatically with his actual experience at university – one of isolation and imposter syndrome. Conversations with Friends documents the lives of members of the Dublin elite – actors, writers and performers living off inherited wealth. Rooney’s fascination with the irony of people who seem to espouse leftist ideals and yet live incredibly comfortable lives is striking and astute. However, many have criticised the author’s characters for their sameness – both Conversations with Friends and Normal People feature skinny, white, rich, tragic young women with a penchant for destructive behaviours. Some people also find Rooney’s writing style grating – a tell-don’t-show, quotation-mark-less, winding structure that can be dif- ficult to settle into. I personally enjoy the way Rooney forces her
readers to get inside the heads of her characters, even if those characters are deeply annoying at times. Still, criticisms levelled at the author don’t seem to take into account the ways in which she’s innovating, and how the popularity of her work has encouraged many people who may not read often to pick up a book – long may that continue. The success of 2020’s Normal People TV adaptation, which was widely praised by fans and critics alike, has resulted in the announcement that Conversations with Friends will also be adapted for the screen. It is likely that it will attract a similar level of viewership as its predecessor, just as Beautiful World Where Are You? is benefitting from the excitement generated by Rooney’s previous work. Rooneymania isn’t set to end any time soon. As Beautiful World, Where Are You? hits bookshops, doormats and ‘to be read’ lists, it remains to be seen whether it’ll live up to the hype. But one thing remains certain – Sally Rooney is one of the most important novelists of our time. I don’t feel like it’s dramatic to suggest that her works will be seen as classics years down the line, and I’m personally already excited for what she does next.
Photography and Danger
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Image: Flickr
age credits: Faber and Faber
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Cassia Grace, Deputy Editor, discusses why photojournalists place themselves in danger to get the story
ISTORY is told by the victors. That fact has proven true time and time again. Yet one of the greatest challenges that
victors face when formulating their own version of events is the activity of a free press. Photojournalists have the opportunity to capture a moment in time in its most truthful form. Photoshop aside, it will always be easier for stories to be manipulated if there is no photo evidence. The importance of journalism, in particular photojournalism, can be seen throughout literature. In Orwell’s 1984, the authoritarian and omniscient Big Brother seeks to control everyone’s lives by shutting down the free press and rewriting the history books to suit their chosen image through historical negationism. The Party frames history to always show Oceania in a positive and successful light. Accordingly, they won every war, were always innocent in initiating them and have had domestic peace since The Revolution (rather than regular rebellions). Of course, restricting access to free news doesn’t just pertain to fiction. Almost every repressive regime throughout history has implemented some kind of media censorship. This just goes to show the power that photography has and the threat it presents to anyone trying to prevent democracy and freedom of information. Famous
photos such as Nick Ut’s The Terror of War, which depicts injured Vietnamese children fleeing from napalm, clearly places the photographers in dangerous situations, but they also had deep social and political ramifications. In the case of Nick Ut, his photo not only earned him a Pulitzer Prize, but it also turned the tide of public opinion against Nixon and the Vietnam War. Without photojournalists placing themselves in the line of action, it would be much harder for people to hold their politicians accountable and understand the true severity of these situations. In the semi autobiographical The Bang Bang Club by Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva, four South African photojournalists shed light on life under the Apartheid regime, aiming to “set the record straight”. Apartheid for a long time crushed any criticism or descent and, as a result, we know surprisingly little about what exactly happened. However, the journey to and eventual liberation of South Africa is arguably one of the most significant events of the last 50 years. Although the book is not necessarily an accurate representation of the historical and political events (it certainly couldn’t be used as a historical source by any budding his-
tory students), it does serve to demonstrate how much journalists will endure to tell their truth. It also depicts the ethical struggle that they must continuously endure: is photographing people at their most vulnerable actually exploitative? All these journalists put themselves in dangerous situations, valuing their work above their lives. Of course, some have actually died in this pursuit of the truth. Tim Hetherington, a British photojournalist, travelled the world for his work, engaging in the Afghanistan conflict and eventually dying in Libya whilst covering Gadaffi’s siege. The Tim Hetherington Trust, which works to create safe spaces for artists and journalists, recently donated all of his work to the Imperial War Museum, demonstrating the long term significance of his work in helping us to remember and depict history. Tim’s sacrifice reflects the ultimate belief of photo journalists that they have a duty to make the world more interconnected. To quote him: “I’m a documentary image maker, still and moving, because keeping the real world on the agenda is really important at a time when we’re increasingly disconnected from parts of the world on whom we depend.”