Meditations on Joy - part 002 - Sally Rooney - Beautiful World, Where Are You

Somewhat to my husband's frustration, I do love an absorbing story and over the last couple of month's I've been particularly enjoying Sally Rooney's latest novel.

As per the Guardian "love-quadrangle review", there are four principal characters in this novel, i.e. all with strong voices and significant character development, but the primary narrator is Alice, a hugely popular but discontented writer, struggling with her new rock/writer-star celebrity status. 

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney review – author of her own discontent

… a love-quadrangle storyline à la Conversations With Friends. Eileen, employed by a Dublin literary magazine, beds her girlhood crush, Simon, a political adviser; Alice, now living by the sea in Mayo, falls for her Tinder hookup, Felix, a warehouse worker. Their relationship crackles with the flinty repartee that is the shining currency of all Rooney’s fiction.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/05/beautiful-world-where-are-you-by-sally-rooney-review-author-of-her-own-discontent

This was my first Sally Rooney, people have been telling me for a while I should be reading her and so I was happy when she was chosen for the book club at work. One of the epithets the author doesn't like is as a millennial writer, or more precisely, she is being dubbed the first great millennial writer by some? 

My younger colleagues saw her as writing for millennial's. However, they focused on the details of being in their late 20s or early 30s and living in an expensive, metropolitan hub city like Dublin or Amsterdam. And yes, there are many parallels for young professionals living in these two cities; the conversation even briefly drifted onto New York with the revamping of Sex and the City? 

However, I suspect the epithet "millennial writer" annoys Sally Rooney because yes there is something in the fresh rebellious tone of her writing and this epithet can be seen as somewhat patronizing. The book is packed with both exciting people and exciting ideas, especially the defence of socialism and complacency of those who see the last 50 years as a vindication that the "right-wing thinking has been proved right" plus the "left-wing think is a bit simple and naive"? While I hope no one would try to defend the old USSR, I like that she is pushing back against "end of history": 

“Human beings lost that when the Berlin Wall came down. I’m not going to get into another argument with you about the Soviet Union, but when it died so did history. I think of the twentieth century as one long question, and in the end we got the answer wrong. Aren’t we unfortunate babies to be born when the world ended? After that there was no chance for the planet, and no chance for us.”  

— Beautiful World, Where Are You

  

I think the visionary Jeannette Winterson with her "superior arguments of socialism" would approve of Sally Rooney's perspective and push-back against the triumph of naked capitalism:

“It was a real advance in human consciousness towards collective responsibility; an understanding that we owed something not only to our flag or to our country, to our children or our families, but to each other. Society. Civilisation. Culture.

That advance in consciousness did not come out of Victorian values or philanthropy, nor did it emerge from right-wing politics; it came out of the practical lessons of the war, and–and this matters–the superior arguments of socialism.

Britain’s economic slow-down in the 1970s, our IMF bail-out, rocketing oil prices, Nixon’s decision to float the dollar, unruly union disputes, and a kind of existential doubt on the Left, allowed the Reagan/ Thatcher 1980s Right to skittle away annoying arguments about a fair and equal society.”  

— Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

  

But putting politics aside, my favourite character was Simon, quiet, elegant, peacefully getting on with his life. I perceive him as a role model, of those many "gently religious" folk, who have the self-discipline to keep their faith, find the good and relevant in their religious convictions without getting drawn into extremist and/or intolerant positions?

I was chatting with a couple of friends after Church last month and mentioned that I was reading this great new novel: final there was with a strong Christian character who is not a complete idiot. My two friends, who are probably a bit more orthodox than myself were a bit shocked but also amused (I hope). Simon is likeable, relatable, handsome and possibly the nicest character in the novel. He is also the perfect counterbalance to his neurotic girlfriend Eileen. There are two strong romances in this novel: while Alice and Felix bump along and slowly fall in love, with a modicum of bickering; Eileen is more intensely besotted with Simon and in one memorable scene they have the best phone sex ever. Well, it is the best phone sex scene I've ever read and I can't help musing that only an accomplished author could have phone sex with such elegant dialog? I will not quote any of this, partly as it is the romantic context and build up which makes this scene so perfect.

I will leave you one last quote, demonstrating the quixotic humour and eye for quirky details, which made this book so a joy to read, Alice is writing to Eileen (this is largely an epistolary novel):

“I miss you. I was sitting in the Musée d’Orsay this morning looking at sweet little Marcel Proust’s portrait, and wishing John Singer Sargent had painted him instead. He’s quite ugly in the painting, but despite this unfortunate fact (and I do mean despite!) something in his eyes reminded me of you. Probably just the glow of brilliance.”  

— Beautiful World, Where Are You

 

patronize | ˈpatrənʌɪz | (also patronise) verb [with object] 1 (often as adjective patronizing) treat with an apparent kindness which betrays a feeling of superiority: ‘She's a good-hearted girl,’ he said in a patronizing voice.

metropolitan | mɛtrəˈpɒlɪt(ə)n | adjective 1 relating to or denoting a metropolis: the Boston metropolitan area. noun ...
2 an inhabitant of a metropolis: a sophisticated metropolitan.

epithet | ˈɛpɪθɛt | noun an adjective or phrase expressing a quality or attribute regarded as characteristic of the person or thing mentioned: old men are often unfairly awarded the epithet ‘dirty’. • an epithet used as a term of abuse: people jeered and hurled racial epithets.

besotted | bɪˈsɒtɪd | adjective 1 strongly infatuated: he became besotted with a local barmaid. 2 archaic intoxicated; drunk.

Eulogy for Joan Didion

I wanted to write this month about Joan Didion anyway, amongst two other very famous feminist writers.

But now, a few days after Christmas, I see the Joan Didion obituaries coming in. On the one hand, I feel sad that such a great writer and commentator has passed away, and on the other hand, I think, good for her; she had a pretty amazing life and continued in that way to almost the very end. The very end being an impressive 87 years, Joan Didion seemed like a workaholic writer who loved her work but maybe didn't care too much for either sleep, nor eating her greens. 

So who are the other two feminist writers I have in mind: Doris Lessing and Sally Rooney.

Doris Lessing was a disillusioned communist, proto-feminist and master of the inner-space narrative. Doris Lessing was written some wonderfully insightful, sensitive and inter-twined tales within the Golden Notebook. These tales cover a wealth of emotions and historical themes; there is a lot of sex, well, there is a lot of straight sex, some of it good, some of it wild & wonderful, but also some it not so good. The gay sex, like the gay characters, was disappointing and a bit painful to read, one weak spot in an otherwise wonderful story.

I would have imagined that the disillusioned London Communist (Lessing) and the disillusioned Californian Hippie-come-Hipster (Didion) would have had a good amount in common and mutual sympathy, but maybe Didion was jealous of Lessing's celebrity status? I can only guess.. they should have been kindred spirits. During the Amsterdam non-fiction book club this month, we discussed this point and Evie suggested that Didion's strict training as a writer at Vogue and the need for bright, concise and on-point prose "Didion didn't just hit her exact word counts, she hit her exact character counts", could have clashed with Lessing flowing & lyrical inner-space narrative style, taking hundreds of pages and with no definitive conclusion? 

Sally Rooney has been dubbed a "millennial writer" (I'll come back to what that might mean later); she is also known for writing about sex in a direct and exciting manner, not normally associated with more sophisticated, modern, feminist writers. Actually, I expect her first two books were more salacious, but I haven't read them. In her 3rd novel, there isn't that much sex however there is one really quite a remarkable phone sex scene. Two things stand out: firstly, only a writer and/or poet could have that hot phone sex. While part of me is jealous, this was a joy to read. Secondly, this scene doesn't seem salacious. Despite the sticky ending, it is pivotal to the plot. I really wasn't sure where this wonderful story was going, but after this scene, I realized A ends up with B, plus C with D and Jane Austen would have approved of this underlying, classical romance theme. Salley Rooney is the hot young, Irish writer of our age, I suspect like F S Fitzgerald will be being read in 50 or 100 years from now! Her characters will connect to future generations, the same way as we still Gatsby, Nick Carraway, Jordan Baker, Dick Diver & Nicole… Anyway, Rooney seems connected to the "communist writer" theme, which broke Lessing's spirit and all the "communist writers" intrigued Didion (a recurring topic in her book "The White Album") and slightly counter-intuitively, 50+ years later on Rooney is powerfully arguing needs re-evaluating. 

My personal opinions are and have always been pretty centre-left, but as I get older, I get more frustrated by the "harder-left" as they appear to be a distraction to what we can achieve in small steps now, for example, in the last UK general election, which seemed to be a choice been a swing to the hard-left (although the FT argued that maybe Corbyn's policy would just bring the UK back into line with other western European countries?) or carry on with hard-right (even more extreme free-market plus less local & national government). Maybe Rooney's powerful intellect and fine writing can re-invigorate left-wing politics, the failure of free markets to curb CO2 emissions so far may mean that future generations will eventually push back and impose more limits and give great guidance to businesses in the future. 

I would love to have known what Didion would have made of the upcoming decades, but for now, I'm grateful for excellent writing and sharp descriptions of the 60s, 70s and 80s… she takes you to places in American culture that very few other writers have so perspectively described, a wonderful legacy and RIP Joan Didion, God bless America.