2024-09-27 08:17:33
Irish best-selling author Sally Rooney is also considered by many to be the most politically charged author today. Now his new novel “Intermezzo” is published and reveals: Rooney fails in the face of our tragic reality.
In the new novel of Sally Rooney, “Intermezzo,” everything is the same as always with Rooney: young Irishmen, protected with insecurity in every thread of their actions, go through disturbing events, caught in the sexual experiences of he brings fire, and makes complex ways of betraying themselves and others. Plus outdoor lanterns, swirling autumn leaves, glasses of wine, cultural events. The question of why this was so successful – on the day of publication, fans were lined up in front of the shops at midnight, Sally Rooney’s parties were with specially designed quiz games and table figures on which the cover A new book can be folded together. – , which has been discussed at the end and can be considered in detail at the end because there is a lot of “matter of taste” in it.
In fact, “Intermezzo” also has the reliable appeal that all Rooney’s books have had since the million-dollar success “Ordinary People” from 2017. Rooney tells the story of Peter and Ivan, two unequal brothers who, in in addition to the ten-year difference, separated by a world of other differences: the older is attractive, successful, intelligent, the younger is intelligent, nerdy. , socially awkward. One is a lawyer, the other is a chess genius. Both: lost. Both: in a complicated love story with a big age difference. Peter with Naomi, a student and somehow also a sex worker, Ivan with Margaret, a woman in her mid-thirties who runs a cultural institution.
It is incredibly interesting, it is sometimes funny (like when Ivan, thinking that he has spent many years of his life playing chess, says: “I would not have become the most famous person because I did not play chess.” ) ), and you persistently wake up the big question that every Sally Rooney book was to you: Why don’t you see this Rooney-agent rolling out of every single insecurity, every single wrinkle in your thoughts unbearable enough to simply leave the book down? Perhaps it is because in “Intermezzo” – compared to the previous novel “Beautiful World, Where Are You” – the endless student discussions about the subtleties of capitalist injustice are somewhat toned down.
Like under a glass jar
The reporter Zelda Biller wrote about “Beautiful World, Where You Are” three years ago: the only artistic intention that can be attributed to Rooney’s ordinary character design is to show millennials how boring they are. Since the “survival questions that raise serious doubts about humanity” do not exist, the “greatest worries” of young people are “irregular events such as climate change or discrimination”. Biller also wrote a memorable sentence: “However, unexpected times do not have to produce books that do not exist.” .
Rooney is considered a very political writer, he describes himself as a “Marxist,” and in 2021 he prevented the translation of his novel into Hebrew and thus its publication in Israel. At the time, he cited decisive policy as the reason for his move and repeatedly expressed his support for the anti-Semitic BDS movement. He has just used his book launch at London’s “Southbank Center” to make a sweeping statement about the ongoing “genocide” in Gaza and the “apartheid” that should already exist in Israel and the West Bank. sun.
Of course, there is no existing obligation that a successful novel must be about current political problems. But it is strange when a writer who is seen as highly political and contemporary – he was recently described in a review in the British “Times” as “challenging, political, and always dense” – manages to ignore the present in such a fundamental way. . “Intermezzo” seems to be under a glass bell, where the famous “economic” debates continue to take place, they are around the modified mosquitos of nature and the irregularities of our economic system, the latter is presented through the eyes of the young mathematician Ivan Ivan. .
We don’t live in the world of 2021 anymore, the people that Rooney describes don’t exist. The “questions that make man doubt himself” are back, only Rooney seems to notice nothing about it. Perhaps the Manichaean worldview and great literature cannot be properly reconciled after all.
Sally Rooney: “Intermezzo”. Translated from English by Zoë Beck, Claassen, 496 pages, 24 euros.
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