The star novelist discusses her public persona, the discourse around her work and why reinvention isn’t her goal.
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From the New York Times this is the interview I'm David Marchese.
The arrival of Sally Rooney's new novel Intermezzo this month is absolutely one of the fall's biggest publishing events, not only for all the readers hungry for new fiction from the 33 year old irish author, and that includes myself, but for all the book lovers, again, myself included.
Eager for the flood of think pieces and commentary that Intermezzo will surely spawn, Rooney is one of those rare authors who's been able to earn a mass readership as well as serious critical attention.
Maybe I should just say attention, period.
The popular success is, on some level, easier to understand.
Her four novels are beautifully written relationship studies, someone else might dare call them romances that weave together politics, sex, moral philosophy, dry humor, and a distinctly millennial unease with the state of the world.
It's a compelling combo, one that found an even broader fanbase after her first two novels.
Conversations with friends and normal people were adapted into buzzy tv series the lightning rod aspect to Rooney and her work is a little more mysterious.
I'm sure any writer who gets held up like Rooney does as the voice of a generation is sure to be scrutinized.
But the outsized amount and the intensity of both the praise and the criticism of her output feels a little confusing, including to Rooney, who, as she told me, would much rather let her work speak for itself.
And yet, here's my conversation.
Sally Ruby, I was just reading a brief interview you did with the New Yorker that ran in conjunction with an excerpt from Intermezzo, and I think in there it said that.
You said that it's stressful to publish your work, and maybe even more stressful to wait for it to be published.
Why is that?