The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, April 17, 2019 — 5A

Sally Rooney entered the literary scene in 2015 with “Even if 
You Beat Me,” a nonfiction essay published in the Dublin Review 
recounting her years as a champion debater. A year later, Rooney 
made the jump to fiction with “Mr Salary,” a short story picked 
up by the literary magazine Granta and quickly shortlisted for 
the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the richest prize of its 
kind. In 2017 Rooney released “Conversations with Friends,” her 
first novel chronicling the nuanced adultery that combines and 
recombines a couple and a pair of best friends. Rooney’s debut 
was met with electric praise, awarding her comparisons to both 
Salinger and Joyce and landing her in the VIP zone of the literary 
radar. For a year, we salivated. In Aug. 2018, Rooney released 
her sophomore novel, “Normal People,” in her home country of 
Ireland, where it quickly spread like rapid fire across the globe via 
social media and Amazon.
In the short span of three years, Rooney has evolved from 
essayist to fiction writer to “the first great millennial novelist.” 
Sally Rooney got a New Yorker interview in January, told The 
Guardian that she “do(esn’t) respond to authority very well” and 
has a 10-minute YouTube video on writing and Marxism. She’s a 
veritable cultural event, heralded for her bare prose, biting irony 
and slow burn of love in the time of late capitalism. Just check out 
what happens when you search #normalpeople on Instagram.
“Normal People” drops in the States on Tuesday, Apr. 16, and 
The Michigan Daily Book Review is celebrating by reviewing 
Rooney’s fiction career, last to first. Catch “Normal People” on the 
16th, “Conversations with Friends” on the 17th and “Mr Salary” 
on the 18th.
Frances, the central character of Sally Rooney’s debut novel 
“Conversations With Friends,” is worried she doesn’t have a 
personality. More specifically, she’s worried about how porous 
she is, how willing she is to go along with things that happen 
to her: “At any time I felt I could do or say anything at all, and 
only afterward think: oh, so that’s the kind of person I am.” She 
is always pretending to be interested in something or other, or 
is otherwise carefully evaluating the cultural valences of what 
she says or does. This never results in anything bad or evil, but 
it mostly involves a lot of Frances second-guessing herself in 
microscopic ways. She’s never quite sure if she’s fulfilling the 

role she ends up in correctly, or often, what that role even is. But 
there are roles.
In the place of a fixed personality, Frances experiences a 
series of intense, often contradictory and overlapping emotions 
that she frequently doesn’t find the right words to express. 
Instead, we get complex interpretations of things that happen 
to her and snippets of revelatory action. The prose is always 
even and precise, almost clipped at times; her fraught emotional 
landscape is rendered with what can be merciless objectivity.
Frances also seems to contrast her accommodating personality 

with her best friend and former lover, Bobbi, who is pretty, 
smart and self-assured to the point of being a little mean. It’s 
clear Frances is contrasting her unsteady inner life with Bobbi’s 
glittering exterior, a comparison destined to be maddening. Late 
in the novel, Frances writes a thinly-veiled short story in which 
she describes Bobbi as “a mystery so total I couldn’t endure her, 
a force I couldn’t subjugate with my will, and the love of my 
life.” If the idea of a “personality” seems, itself, a little elusive 
by this point, Frances’s story fully reveals the extent to which 
she tries to replace her desire for love and belonging with the 
dream of individualist autonomy. She wants to be Bobbi, in that 
Bobbi has no legible internal strife, in that Bobbi is worthy of 
love as a result of it.
Rooney, who came of age with the 2008 financial crash and 
austerity politics as a central event in her life, is skillful at 
teasing out the social mythologies of the present moment, where 
everything is in flux and precarity reigns. In one interview, 
she mentions “the particular nature of the crash, which came 

out of our first ever period of prosperity and revealed it to be a 
mirage.”
Her fiction is subtler than simple allegory, though, and she 
treats her thematic material on the scale of a small cast of 
people who, by themselves, can’t be blamed for much. Much 
is made of her Marxism as well as her attachment to an anti-
individualist personal style that is popular with millennials, 
but she really has more in common with Jane Austen or perhaps 
Henry James. She has said herself that it’s sort of difficult to 
represent Marxism, which is societal in scope, in the confines 
of her chosen medium.
She instead considers the framework of a social novel, its 
network of overlapping and contested relationships, as a way to 
show how dependent people are on each other, in a way that can 
be usefully compared with the larger-scale question of society. 
Social class itself, the ways in which our interactions with each 
other are somewhat circumscribed by class tension, certainly 
crops up in Conversations — when Frances first goes to Melissa’s 
house, she quickly notices a framed print, a glass conservatory, 
other expensive objects. “Rich people, I thought. I was always 
thinking about rich people then.” A few chapters later, Frances 
recounts how her father accused her of “changing her accent.”
Class is communicated, ultimately, through small signifiers, 
in the same messy space where everything else about human 
personality is kept. Close to the end of the book, Melissa rips 
into Frances, making almost 300 pages of subtext text. “You 
treated me with total contempt … Suddenly I’m looking around 
my own fucking house, thinking: Is this sofa ugly? Is it kitsch to 
drink wine? And things I felt good about before just started to 
make me feel pathetic.” It’s impossible to know whether Melissa 
is necessarily referring to these things being signifiers of her 
relative class position above Frances, but it’s so obvious that 
such rhetorical questions wouldn’t be possible without their 
disparity.
Rooney’s characters have all the theoretical tools they need 
to understand these things, but they prove useless in the face 
of class divisions, real and fake, and the book is remarkable in 
how combative the characters are even in the best of situations. 
Actually, the novel is remarkably effective at showing how little 
it helps, on a day-to-day basis, to have knowledge. You can read 
feminist theory and thoroughly get to know the present state of 
neoliberal rot, and all of that won’t give you a course of correct 
action in the minutiae of day to day life that we are all subject to.

Socialism and sociality in Rooney’s ‘Conversations’

BOOK REVIEW: SALLY ROONEY WEEK

EMILY YANG
Daily Arts Writer

Known for his hit song 
“Straightjacket,” 
Mikael 
Temrowski, 
better 
known 
as Quinn XCII, has recently 
introduced a new sound to the 
pop sphere. With elements of 
pop, electronic, hip-hop and 
hints of Motown, Temrowski 
has 
certainly 
redefined 
music structure and lyrical 
approach.
Temrowski released his 
new album From Michigan 
With 
Love 
in 
February 
and is in the middle of 
his 
second 
tour. 
While 
Temrowski 
has 
already 
performed in both Grand 
Rapids and his hometown of 
Detroit, Michigan, he plans 
on returning to his home 
state later this month to 
perform at Michigan State 
University. Graduating from 
the university in 2014 with 
a 
degree 
in 
advertising, 
Temrowski 
started 
recording and sharing his 
music to SoundCloud during 
his time in East Lansing 
and 
frequently 
skipped 
classes to drive out to the 

University 
of 
Michigan 
where he collaborated with 
his partner and producer, 
Ayokay.
Initially 
playing 
small 
shows 
in 
East 
Lansing, 
Temrowski 
performed 
under the name Mike T, 
but later opted for Quinn 
XCII. A learned acronym 
from a college professor, 
Quinn 
stands 
for 
“Quit 
Unless Your Instincts Are 
Never 
Neglected,” 
while 
XCII is the Roman Numeral 
for Temrowski’s birth year, 
1992.
While Temrowski almost 
always introduces himself as 
Quinn XCII, he has dropped 
references to his real name 
in his songs, and oftentimes 
his most vulnerable ones. In 
his song “Panama,” a tune 
reflecting over the loss of 
his grandmother, Temrowski 
includes a voicemail message 
from his grandmother at 
the end of the song where 
she addresses him as Mike. 
Temrowski’s real name also 
makes an appearance in his 
song 
“Always 
Been 
You” 
when he describes the way 
his 
girlfriend 
takes 
him 
by surprise by calling him 

Mikael 
amidst 
the 
many 
fans who know him as Quinn 
XCII.
As 
Temrowski’s 
music 
continues to make waves in 
the pop music scene, his real 
name increasingly becomes a 
symbol for the person he was 
before his big break in music. 
The distinct separation he 
makes between his life in the 
spotlight and the one behind 
the scenes suggests he still 
views them as binaries and 
hopes to maintain a personal 
life out of the eyes of the 
public.

MUSIC: PSEUDONYM WEEK
Pseudonym Week: Quinn
XCII and the world of pop

On April 12, the second 
annual 
Michigan 
Fashion 
Media Summit was hosted at 
the Ross School of Business. 
The atmosphere could be 
described 
as 
passionate, 
stylistic 
and 
above 
all 
exciting. 
The 
level 
of 
planning and dedication of 
the team was visible in each 
detail. Be it the aesthetically 
pleasing gift bags, the photo 
booth or even the panels 
highlighting 
the 
features 
of the event, each piece 
complemented 
the 
others 
perfectly.
Ali Gropper, one of the 
founders, said MFMS intends 
to “break the fashion stigma 
in academia.” This daylong 
event offered a rather rare 
opportunity to bridge the 
seemingly large gap between 
the University of Michigan, 
an institution known for 
educational excellence, and 
the complex but commonly 
misunderstood 
world 
of 
fashion 
and 
media. 
The 
morning keynote was hosted 
by Sophia Macks (founder 
of Beyond the Mag) and 
featured 
Jennifer 
Powell 
who is a manager for some 
of 
the 
most 
influential 
social media personalities 
including Chiara Ferragni. 
Listening to Powell speak 
about building one’s brand 
but 
more 
importantly 

prioritizing 
“intention 
and 
potential” 
struck 
a 
chord with me for she truly 
embodies the spirit of taking 
the 
risk 
and 
relentlessly 
following the path you see 
best for yourself. This is 
reflected in the fact that 
Powell was one of the first 
agents to revolutionize the 
space of social media as a 
business.
Out of the three panels 
held, the one that stood out 
to me the most was “The 
Art of Storytelling,” hosted 
by Sophia Chabbott (Digital 
Director at Women Wear 
Daily). 
The 
speaker 
was 
Aliza Licht (former DKNY 
PR head) — the mind behind 
the infamous DKNY PR Girl 
who took Twitter by storm. 
I thoroughly enjoyed this 
panel due its focus on as 
Aliza described building a 
“multi-pronged” 
personal 
narrative, 
something 
that 
is crucial but not always 
touched 
upon 
through 
our 
college 
education. 
Furthermore, 
it 
was 
an 
enthralling time to listen to 
Aliza’s experiences in the 
fashion industry over the 
last 20 years. She is a woman 
who has done it all right from 
working at DKNY to Alice + 
Olivia to writing her own 
book and even launching 
her own company. Thus, it 
is safe to say that Licht’s 
insights were invaluable but 
when she said, “if it doesn’t 
hurt a little, it isn’t change,” 

it 
remained 
with 
me, 
because as students trying to 
navigate their careers, this 
was something that all of us 
could benefit from learning.
I am so grateful to have 
gotten the opportunity to 
attend the Michigan Fashion 
Media Summit because it 
was educational, inspiring 
and of course, fashionable. 
Being 
able 
to 
listen 
to 
professionals from a varied 
range of areas of such a 
diverse 
industry 
enabled 
one to go so much deeper in 
comprehending the world of 
fashion. Moreover, the event 
also offered the opportunity 
to 
advance 
professionally 
through 
its 
networking 
sessions while highlighting 
the 
fashion 
space 
at 
the 
University 
with 
the 
Fashion Forward Showcase 
(presented 
by 
Steve 
Madden) 
that 
recognized 
the work of students in the 
industry. MFMS highlighted 
the possibilities that lie in 
lesser explored fields while 
gradually transforming the 
relationship 
between 
the 
University and the world 
of fashion. I believe that 
anyone with even a brief 
interest in related industries 
or even those simply in 
need for motivation should 
definitely attend the MFMS 
next 
year 
to 
gain 
novel 
perspectives from those who 
have not only excelled but 
have rather re-defined what 
they do.

Fashion Media Summit is 
an opportunity to explore

STYLE EVENT REVIEW

PRIYDARSHINI GOUTHI
Daily Arts Writer

Be it the rather aesthetic gift bags or the photo booth or 
even the panels highlighting the features of the event, 
each piece complemented the others perfectly.

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

KAITLYN FOX
Daily Arts Writer

Conversations With Friends

Sally Rooney

Hogarth

May 27, 2017

His real name 
increasingly 
becomes a 
symbol for the 
person he was 
before his big 
break in music.

