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.