The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Thrusday, April 18, 2019 — 5
In the short span of three
years, Sally 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.
At
a
slim
48
pages,
Rooney’s
“Mr
Salary”
delivers
a
deliciously illicit and poignant
love story. This is done in
a fraction of the pages of
her
full-length
novels
like
“Conversation with Friends”
and “Normal People.”
In the story, Sukie returns
home to Dublin from Boston to
visit her dying father, Frank.
She’s greeted at the airport
by Nathan, her closest friend.
Their interaction is heady with
unfulfilled
sexual
tension.
Sukie moved in with Nathan
years ago after her mother
died and her father lost all
their savings to prescription
drugs. Sukie was 19 at the time,
finishing up her exams. Nathan
was 34.
Due to the precarious nature
of their relationship and the
15-year age gap, there was
nothing sordid about their
time spent living together.
Nathan
even
jokes
about
their living arrangement. He
says, “I’m not really getting
my money’s worth, am I?”
Despite this, Sukie falls deeply
and irrevocably in love with
Nathan.
“My love for him felt so total
and annihilating that it was
often impossible for me to see
him clearly at all,” Sukie said.
He was there for her when
no one else was. Now, they’re
on the edge of the inevitable.
As
a
Marxist,
Rooney
explores class tension through
character
relationships
in
“Conversation with Friends”
and “Normal People.” The
socio-economic stratification
serves to magnify the power
imbalance
between
her
characters,
adding
another
conflict to her already tension-
packed stories. Rooney doesn’t
deviate
from
this
theme
in “Mr Salary,” weaving a
deeply layered and complex
relationship in under 50 pages.
“Mr Salary” has a simple
plot, but it’s Rooney’s realistic
writing and profound themes
that elevate the book into
a work of art. It’s not often
that I find myself laughing
and crying in the span of a
single paragraph. It would’ve
been easy for Nathan and
Sukie’s relationship to fall into
perversity, but it’s balanced
by
a
fated
tragedy.
Their
uncertain romance — will they
or won’t they? — is framed with
the pervasive atmosphere of
death.
“Nothing inside my body
was trying to kill me. Death
was,
of
course,
the most ordinary
thing that could
happen, at some
level I knew that.
Still, I had stood
there waiting to
see the body in the
river, ignoring the
real living bodies
all around me, as if
death was more of
a miracle than life
was,” Sukie said.
Rooney’s “Mr
Salary” is dense
with
metaphors,
picturesque scenes
and
passages
worthy
of
being
mounted against a
living-room
wall.
“Mr Salary” does
more than touch
on the intricacies
of
a
forbidden
relationship:
It
adds
substance
to
innermost
thoughts of new adult living
in the 21st century. It’s easy
to relate to “Mr Salary” as a
junior in college, worrying
about my future but still tightly
holding on the optimism of my
childhood.
Like “Conversations with
Friends” and “Normal People,”
Rooney leaves “Mr Salary”
open-ended. There are elements
of melancholy juxtaposed with
sentimentality.
Rooney,
at
just 27 years old, manages to
masterfully convey these two
sentiments. Weeks later, my
thoughts still circulate back
to this story as if Nathan and
Sukie are my own friends. It’s
the best short story I’ve read.
Rooney’s ‘Mr Salary’ is
more than ordinary love
UNIVERSAL PICTURES
SARAH SALMAN
Daily Arts Writer
BOOK REVIEW: SALLY ROONEY WEEK
Mr Salary
Sally Rooney
Faber & Faber
Jan. 3, 2019
Patty Griffin is an unsung hero
for blues, folk and soul music in the
modern age. She’s run the gamut
of every possible genre, picking
up influences from jazz to classic
folk and even, as she laughed at
The Ark on Friday, characters like
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Griffin is
a tiny woman, her size countered
by a cloud of strawberry blonde
curls and a loud guffaw
between songs. But the
biggest thing about her, is,
of course, her voice.
Last
Friday
night,
Ann
Arbor’s
beloved
folk
venue
sold
out
completely,
audiences
rushing to see Griffin
in the intimate space of
Main Street’s listening
room. The songwriter has
played at the Michigan
Theater
several
times,
but her appearance at
The Ark marked a special
opportunity for fans to join
her in closer quarters, no
more than 50 feet from the
stage at the farthest seats.
Opening for Griffin was
Lucy Wainwright Roche,
a fantastic songwriter in
her own right and part of
the famous Wainwright and Roche
lineages of music. Wainwright
Roche’s smooth voice and hilarious
banter with the audience prepared
them for a night of laughter and
good music, and that they got.
As
Wainwright
Roche
left
the stage, all seated within the
wooden walls of the venue buzzed
in anticipation. It was a full house,
saturated with excited new fans
and longtime patrons of Griffin
alike. Though the venue was filled
with silver-haired listeners, there
was also a surprising number of
young members of the audience, a
fact that proves Griffin’s universal
appeal. She can do no wrong when
it comes to live performance,
given that her songs are often
centered on the things we all have
in common; grief, struggle, love.
Through her raspy, soulful voice,
Griffin has established a solid niche
in the songwriting community, one
that extends from her own projects
into those of the Dixie Chicks and
several other artists.
Griffin took the stage in a
long black dress, her wild hair
illuminated by the yellow stage
lights in a sort of halo. She was
joined by only a guitarist and
drummer (who also played bass),
incredible
musicians
in
their
own right. They both played
piano during the performance at
different times, handing guitars
and tambourines across the stage
in order to build Griffin’s clear voice
into a woven landscape of sound.
Just the three of them created an
ambience that was equal parts
intimate and perfectly produced.
It seemed as if every wavering note
in Griffin’s singing was put there
on purpose, adding to the air of
raw intensity that each of her songs
evokes. She didn’t hit every high
pitch, didn’t flip her voice around
in acrobatics as most modern pop
artists do, but in that restraint was
Griffin’s power. By holding back
at the right moments, the singer
laid down a foundation of
suspense that always broke
at the right times, letting the
floodgates open with sound at
the right point during a bridge
or chorus.
You could say that Griffin’s
performance was careful in
these ways, but it would be
a lie. In her eyes throughout
the night, the audience was
well aware of a fire beneath
the surface of Griffin’s petite
frame, boiling out in her
inimitable soul. No matter
which song she sang, some
from her new self-titled tenth
album and some old favorites,
this intensity laid comfortable
underneath her voice. It’s the
thing that strings all of her
music together, despite the
variety of genres and styles
she chooses to adopt. In The
Ark that night, this fire warmed
the room easily, making each
person sitting there feel a part of
something bigger. If you have never
listened to Griffin, it is a spiritual
experience in the most simple of
ways: She sings for the world, for
all of us and none of us at the same
time. Hearing someone’s soul come
out of their mouth in beautiful
harmony is an incredible thing
to witness. And that is the thing
Griffin is best at.
Patty Griffin brings her
inimitable soul to The Ark
CLARA SCOTT
Senior Arts Editor
SHOW REVIEW
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
I wish I would have taken
a look at the poster for “The
Public” before I decided to see
it. If you haven’t seen the poster,
try to recall “Love Actually’”s,
swap in “The Public”’s cast,
substitute a book stack for
ribbon and you’ve got it. Can
you see it? I hope so. This poster
telegraphs all due warnings
about the shortcomings of this
film: It has more characters
than it knows what to do with, it
thinks passing references to the
power of literature suffice and
Emilio Estevez (“The Breakfast
Club”) is in the middle of the
confusion.
“The Public” has Estevez
written all over it. He wrote,
directed and starred in this
confused tale of a librarian at
the Cincinnati Public Library
who, in an out-of-character
move,
takes
a
stand
and
occupies the library with its
homeless patrons who have
no other place to stay for the
excruciating
winter
night.
Unfortunately, Estevez strikes
out on all three counts, and
the movie that could have
been a timely statement about
the continued importance of
activism and civil disobedience,
of refusing to remain silent
in the face of governmental
neglect, is a dud.
First,
Estevez’s
direction
leads us nowhere compelling.
At best, it’s as disorienting as
his overwhelming number of
characters and subplots. At
worst, it’s laughable. Take,
for example, his montages:
He randomly inserts two in
which people make various
idiosyncratic requests at the
library help desk, set to a
nondescript, upbeat score that
sounds like it might have been
borrowed from iMovie.
His
direction
is
nothing
compared to his script, however.
The dialogue is awkwardly
expository,
painfully
stilted
and often guilty of sapping even
important, culturally relevant
conversations
of
all
their
poignance.
Then comes his acting. Simply
put, Estevez cannot
bear the weight of this
story. He delivers the
stilted lines he wrote
without any notable
charisma. Librarians,
notoriously
underappreciated and
mistaken
for
being
uncool,
are
owed
an apology, because
Estevez
convinces
us
of
nothing
but
his
uncoolness.
Worse than that, his
lack of charisma is
contagious. It grieves
me to say that even
commanding “Wire”
alumnus
Michael
K.
Williams’s
star
dulls in scenes with
Estevez. Same goes
for
Jenna
Malone.
The only one who
seems
immune
to
Estevez’s
dullness
is
Taylor
Schilling
(“Orange Is the New
Black”); her character,
however, is written
inexplicably into a relationship
with Estevez’s character, so I
suppose she falls victim to him
in another way.
To
top
it
all
off,
the
film,
overextended
by
its
multiplicity of characters and
incongruous
subplots,
ends
up creating more ambiguities
than anything else, many of
which are just as troubling as
they are puzzling. The most
troubling of these ambiguities
was
Estevez’s
treatment
of
mental illness. In a film like
“The Public,” too confusing to
be dark or pessimistic, comic
relief was not a necessity, yet
Estevez wove it in, often at the
expense of homeless library
patrons with mental illnesses.
In
fact,
Che
“Rhymefest”
Smith’s character, Big George,
operated exclusively as the
butt of insensitive jokes about
his delusion that his eyes
having laser beams that kill
people upon eye contact. The
ambiguity
surfaces
when
Estevez’s
character
gives
George his glasses,
claiming
it
will
impede
the
laser
beams. Does Estevez
want to check off
another
box
on
his
Christ
figure
checklist (feeding the
hungry,
sheltering
the
homeless
and
returning
sight
to
the
blind)?
Does
that make him an
ally,
after
having
manipulated George
throughout the film,
for humor’s sake or
otherwise?
Does
Estevez even know
what he wants?
I’m
still
wondering.
For
a
challenging, complex
debate about forms
of activism, tune in
to “On the Basis of
Sex.” For a rallying
cry in favor of civil
disobedience
and
a blunt exposé of
false allyship, watch
(or read) “The Hate U Give.”
Watch any number of films I’m
missing, but don’t bother with
“The Public.”
Estevez does not hit the
mark with ‘The Public’
FILM REVIEW
JULIANNA MORANO
Daily Arts Writer
The Public
Universal Pictures
Michigan Theater
In her eyes throughout
the night, the audience
was well aware of a fire
beneath the surface of
Griffin’s petite frame,
boiling out in her
inimitable soul.