‘I’m a lot tamer than Jack Kerouac – he did loads of drugs,’ replied author Sally Rooney when asked about her hours spent toiling at the writer’s desk. At Belvedere House for the Dublin International Literature Festival to promote her debut, Conversations With Friends, Rooney spoke of how the book came into being while she was pursuing a masters in American Literature in Trinity College Dublin. She would find time to write after class in the evening, and would work late into the night. Her interest in American literature is evident in her prose, her editor at Faber identifying her as ‘Salinger for the snapchat generation.’ As a young up-and-coming writer, Rooney has appeared on the literary scene to much laudation.

Having work already already published in The Stinging Fly and Winter Pages, it was Mayo-born Rooney’s 2015 essay ‘Even If You Beat Me,’ in The Dublin Review of Books that drew attention from publishers giving rise to a seven-way bidding war. Her short story ‘Mr Salary,’ first published in Granta in 2016 and later shortlisted for the £30,000 Sunday Times EFG short story award, served to further confirm her position as one of Ireland’s new literary stars.

Any writer coming from Ireland will inevitably, it seems, be coerced into commenting on ‘Irish’ writing. A recent interview given by Rooney to The Independent quoted her dislike for Yeats, yet in conversation with O’Shea, Rooney clarified that while she could appreciate Yeats as a reactionary force in both Irish society and literature, she felt that he tended to find too much of an aesthetic beauty in the existing social order between the aristocracy and the peasantry. According to Rooney, Joyce is much more egalitarian and democratic in his depiction of life, and she tends to shy away from Yeats’ ‘ye comely maiden,’ portrayal of Irishness. She continued to speak of the problematic way in which we visualise the Irish canon and the historical issue with literature being dominated by men, underlining the importance of writing women back into the literary landscape.

From the problems faced by women writers trying to get published and having their voices heard, Rooney moved to emphasising ‘the need to break down more than gender barriers in writing,’ speaking of how the publishing world is an incredibly homogeneous place due to a lack of ethnic diversity. According to Rooney, this stems  from the fact that having the ability to write full time freely and unencumbered by day to day living expenses ‘stems from a place of financial privilege,’ not afforded to many.  Rooney looked to her own life post-university, during which she worked in a café, before quitting to write, leaving her temporarily unemployed. Fortunately, her book deal enabled her to make writing her job, legitimising it as a means of work, and enabling her to continue. Others aren’t so lucky. In a country that prides itself in the artists it produces, what does it say of our society if we can only ensure that artists can create if they come from a place of financial privilege? Fellow ILF speaker Colm Toibin expressed similar sentiments recently in the Irish Times. In today’s creative industry, there exist huge inequities, for only people who can afford to work for free can progress in the creative industry. This raises issues as to what we want our literary culture to look like, but I digress.

Rooney’s book itself focuses on the particular social dynamic that exists between two friends, Frances and Bobby, and their enchantment with a young, sophisticated, married couple, Melissa and Nick. She describes Conversations With Friends as a story  about ‘the difficulty that lies in trying to read people; how we get to know people, how we come to understand them as individuals and move beyond the labels and stereotypes that we would otherwise attribute to them.’ She is interested in the ambiguity and irreverence of situations, her novel seeking to deconstruct relationships that can be oppressive while examining how relationships might be built in a way that feels liberating. As to whether there is any truth in the fiction, Rooney says that the book is in no way based on her own life, merely coming from her observations of social patterns and behaviour, that happen to fall into her writing.
But the big question is, how did Rooney fall into writing? Why did she become a writer? For her, it wasn’t ‘some cosmic thing,’ but rather something she always did, saying that even had she not been published, she would still write: ‘I don’t know what I would do otherwise.’

 

You can catch Sally in conversation this summer during her book tour around Ireland and the UK.