What is driving Sally Rooney obsession? (by WSJ)

—— From literary darling to mainstream. 从文学小众到市场主流

https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-really-driving-the-sally-rooney-obsession-11631017866

这篇文章提出一个有趣的问题：

为什么Rooney的小说这么popular？为什么Ronney小说中的人物会这么吸引当代年轻读者？

• what is the chemistry between the book and the culture？ （喜欢这个概念)
• What is it about Rooney's world of tormented Dublin intellectuals that has beguiled the reading public so intensely?

For one, her world is flattering to the anxieties and self-defeating torments and dramas of the young.

原因一｜Rooney式“天才主人公”——焦虑，敏感，戏精。

上一个将同代人焦虑风格化（Stylish）的作者是 Joan Didon。

Rooney’s work concerns itself with people who feel essentially awkward and painfully self-conscious and obsessively concerned with their place in the world but are also, by some improbable logic, cool.Her protagonists are nerds and gifted writers and Marxists and people who would’ve studiedFoucault and Cixous in college trying to navigate fraught relationships.

Rooney小说中的主人公都是别扭的，具有强烈自我意识的，极度在意自己在世界中的位置，同时，又表现地酷酷的。她的主人公是一些nerds，writers，marxists，以及那些本来应该在大学中学习福柯和西苏的人。（有点像《Sex Education》中的女主的样子）

Over time her readership has changed; less literary, more conventional readers.

纽约一家独立书店连锁（McNally Jackson）Marketing Director的一个观察：现在买Rooney书的读者一起买的书都是一些畅销书或浪漫小说，而不再偏文学的书。

（这里有两个有意思的点：一是书店的数据分析，根据读者会买哪些书，从而给读者和书进行label；二是阅读品味的“鄙视链”）

It is fundamentally very Rooney to succeed while critiquing that success, to be consummately commercial, while also somehow being anticommercial.

Rooney的小说成为现象级畅销书，取得巨大的商业成功。但是她在采访中表示“对于将文学艺术货币化感到不是很舒服“。这种表述就非常像Rooney笔下主人公会说的话，例如《Normal People》中的Connell。

Part of the appeal of a Rooney book is that her characters both deride the trappings of money and are obsessed with them; they scorn fame or status and also effortlessly stumble on it. Not having to do the work of resolving these contradictions is a gift Rooney is giving to her readers.She adroitly mirrors the ambivalence of a certain liberal educated elite about the materialism and success and ambition they both disdain and crave.

Rooney的主人公一方面鄙视金钱，一方面又爱钱，一方面鄙视名声和地位，一方面又执着于此。而这种矛盾正是小说吸引读者的地方。她巧妙地反映了受过自由主义教育的精英对物质主义、成功和野心的矛盾心理，他们既蔑视又渴望。

Another reason may be that Rooney writes sex scenes well, not just as satiric fiascos, a rare talent among contemporary writers.

原因二｜Rooney对亲密关系的描写。

这篇文章的视角让我又有兴趣重新打开《Normal People》。原版英文小说读了十几页确实有些觉得零散琐碎，然后就放下没读了。如果她笔下的人物是这样一个风格的话，也可以慢慢读下去。她的小说中也埋着一些文学梗，应该会比较有趣。

另外一个觉得很有意思的就是这种“反大众文化、反商业化，反主流”的态度，反而让她更受主流市场的欢迎。

用Connell的话回答：

“A lot of the literary people in college see books primarily as a way of appearing cultured… it was culture as class performance, literature fetishized for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys… all books were ultimately marketed as status symbols, and all writers participated to some degree in this marketing.”

主题：文化品位与阶级，文化资本与地位，符号，市场营销。（Interesting！）

扩展：

Maggie Nelson (born 1973) is an American writer. She has been described as a genre-busting writer defying classification, working in autobiography, art criticism, theory, feminism, queerness, sexual violence, the history of the avant-garde, aesthetic theory, philosophy, scholarship, and poetry. Nelson has been the recipient of a 2016 MacArthur Fellowship, a 2012 Creative Capital Literature Fellowship, a 2011 NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction. Other honors include the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism and a 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant.

Sigrid Nunez is an American writer, best known for her novels. Her seventh novel, The Friend, won the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction.