Good morning. Today, we're covering one of the most passionate fan bases in literature — as well as Israel and Hezbollah, Hurricane Helene and an interview with John Oliver. —David Leonhardt
Conversations with fans
On Wednesday, a crowd of mostly young women, many carrying bookstore tote bags, filled a venue on the bank of the River Thames. They — we — were there to hear the Irish novelist Sally Rooney discuss "Intermezzo," her latest novel. Rooney is a literary star, and each new release is a highly anticipated and heavily marketed cultural event. Fans attend midnight release parties. The lucky few who get advance copies wield them as status symbols on social media. "I did post the book," a 26-year-old Rooney fan told me. "Everyone knows I'm obsessed with her." Rooney's writing embodies a kind of cool that feels of the moment. Her style is unforced, spare and incisive — the literary equivalent of Gen Z's habit of omitting capital letters from text messages, or the doe-eyed, bored poses of influencers on Instagram. "If writing is almost too effusive, too emotional, it becomes a bit cliché," another fan told me. "I think her writing feels really fresh because it's pared back." The simplicity of Rooney's language is part of its power. Her most emotionally resonant sentences have word counts in the single digits, and they arise in mundane situations. "Normal People," Rooney's second novel, is about two young people, Connell and Marianne, who are negotiating their relationship, with its various power imbalances, while feeling out their place in the world. I think about this scene a lot: "She smiled, rubbed at her nose. He unzipped his black puffer jacket and put it over her shoulders. They were standing very close. She would have lain on the ground and let him walk over her body if he wanted, he knew that." Many of the Rooney fans I spoke with at the book talk on Wednesday — all in their late 20s — praised the emotional truth of her writing. "I couldn't believe that somebody had written something that I related to so much," a fan said of "Normal People." Rooney's books deal in the fraught business of interpersonal relationships — the difficulty of vulnerability, miscommunication, understanding one's own power over another.
Her characters often consider their political and social context, what it means to be young and to be in love right now, at a time when connection can be difficult and things appear to be falling apart. In Rooney's third novel, "Beautiful World, Where Are You," the character Alice writes to her best friend, Eileen: "I think of the twentieth century as one long question, and in the end we got the answer wrong. Aren't we unfortunate babies to be born when the world ended?" At the event, I found myself thinking about Taylor Swift and the Eras Tour, which I attended a couple of weeks ago. There are, of course, considerable differences between Rooney and Swift. Yet their fan bases are demographically similar — there is certainly overlap — and they share a desire to see themselves in their idol's work. I thought, then, about how few avenues Rooney's fans, as opposed to Swift's, had to connect to her. A key part of Swift's appeal is her willingness to narrate her life as it happens. She courts her fans' investment not only in her work but in herself. Swift is an active participant in her celebrity. Rooney seems quite removed from the hype that surrounds her career. She's made clear her discomfort with publicity and the idea of books as a commodity, and she guards details about her personal life, and often objects to claims that her work is a reflection of personal experience. "I don't have any interest in marketing my books," she told The Times of London. "I certainly don't answer interview questions with the intention of selling my book." At the talk on Wednesday, one fan, jokingly, lamented how difficult it was to develop a parasocial relationship with Rooney. Rooney's debut, "Conversations with Friends," was released when she was just 26. She published "Normal People" a year later, and it was adapted into a popular television series, which seemed to turbocharge her career. Both novels concerned the lives of university students.
Rooney is now 33. "Intermezzo," her latest novel, is about two brothers grieving the loss of their father. One is a 22-year-old former chess prodigy who begins a relationship with an older woman. The other is a 32-year-old lawyer romantically involved with a younger woman. Critics have largely praised the book, many highlighting a new maturity in Rooney's writing. The change is welcomed by an audience that is growing older alongside her. A fan, a 28-year-old Instagram book reviewer, told me that she could map her life onto those of Rooney's characters. "I love that she's writing books that I feel like I can connect with each time she publishes them," she said.
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Should Democrats end the Senate filibuster, as Harris pledged this week, to pass a law reinstating abortion protections? Yes. In addition to helping reinstate abortion protections, ending the filibuster will make the Senate more productive all around. "If you think that Congress has a purpose, and that purpose is passing laws, you might want to join Kamala Harris and Joe Biden in reconsidering aspects of the filibuster," Jamelle Bouie writes. No. The filibuster is an important guardrail against extremism, and Democrats should consider how the decision to end it might come back to haunt them. "Imagine the frightening things that could happen when the tables are turned and Republicans regain power. Gridlock looks a lot more attractive then," The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus writes.
Kelly McMasters writes her own obituary every year. It is more comforting than it is maudlin, she writes. Here are columns by David French on Iran's military losses and Ross Douthat on Harris's plan for Ukraine. Readers of The Morning: Don't miss out on a full year of savings. From in-depth coverage of Decision 2024 to unlimited news and analysis, Games, Cooking, The Athletic and more, subscribe now for only $1 a week for your first year.
Sushi-Con: The 400-pound star of a Manhattan food expo flew in from Ibiza. The new old age: Wondering who takes care of the dog after your death? Think about a legally binding pet trust. 3,600 years old: Cheese dug up with mummified human remains in China offers insights into the origins of kefir. Vows: It was risky to hold a wedding in Ukraine. They did it anyway. Lives Lived: Amadou Mahtar M'Bow was the first Black African to head a major international organization when he was elected director general of UNESCO. His tenure was contested and led the United States and Britain to pull out. He died at 103.
This week's subject for The Interview is John Oliver, whose HBO show "Last Week Tonight" has been on the air for 10 years. We spoke about why he doesn't consider himself a journalist, not giving in to nihilism, and what he's learned over a decade of making the show. It's funny going back to the first season as a viewer. I found it to be remarkably similar. There's a consistency there. [John Oliver makes a face.] I mean it as a compliment! I was literally wincing both inside and outside. I saw you wincing. I don't do many interviews about myself, so I am kind of emotionally in a defensive position, and I think, unfortunately, it's translating to my face. [Laughs.] It does seem as if you understood what you were up to quite early on. I think we learned some big lessons early on. It might have been in the first season, we did one story called "Prison," and it was about 16 minutes, and that seemed like a long time at the time. And I think what we gradually learned was, it is crazy to try and talk about all the problems with prisons in 16 minutes, especially if two of those minutes are going to be a song with "Sesame Street" characters at the end. So, since then, we've basically come back and redone that story in 20 different ways. We've talked about prison labor, prison phone calls, prison recidivism, prison re-entry. There are so many different aspects to criminal justice. You can't just slap "prisons" on it and say, "Oh, we've done it now." I look back at that and do slightly wince. Read more of the interview here.
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In this week's Five Weeknight Dishes newsletter, Margaux Laskey admits that the kid wrangling, lunch packing and commuting of the back-to-school season has tired her out. If you're also feeling lethargic, she offers recipes that you can eat out of a bowl with a spoon like "a big, overtired baby," including corn and cod green curry, mushrooms and dumplings, and tortellini soup.
Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangram was theology. Can you put eight historical events — including the near-abolition of the Electoral College, the creation of purple, and the making of Mario — in chronological order? Take this week's Flashback quiz. And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com.
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Sunday, September 29, 2024
The Morning: Sally Rooney returns
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