Louise O'Neill: The promise of success, and the problem with capitalism

Picture: Miki Barlok

I joked to a friend recently that in order to be an internationally successful young Irish woman today, you had to have the initials S.R. Think about it — Saoirse Ronan. Simone Rocha. Sally Rooney.

All considered to be the best of their generation in their chosen fields; each of these women is well-respected, if not adored, by millions of fans. It’s interesting that of the three, the one that causes the most cultural conversation is the person whom you would expect to have been able to escape that attention.

When Saoirse Ronan decided to become an actress, presumably she had some awareness that if she became successful, a loss of anonymity would follow. I very much doubt that Sally Rooney thought she was risking the same when writing her first novel. 

But while Saoirse isn’t exactly posing for at-home photoshoots with Hello magazine, she does give the audience enough of herself that they feel as if they have some degree of familiarity with her. (Even if when you take a closer look, you realise that familiarity basically amounts to “Saoirse really likes tea” and “Saoirse has a Dublin accent”.)

Sally Rooney does not do the same. In a recent interview with the Guardian, conducted via Zoom, the journalist Emma Brockes notes Rooney’s “stark, white background, stripped of even the most incidental feature”, which is purportedly a metaphor for Rooney’s desire to give away as little as possible, both about her choice of interiors and her interior life. 

Yet the less she gives us, the more fascinated people become with her, the more desperate they are to ‘know’ who she is. If Rooney thinks the novels should be enough to satisfy us, the industry of think-pieces created in her name would suggest the appetite is far greater than three books alone can sustain.

I read a proof copy of her latest, Beautiful World, Where Are You, and found it to be well-written and sexy. (Sex that is, well, sexy, is surprisingly rare in literary fiction — there’s a reason why the Bad Sex awards exist.) To my mind, one of the most interesting aspects of the book is its exploration of celebrity.

One of the main characters is a wildly successful young Irish author called Alice, and in her emails to her best friend, Eileen, she writes that, “people who intentionally become famous — I mean people who, after a little taste of fame, want more and more of it —are, and I honestly believe this, deeply psychologically ill.”

While it would be a mistake to conflate Alice with Sally, given the latter’s palpable discomfort with her own growing celebrity, it seems likely that this opinion is one she shares. It’s too simplistic to say that Sally Rooney should simply opt out of interviews if she’s uneasy with the process — authors write to be read and publicity is an important factor in getting your books into readers’ hands. I haven’t heard Rooney say she wants to stop writing (and why should she be expected to?) or that she doesn’t want her work to be respected; she just doesn’t wish to be commodified. Surely that’s not an unfair request?

Her spate of recent interviews with the Guardian, the New York Times, and Vogue reminded me of a brilliant blog post by Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist. 

Entitled ‘Success, Creativity and the Anxious Space’, Burton wrote: ‘When something you have made in private is mass-consumed, the irony is that the magnifying glass burns even brighter on you as an individual. Who you are, where you come from, how you make your work. And if you do not have immediate answers to this, because let’s face it, who truly does, then boy, are you in for a bumpy ride. And because you have written a surprise international bestseller, you are not supposed to complain that your mind is crushing you.’

What both women are touching upon, in different ways, is the very problem with capitalism. We live in a world where when asked what they want to be when they grow up, children answer with one word – ‘famous’.

As adults, many of us become obsessed with the trappings of wealth — the car, the house, the holidays — and what these markers signify about us and our worth. We are expected to work and work and work, with the promise of success, and all it will bring us ‘one day’, driving us on. We must achieve or we will fail; those are our only two options. So, to see someone like Sally Rooney reach the pinnacle of her career at such a young age and to deem it meaningless, feels almost dangerous.

It is as if she is looking back over her shoulder, trying to warn us that everything we have been taught to believe in since childhood is, in fact, a lie. That rather than being something to aspire to, fame is a dehumanising, destabilising, experience.

But I wonder if Rooney, like Cassandra, is destined to speak the truth and have no one believe her. We would rather call her spoiled and ungrateful than have to acknowledge the scary thought — what if she’s right? What if none of the things we’re striving for will actually make us happy? What do we do then?

Louise Says:

Read: Magpie by Elizabeth Day is stylish, sinister, and utterly gripping 

Listen: The Receipts podcast on Spotify. This is a fun, honest conversation between three young women about everything from relationships to race and religion.