Everything Is Content - Intermezzo, thin characters & publishing unpacked

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

It's Sally Rooney week here at Everything is Content!Beth, Ruchira and Oenone dive into their pop culture recommendations from the week, before plunging into the biggest literary event of the year: Sally Rooney's new novel Intermezzo.So, how good is it? The girls answer that core question, and dissect just how compelling her male characters are. The chat is fairly spoiler free, but do skip onto the next segment around the 30 minute mark if you want to be extra cautious.Next-up, discourse around Rooney and her mostly thin characters was firing up the timeline even before Intermezzo dropped. Just how justified are these arguments against the alleged "great millennial writer" of our time? Finally, what can we learn from Rooney's astonishing success when it comes to publishing at large? Do other diverse writers get the same chances for global stardom?Want to keep the conversation going? You can message us on our socials. FYI it's one kiss to everyone who subscribes to the Instagram and TikTok pages @everythingiscontentpod! -ITV: JoanNETFLIX: Nobody Wants ThisVANITY FAIR: Lost Illusions: The Untold Story of the Hit Show’s Poisonous CultureGQ: Willem Dafoe hits his final form: the Miu Miu overlordSALLY ROONEY: IntermezzoVOGUE: Why Are All The Characters In Sally Rooney’s Novels So Thin?ELECTRIC LITERATURE: I Love Sally Rooney’s Novels, But They Aren’t Written For MeEMMA SPECTER: More PleaseTHE NEW YORK TIMES: Sally Rooney Thinks Career Growth is Overrated  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Don't fall asleep. I'm Beth. I'm Richera. And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything Is Content. We're the podcast that dives into the week's biggest and best pop culture stories. Whether it's long reads, books, TikToks or films, we discuss it all here. We're the coveted Sally Rooney proof through your content postbox.

This week on the podcast we're diving into the millennial literary sensation herself with a bumper special on her latest novel intermezzo the discourse around her and publishing at large if you've not finished the book don't worry we're not going to reveal the ending or anything crazy like that this will be a fun discussion about the themes and the characters so there's something for everyone before we dive in to all of that sally rooney verse excellence what have you both been loving this week i have been loving what the world has been loving and what set Cohen fans globally are just delighted and and horny about which is Nobody Wants This the new Netflix drama with Kristen Bell and Adam Brody who I keep just

calling Seth Cohen and then also sometimes Seth Rogen and it's just so good I've only watched a few episodes and I'm actually like I kind of because I have not that in the too distant past gone through a breakup I kind of can't watch things that make me feel too many emotions and this is kind of setting up like one of the most gorgeous emotionally literate emotionally intelligent relationships that we've seen on the screen I think for ages and it's such like a perfect rom-com it's really funny so I am enjoying it but I have to kind of microdose it because otherwise it's a bit triggering. That's very fair you know don't don't overdose don't take it too far just balance balance with these things kids. Have you watched it Ruchira? I've watched one episode and I yeah I loved it I

thought I was I was kind of cynical about it to be honest because I haven't seen Kristen Bell in a rom-com lead role um I really like her in like various things but I've not seen her do that so I didn't really know if she had the chops to be like I don't know I guess with those kind of characters you want them to be like funny warm charming and also like a bit goofy in a way or like endearing in a hard to describe manner but I thought she nailed it I thought she was great and I really yeah I really enjoyed the first episode so I'm ready it's interesting depending on the age of the people listening she will either be Eleanor Sheldrup from The Good Place or Veronica Mars so she has done rom-coms but I think this is so specifically like millennial

rom-com and I loved it I watched all 10 episodes in one day and only it can be done I wouldn't recommend it for you I did go into it watching it and like you said have you guys seen the Seth Rogen rom-com which immediately lit the fire in my loins because I have such a huge crush on Seth Rogen Seth Cohen is also excellent but I was sort of disappointed it wasn't every week is a reveal a big reveal like an advent calendar of like the unexpected crushes you have but also I I was laughing even more because I realized when I was imagining Seth Rogen I was actually imagining Joe Rogan oh god such a tangled web um and only can I ask you that you give a little bit of a summary for I mean everyone will have heard of this but if they haven't heard of Nobody Wants This, what can they expect? So it's kind of this meet cute situation

between Kristen Bell's character who has a podcast with her sister. They're two quite unhinged white women who talk about like sex and relationships. They're quite catty. They're quite British coded in a way that I can't quite explain. And then Adam Brody plays this hot rabbi. They meet at a party. They kind of hit it off. He's recently come out of a very serious relationship and she's been single for a while. And I don't know, it's just so well written. The chemistry's amazing. The jokes are really funny. I think it lands really well. And the kissing, I saw an interview of them talking about this, but in one of the scenes when they first kiss, it's just the most gorgeous kiss. And it says in the script they have the best kiss

they've ever had and apparently both actors were like well what is that that makes it really good and the thing that makes a kiss really amazing is that anticipation and then every kiss Adam Brody like really caresses Kristen Bell's face and she's like I wasn't prepared for how much he was going to touch my face so it's just a lot of really good kissing, mostly, and great writing. Oh, God, that sounds so cozy and like exactly what we need to just deal with the dark skies, like winter coming. That sounds so good. What have you been loving this week, Beth, apart from binging all of Nobody Wants This? I just love everything at the moment. So what I've been loving, and I am 1.5 episodes in, but it is Joan Joan which is an ITV series based on Joan Hannigan's memoir and she was a female jewel thief in the 80s it stars oh my god how am I forgetting her name I'm not going to

say it Mrs. Jo Jonas Sophie Sophie Turner Sophie Turner adore her so sorry for my slight just then she stars as Joan she is excellent I'm only I say, about one and a half episodes in, but it is really gripping TV, really well acted. Starts off with her as a single mom, sort of on the fringes of crime with her partner, who is a thief, I guess, a bit of a gangster. She has to flee where they're living in Kent, ends up in London,

ends up embroiled with a antique dealer slash scam artist. And that's where I've got to. It's really, really good though. And it's so nice to see Sophie Turner acting again. So nice to see her in something other than Game of Thrones. I think she's amazing and I highly recommend it. Yeah, I definitely want to support Sophie in this because I feel like she had a really shit divorce with the Jojo-ness situation and the like PR spin attempt to make her come out like a bad mother so I'm down I'm down let's support our girl Sophie. Richard what have you been loving this week? So I have two that I want to bring up I promise I will eventually stop wanging on about Lost but there's a long read in Vanity Fair from 2023 so oh god I didn't realize it was literally just a

year ago essentially talking about the poisonous culture on set and how the writers were they'd messed up on so many fronts when it came to the people of color on the cast and not tying up loose ends with many of the characters unless they were white and male and doing a disservice to a lot of the actors with essentially just having like quite a racist sexist set and yeah absolutely fascinating stuff and I really recommend if you have started watching Lost to read that as like a side piece love what was your second thing have you seen Willem Dafoe walking for mew mew yes i also love the way you just said mew mew mew mew oh how do you say it mew mew mew mew mew that's what you say mew mew would you say what would you say beth i say mew too the pokemon carry on so essentially it's paris fashion week and willem dafoe i guess

is taking a break from acting on set and is just walking the Miu Miu show. And he looked cool. He looked chill. He looked like he was born to do this. I think it was fun. Yeah, he's in a long navy coat just walking down the runway. Do you know what this has made me think of? Because I was just thinking about runway shows now having older actors or actresses modeling. And then it made me think of Maggie Smith and Loewe.

And then it made me think about just Maggie Smith in general. Really sad. Yeah, R.I.P. And then it made me think about just Maggie Smith in general. Really sad. Yeah. R.I.P. And also I fancy Willem Dafoe so much. Do you? Yeah, he's another one of mine. He's gorgeous.

So it's time. It's time to talk about Intermezzo, Sally Rooney's fourth book following Oh Beautiful World, Where Are You? Normal People and Conversations with Friends. The book came out last week after what felt like, honestly, years of hype. I feel like we've been in the media circus for this for ages. We saw intermezzo tote bags, personalized covers, and coffee cups all given out on the release day. And this, of course, came after a summer of seeing

people smugly, I would say, post on Instagram if they got an early proof. It almost felt like anyone who got a proof was proof of being in the It Literary Club. And you know, I'm not jealous. I don't mind not getting a proof. It's fine. Intermezzo follows two brothers a decade apart in age. Ivan is a 22-year-old competitive chess player and Peter, 32, is a Dublin lawyer. The book starts with them in the days after their father's death and they're both plunged into grief and struggling to navigate life again ivan meets margaret a 36 year old arts program director he meets her at a chess event and they start seeing each other almost immediately while peter is stuck between loving sylvia his

ex-girlfriend who was involved in a car accident and now has chronic pain and can't have sex, or Naomi, a younger student in her 20s, who was a kind of sex worker. It's not really made clear what she does. I think the assumption is something along with her OnlyFans. And they essentially have a really passionate relationship, but he often feels like it's transactional because he sends her money. So what do you think of this book? And I also want you to contextualize it with what you've thought about Sally Rooney's other books as well. Okay, so I can't believe how much I think it's my favorite book of hers I've ever read. And what a sweet relief to be back in the gorgeous Irish clutches of Rooney's safe hands. There's something about the way that she

writes that immediately you start reading it and you are, you know exactly where you are, you know what this world is, and you know who these people are. And even though this is kind of different, not just people have been talking about it, it opens up from Peter's point of view as the older brother. And it's written in this sort of stream of consciousness kind of writing, which I guess sometimes can be quite jarring. And when you first read those first couple of pages, I don't know about you guys, but I was kind of having to readjust because it kind of flits between people who are speaking there's not like the grammar and the punctuation stuff is a little bit confusing and then once you're in the flow of it I want every book to be written like this my favorite books

were well now I'm going to say I've had to order them into mezzo number one conversations with friends number two normal people number three and oh beautiful world where are you number four oh that's so interesting because almost immediately before you started speaking i was like do you know what i'm going to answer ruchira's question is my ranking and it's really different from you my mine is first oh beautiful world where are you that's my favorite so far then normal no book, Intermezzo. Then Normal People, then Conversations. I think Intermezzo could actually take the top spot, but that will be determined on my reread. But I think mine is quite unusual. I think Beautiful World has

been largely misunderstood, which is fine, but it is my absolute fave. That's so interesting. Can I ask you why it's your favourite? I love those four characters. It was when we saw Felix, who is a quite complex male character, which we get so much of actually in Intermezzo, who is so unlovely, but so lovable. And he's in this spa with, and I forget the character's name, but his kind of love interest in that. And I found it so charming, especially interposed with this really devotional relationship between and again I forget their names Simon and God what's her name and my memory is a sieve and

it's really frustrating but the two couples I think are just so perfectly captured and it was and it really captured my own frustrations with the world and I have thought that a beautiful world where are you in many iterations like this is not the world I was promised and I think it was a kind of antidote to that she obviously didn't write it just for me to feel better but it did make me feel better so I love it but I'm very interested in actually Richard what is your ranking if I can be so bold you may be so bold um I haven't read conversations with friends so that is next next on my list to read once I get through various other books. But my list is exactly the same as yours and only then. So Intermezzo, number one, Normal People, and then Oh Beautiful World, Where Are

You? I really didn't get on with your fave, Beth. So yeah, I'm glad we have a bit of difference among us. Yeah, I almost can't remember it. But I know that I did it for book club. And I remember that a lot of the conversation we were having about it was about the meta-ness of A Beautiful World where are you kind of focusing on the fact that was she called Alice the main the protagonist who was the writer who everyone was like is this about Sally is she kind of trolling us and then there was all these elements of kind of like it felt like these characters some of the characters in A Beautiful World where are you felt like characters from normal people or so maybe when I read it I was focusing on it more from like an executional point of view and as Sally as a point of intrigue as a writer and it

being so hotly anticipated and also people being aware of like how much money I think she'd got like millions for that book deal so maybe I didn't create an emotional connection with that book because I wasn't reading it like that maybe I need to reread it I think for me that book I struggled with the the amount of emailing and the lack of um direct dialogue between the two best friends so yeah I hate that I hate that distance that like technological distance and the kind of getting sucked back into the world of just like detailing of life rather than conversation who doesn't just text their friend i know it was like they were quite um fancy people and they just communicated like that but it what i agree that that is a little bit more frustrating although stylistically and i know you mentioned this just

now and only i think people are really struggling with stylistic choices she's made in this um intermezzo the kind of stream of consciousness it's a lot harder to read than two like long emails between best friends, unless you disagree. I love that as well. I think I felt quite similarly to you, Anoni, where at the beginning, I was really annoyed by the style and it felt quite frenetic and just quite frenzied. And then once I got into the flow of it, I've never felt closer to a character's, I guess, internal monologue in their mind. It felt like you are hearing his anxious thoughts conflicting with each other constantly. And you were almost at a front seat

with his anxiety, just like listening to it go off and off and off. And I don't know if I've ever felt that closeness to a character before. I agree. You're so right. I think it must be that thing of where you feel like you're in their mind because you're hearing what he's saying in the dialogue and then also what he's kind of thinking concurrently at the same time so it is almost like you're operating from inside his mind you're looking out through his eyes and I agree I think it is slightly tricky to get into it but there is something about the email format where my brain just wants to like not read them so even if it was like interesting just the fact that it was like formatted or I knew it was an email I kind of

wanted to get back into the meat of the book. Whereas with this book, I've found, and I felt this a little bit with Blue Sisters, sometimes when we have swapping narratives, I can find it a bit boring

or I'm more invested in one character's story than the other. Whereas with Ivan and Margaret and Peter and Sylvia and Naomi, it didn't matter whose story I was reading. I was equally wrapped in both times. And so the flow and the pace of this book is amazing because it's a long book.

It's not super plot heavy. You are swapping between people's perspectives. But at not one point was I like, oh, I just want to get back to finding out what those other characters are doing. This I will agree with because I think, and actually I'm not the first person to think this, Sally Rooney's interiority, rather, or ability to write interiority is her skill. So actually, if you say she's writing many of her chapters as the exterior world of writing an email, two best friends essentially lying to each other. Because, of course, we all do. And we present differently. We do passive aggression. Whereas what we get in Intermezzo is pure, unfiltered inner inner and that is why I think it will top it will like top the list for me yeah so let's

go through the characters what were your thoughts on let's go through the brothers first Ivan and Peter I hate Peter love Ivan no no not at all I love them both they're both so flawed but as perhaps a younger sibling I I felt a lot of protectiveness towards the younger brother. And it was only a lot later that I really swung around and I saw Peter's pain and I was able to really fully empathize with him, is what I will say. One of my most favorite bits about the brothers is, I think I naturally feel a bit more of a kinship towards Ivan. Is it even Ivan? Ivan? I thought Ivan. Ivan. And he, because he just comes across as so much sweeter, so much purer. Peter is a very complex, Ivan's

very complex, but you know, yes, naturally I did. I felt more of an affinity towards Ivan, but I didn't dislike Peter. One of the scenes that really stuck with me is Peter and Ivan go for lunch and they have this kind of like big falling out. And afterwards, Peter's relaying this to Sylvia and he's like, well, Ivan's just never really known how to communicate. Like he's always been like this. He kind of calls him sort of like emotionally inept and socially stunted. And she says back to him, have you ever thought about the fact that maybe you're creating this environment where he feels like he can't communicate? And the insight to that was, I think, especially with

siblings, there's this like hostility between him and Ivan where they just can't talk to each other. And it is all of that sort of like sibling rivalry, the competition, the fact that you love each other so much, but you're so frustrated by each other. The fact that sometimes you can't talk with these people that are so close to you about things that you would like talk to your hairdresser about, but something about being a sibling. So I think those characters are so fascinating to me because she's written siblings to me in a way that feels very true, even though I'm one of three sisters rather than brothers.

I just felt she encapsulated something that I've not ever been able to quite articulate that I've experienced in my own life as well. Yeah, I mean, she's the queen of miscommunication, isn't she? Like every novel, you're just like screaming at the characters being like, but say what you really think just say what you actually think but I think compared to when it's in a romantic setting

with the familial setting of two brothers and having a decade between them which is a huge age gap I really believed in it didn't feel like that same frustration of you need to get your shit together it just felt like this really sad fact of life that having 10 years apart and having a brother who's so different you could just see how they may never speak again and that that would just be life that is so true and it was the so the loss of their dad is the catalyst that makes it possible that they will be estranged forever and that is I think the central kind of conflict in the book between them is, will we have a relationship? And estrangement actually in adulthood is not that rare, especially when there's not a singular figure, e.g. their father to keep it together. It sounds like their dad is this kind of kingpin, actually, no, that's not the term I mean, lynchpin. He's not a drug kingpin. He's a lynchpin to hold them together. So even though they are able to dislike each other, you know, they go from heroism to disliking each other, not having a relationship, they are bound together. They will always have this kind of family home,

this father to return to. And so without him, they're thrust into this world where they have to decide if they are going to stand kind of, you know, brother to brother, shoulder to shoulder, they have to make it happen versus it's sort of an automatic, well, of course, I'll see you at home, which i think was so painful and just such a really interesting articulation of what grief also is which is the loss of someone the glue of a family but just having like they're kind of floating freely in space with like i'm imagining it as like the

spaceship of their father has been detonated they are just these two like astronauts out in space and it just broke my heart and you know the idea that they won't reconcile was like I was weeping along like right into the very end yeah that's such a beautiful image I we said it in the last episode but it's so true it really feels like this year there's been a massive push towards art around siblings and grief and literally you know his three daughters the film that i mentioned for my recommendation last week is the exact same thing where it's like the glue's gone we could never speak again are we going to do something about it or will it just disappear it is interesting seeing so much of that this year i don't feel like i've seen that before where it's like i could name five books films now this

in the space of yeah 10 months I also think it's interesting to read Sally writing men obviously she always has male characters in her books but having the men as the central character because I do think that they're the fact that their brothers is significant as well in their inability to communicate or sort of like get together there is that real sense of the way that men are harmed by the patriarchy and not having as much ability to reach across those borders of like chasms of communications that have been created in the same way that perhaps women that were struggling with grief would feel a bit more fluent in figuring out how to look after one another they simply just kind of can't really face it don't really talk about it they think about it internally but can't ever really

get to that point and it's kind of through these women that they're both attached to that the emotional sides come out but they're kind of having to have it narrativized to them they're constantly having to be asked by margaret or by sylvia about each other and and being held their hands through in order to like get closer to one another it's like these women who are on the periphery of their family have to be the ones to try and help them thread each other back together yeah I found I found the relationship between Peter and Sylvia kind of annoying until so essentially at first it kind of felt like she was offering so much emotionally to him in a way that was like I it kind of felt like she was offering so much emotionally to

him in a way that was like i don't know almost like she was like some angelic like martyr in his life and she was perfect and like didn't need anything in return only until you understand that she broke up with him and their proximity together is this very confusing thing for him so she almost does hold the power in that sense. That kind of evened it out. But at first it did feel like, oh, so women are the answer to these guys' problems in their life, which kind of, I don't know, it felt quite reductive and frustrating. And even Ivan says he essentially was like close to being radicalized in incel forums. There's all of these kind of like traces that he mentions of various like sexist views and anger towards the idea that you have to be giving up your seat for a pregnant woman

and just general resentment towards women but having margaret in his life opens his eyes up to kindness and love and warmth and i guess seeing women in a different light and is it is interesting I think I don't know if Sally Rooney's essentially trying to say that women are the answer for men who get radicalized by those kind of things having love in their life is an answer to that that probably is true but it also feels a bit annoying I don't think I think it was more like once you actually are in and of the world those it will become very difficult if you're not isolated and just like plugged into forums it actually becomes quite impossible to withhold those views and and uphold those views sorry because you start to see people as humans and humanity rather than I thought that was really

interesting as well that you'd like I thought that was such an interesting thread where it's a very light touch it's not overly heavy-handed she doesn't really make any comments about incel culture it's just every now and then she kind of peppers in where he could have gone down a different route. And I think it is just this simple idea, which is a thread through all of her books, which is that gender kind of irrelevant sometimes, just that we can save and help each other in these really small moments of intimacy. And so much of this book is about those gorgeous intimate moments that we have i mean

there's so much sex in this book i i want to talk about the sex and the age gaps i want to make one comment on the insult them because i think that's such both of you just made kind of nailed it and i think these things do happen in teendom which is what ivan's in when peter is deriding him peter this kind of incredible scholar who's 10 years older, he's worldly, his brother looks up to him. He's sort of giving him, he's giving out to him for the fact that he's, you know, and he's in these unfair arguments, these really, the power and balance in these arguments. When Ivan's this teenager going, well, I've read these things on the internet and I believe them. He's a little man basically, and Peter's lording it over him. And I think, separate point, Peter has the most problematic relationships with women,

the women in his life. It's pure hypocrisy for him to do this. And I think that is a very interesting point, that actually Ivan becomes the more, he can see women as sort of fully formed human beings. He is so receptive to Margaret and he asks her questions. He wants to know her he wants to not

judge her at all she's been through all of this stuff and she would be by an incel standards a wounded wrecked woman but he of course being I think an intrinsically good man who was perhaps in the wrong places on the internet except her loves her wants to see her Peter is actually I think has the more problematic view of women long term would love to hear from listeners and both of you on this as to who because everything we see of the women is through the men's point of view so it's really interesting apart from margaret who has her own chapters everything we see of naomi and sylvia is filtered through peter's like very messed up mind i just had a thought and maybe this is really basic, but I just realized

that through Peter's point of view, he's essentially created the Madonna and the whore between the two women. And that's the dichotomy between them. He has this like perfect relationship that's sexless because of Sylvia's chronic pain and the fact that she cannot have sex. And then he has this super passionate relationship with Naomi, who's much younger, and he's stuck between the two. He's just created those binaries. It's even the way he describes how Sylvia dresses. She's always wearing that kind of cashmere. She's very covered up and modest. And there's one point where he's talking about, maybe I should buy Naomi something like this. And he's like, wait, no, that doesn't

work. You're right. It's's so binary what I found so interesting reading it was we know from the get-go that um Peter is sleeping with this much younger woman and I just kind of chalk that up to fine and then when you start reading about Margaret who's a 36 year old woman who starts having sexual encounters with a 22 year old man I am just so uncomfortable I'm like I get it like the attraction the sexiness written so beautifully it's so erotic but then it's like the fact that you have the braces I just keep thinking about this boy having braces and it's like Peter's doing the exact same thing but just with a woman and I know that's such an obvious point to make and

it's such a huge part of the story the the hypocrisy again ofeter but my own internalized feelings around and and margaret and ivan at one point have this conversation where he's like you can't be taking advantage of me and she's obviously got these really complicated feelings about whether or not what she's doing is okay and she's really worried about people judging her but peter doesn't feel that at all about naomi and it's so representative of society and how we view what is predatory who has agency to enter into these relationships who is making the wrong move I don't know if you guys felt that or if I'm just really like backward-minded but I just the Margaret and Ivan thing even though I was like completely understood it I also felt quite repulsed by it I think she's well aware

of that I think Sally really writing, understands completely that societally, we do not accept it when it's reversed. And also, as three women, I won't speak for both of you, I have been the young woman many times. I have that perspective on it now as a woman in her 30s. It's so difficult for me to understand how someone could date or sleep with someone much younger but she really you know makes the case for love and sex as this sort of uniting force between two people who are lost so I think she does that just like really expertly and knows that she'll make us uncomfortable perhaps yeah I I'm really surprised by my reaction because when I was reading it I was I felt quite um in it to be honest and it was only during the scenes when they're you know in public spaces and Ivan is um

reticent about making Margaret feel uncomfortable so he's checking in on her that I get pulled back into society and I am aware of the fact that this is really bizarre this is strange oh how must it look to people who are observing the two of them but when it's just them engaging with each other I feel really in it and I just feel really I don't know I feel like I don't have any of that at all but that's what's such an interesting test and it's so beautiful because I do think what they have is this gorgeous relationship and it's very believable I just I don't think I could be Margaret but I completely I've never felt more sure of the reality of characters in a book I believe all of them so entirely and even the way that sort of Ivan is very pure his skin's like marble and white he's very slender he's very virginal whereas when we

talk about Naomi through Peter's eyes he's always like oh she doesn't care she's like this she's like that he gives he gives her so much power as if she's completely um impervious to having feeling any emotions whereas Margaret does the opposite ivan and how she views him i think siren is such a deft hand at this because she takes something so thorny as age gap discourse which we covered on this podcast and got you know so controversial and she puts it into this book and makes it so difficult to feel anything other than tenderness and like well that's life really i feel like this is a perfect segue to talking about the sex scenes. It's so hard to write sex in a way that is not cringe, that is not

embarrassing, that doesn't make anyone reading want to shrivel up. And it is astounding every time I read a scene that does not make me feel any of those things, especially the ones with Margaret and Ivan were really quite hot. They're so hot, but they're so beautiful. It's such a like, that exactly tenderness is the right word, Beth, but it's that reality of what sex when you're in love is like, which isn't like porn. And it's not like erotica. And it's not like the heightened versions of sex that were so often sold. It's so much about these like really soft touches and even the language she uses can be quite like I don't know what the word is like she doesn't shy away from talking about what's happening it's so plain but it's so sweet it's the best sex I've

ever read and and it's constant and I've noticed that because I've been reading this book mostly when I've been on like buses or tubes and I swear every single time I'm like oh my god if anyone because it goes on for quite a few pages as well like lots of it and I can feel myself flushing and I'm like really into it but then I'm like it's like the most I would say like the majority of the book is sex really. I personally as the podcast premier number one reader of smart think she does it really unmatched agree with you completely some writers cannot for the life of them write sex and and that's okay to say but sally bloody rooney can write fucking hell yeah one thing that has become a bit of a discourse point which i would love to hear your opinion on is just the amount of times she describes sex where both people orgasm at the

same time simultaneously and just I've seen a few people comment on the fact that it's just like nearly every time in the book and how unrealistic that is it's just perfect sex constantly I don't really know how much to say sure you could cut that well no I was just gonna say I don't think it's that impossible but for like a first time interaction you know and like in my mind in and this is very early in the book Margaret and Ivan does he not become quite excited prematurely some might say and he's a little bit embarrassed I because I read that and went oh thank god a bit of and of course in other books it is really hot and heavy especially especially with the teenage sex in normal people.

But in this one, I actually really enjoyed that he is very, he's clumsy, he's nervous. And he arrives in the station before the train is due. I think I quite liked that. But I do agree, there was a lot of simultaneous climaxing that made me feel a bit like, am I bad at sex? So of course a Sally Rooney release would not be complete without some hashtag discourse and across the last week or so we have had plenty. The day after Intermezzo was released an article went live on Vogue's website entitled, Why are all the characters in Sally Rooney's novels so thin? Written by the author and culture writer Emma Spector, the piece

explored the characters in Rooney's four novels and examined what their thinness might be communicating and what that says about the culture that we're living in, one where fat and thin bodies alike are used to tell very different stories. So if you've not read the piece let me include a quote that might help you get a sense. So Emma writes, while intermezzo broadens Rooney's conception of what a body can look like, thinness ultimately factors into the narrative scaffolding as much as in the three novels that preceded it. Just what is really communicating with her recurring descriptions of a certain kind of body? And Emma explores all of this in the article, which upon release very quickly spread across social media to a very mixed reception, generating a lot of spicy takes, a lot of arguments, and really shamefully,

even abuse directed at Emma herself. Since we are Everything is Content and this is content we had no choice but to bring this discourse to you. Now I know Anoni Ruchira you have both read the book and this article so my first question would be what was your initial reaction to Emma's piece? I think my main opinion, and it's not specifically about their piece, it's about the way that content works at the moment, which is you have a piece of art and then there's a market in having reactionary stuff to that piece of art instantly, especially when it's popular. I think that Sally Rooney gets a lot of it and I think a lot of it is quite it almost feels like going through her work looking for

various issues and problems and I think not that the piece is pointing out things that are wrong but I think you could do that to every single piece of work no piece of work is going to represent everyone you know there's no explicitly brown characters in Sally Rooney's work. And I'm not technically represented, but reading for me, because for much of my life, it hasn't been super diverse. The books that I've consumed, I did an English lit degree, which was a lot of white authors and white characters, has been about empathy. And that's not to say I don't think books should have more fat characters, diverse characters, brown characters, trans characters. It's just that every book is going to fail if we start going through a checklist as such. And

I don't know if expecting Rooney to change her world is the way to go about it rather than expecting publishing to extend its world to the way to go about it rather than expecting publishing to extend its world to incorporate books and authors who can write to that. I think also what I find so interesting about it is it's like the mention of the bodies is not gratuitous. It's not kind of like she's not including thinness purely as a means to lord thinness or to say that she's fatphobic. It's like these bodies are very deliberate. Everything that she includes in these stories is not by accident it's not some kind of well maybe it is some kind of bias but it's not really all of the characters every single time are usually coming from a place of deficit

whether that's from grief or economic crisis or that they're always really struggling and often they don't eat very much because they have this internal warfare that they're going through and it's all about their interiority and their thinness acts as just one part of this huge cosmos that builds up these characters that exist really as vehicles for us to talk about human relationships and humanity and empathy like you said Ruchira and actually what does it mean to be alive and so that thinness isn't an accident isn't an accident meaning that it could have been like unconscious bias it's also not something to be act as shameful it's like it's a really crucial part of who these characters are i think and what they're living through and the world that they're living in and the structures that they live under and it just feels i just can't really think and i

know it's really trying to say but of any kind of like big male author where anyone's really gone in and dissected what the bodies of the characters look like in those books it just feels like people want a reason to disregard her work so it's not a new joke on twitter that sally rooney writes thin protagonists so at first i didn't realize that this was connected to a think piece an article i saw and i shared with you both someone wrote a tweet that said, Sally Rooney writing for your my characters, like she's thin skinly down the stairs. So, you know, it's a joke based on how men write women badly. She boobs breastily downstairs and titted downwards, things like that. And so I think the idea is that she's writing thin characters because she can't write women well and she's

pigeonholing them versus the idea which is what you're both saying that actually there is a purpose to the bodies of the characters and either way the scrutiny is so unlike what a male author would get and I actually don't disagree I really think Emma Spector's article is really interesting I think we should take it on board and think about it. I think the abuse was absolutely just pathetic and out of pocket. But I don't agree with everything they said. I do think it's far more. It's just because she's the most popular author of the moment.

It's very easy to position her as the person that should set the levels. Whereas actually, she's writing novels that have a handful of characters by this point she's written four novels she's in her early 30s should we really be turning to her to completely set the level on what inclusivity should be in modern novels yeah i think i think she's a victim of the fact that she's become quote unquote the great millennial author of our times and she's the first person to be dubbed that. And I think in turn, what she's now wrestling with is everyone's expectations and everyone's questions over if she is the great millennial author, why doesn't her work appeal to me? Or why doesn't it answer to me?

Or why doesn't it look like me? We're all looking to identify with you know the content we consume and I think that is now now that's her cross to bear to be honest and I think people's beef isn't really with her but they're distracted by her people's beef is with publishing and the fact that she can be dubbed the great millennial author and that piece of work is shot to astronomical fame and you know her career is like the career of dreams for anyone who wants to write a book but you're seeing her and you're thinking but she doesn't write for people like me so that makes me feel like is that does that mean that I don't matter I guess is ultimately what people are feeling from that possibly but I think

that's publishing's problem I don't think that that's her problem. That's basically what I was going to say. I think it's a really useful thing for us to look at representation of bodies and race and ethnicities and gender within art as a whole. And the way that that is going to be changed is not by getting slim white straight authors to write about lived experience or characters that they maybe A, don't understand or have experience in writing or just don't want to. But rather look at the voices that are making it into the mainstream in order to diversify the range of art that's coming in. It just feels like Sally Rooney is not going to be the person that's going to give us a fat, black, queer character that's going to be really well fleshed out there is a point in this piece kind of but it's just it's misdirected and pointing it out with sally rooney i think this is the nature of her art and her writing and i think that should be allowed but it does need to exist

in a world that also encourages writers of every different kind of intersectionality to be able to have access to the same level of fame and readers that she has. Totally. I think Sally Rooney very much wants to write within her own remit. She is, as I believe, and I think we all do, she's a principled woman who is quite comfortable writing what she knows and writing about love and relationships. And the answer definitely is not that we encourage her to write a stereotypically diverse character. It is that we broaden the horizon. And definitely Emma Spector's article is not an attack. And I've seen people firing back at them in a way that I think misses that point. I thought the article was interesting. I thought it didn't take aim at Sally Rooney personally so much as it did

what we've been talking about, the kind of trends that exist across all literature where thinness, it is used to communicate virtue and innocence and fragility and discipline, while fatness is used to communicate the opposites of those things. Sally Rooney, I don't believe is guilty of that so much as she, I agree with you and only she is using it to communicate actually illness, a lot of the time um depression suicidality it actually does have a place in her um oeuvre and her her novels it's unfair maybe to spotlight one female author i think the piece is is is quite well balanced whether you agree with it or not and i just was so depressed seeing people just engage with the author and being nasty rather than having a

conversation like we've really forgotten how to have hashtag discourse, or maybe we never did. Yeah, it's an easy bullseye, isn't it, for media organisations and also just for a viral tweet. You can't please people from having a problem with her work, but a lot of it feels quite bad faith. I don't think this piece is bad faith, but I think generally the conversations that you know are triggered as

soon as her book has dropped you know a lot of them are just like trying trying to have a go at her for the fact that she's just quite a popular author and she you know she does write about white women white thin women and that is a target I guess such an incredible and insane amount of critique for someone who's written four novels in the space of less than a decade. Is it jealousy? Is it that she will sell copies of magazines if she's in it? I just can't understand why she, who I think just writes lovely novels about sex and love in a really relatable way, is the target for so many think pieces please do go and read emma's piece for vogue and uh perhaps as i'm going to do it by her book more please which is all about the realities of extreme

dieting binge eating and food fixation and of course as usual do message us to let us know what you thought about this discussion are sally Rooney's characters thinning skinnily? Should we leave them alone? And does it have to get so heated when we have these discussions? Could we just be normal people and have a conversation with friends? Our DMs and comments are open around the clock. So please do let us know what you think. Now, more than ever, conversations around publishing are spilling out into the public consciousness with the public being interested not just in books but in publishing itself.

And the industry is both booming and evolving before our eyes with the rise of things like book talk and reading becoming fashionable for want of a better word whether it's celebrities hiring people to buy erudite and interesting books to line their bookshelves for decorative purposes or jacob lordy influencing a whole generation of fuckboys to carry books in their pockets books are hot property but maybe this isn't always a good thing a lot of people at the minute are talking about how books kind of feel like fast fashion. Are we maybe over-consuming books? In a recent New York Times podcast, The Daily, Sally Rooney was interviewed by David Marchese about the issue of production and the ceaseless

need for growth and making money. And she also talks about how she personally benefited from being a young woman in the literary space so while we've said that maybe criticism around her characters being white and thin feels a bit basic and maybe unneeded there definitely is a conversation to be had about the kind of writers and voices that do get pushed to the top of getting published by publishers. And even with the onus that we put on debut novels, which I don't think used to be a thing, but a lot of my friends are writers now. And it's so interesting how everyone's like, you want your debut novel to be amazing. But even as we've seen in only the four books she's written, I think she's progressed

and changed so much as a writer. And I think she's only going to get on to get better. But publishing now, it feels like instead of finding new and interesting voices and cultivating authors so that they go on to become writers with a huge arsenal of like a diverse range of novels, right now all publishing is kind of focusing on is getting the new, shiniest, most sellable book, thinking about writers like Colleen Hoover and others, which maybe don't fit into literary spaces. What do you guys think? I know, Ruchira, you'd made some comments before, previously about publishing, but have you noticed that I even see it on my timeline, or even in, I went into Gail's the other day with Intometso, and the woman was like,

oh my God, I've been waiting to get a copy. And I was like, oh yeah, because it came out today, didn't it? And she was like, yeah, well, unless you're one of those people that knows publishers. I don't think that used to be a conversation that was happening in the wild like 10 years ago yeah no I completely agree I feel like the publishing approach to this book specifically has very much felt like capitalizing on the fact that Sally Rooney feels really zeitgeisty and it's a statement to read a book of hers and it's an even bigger statement to be on a publisher's list to get a proof of her book. It is like co-signed, you're an important person, but also you're a cultural important person. It does feel like the marketing behind this book specifically has become quite a story in and of itself.

And I don't think I've ever seen that for a book before. It is interesting because it wouldn't help it would not have been necessary as someone who has published two books the drive to do these branded moments is because there is perhaps a gulf between you and a potential audience it is for people who are maybe less world famous they know normal people i think sold more than 1 million copies in the uk alone it's just huge huge numbers for somebody who is as ecologically focused she talks a lot about the climate crisis and evidently cares a lot about it it seems very odd for a marketing team to make promotional content that involves like disposable items i mean unless they are going to be used forever

but actually i just think everyone has a tote bag we We don't need any more. That aside, I do, I really respect that you talked in this interview so candidly about self branding and about how she's not that interested in career progression. And in fact, she just loves and is devoted to writing. And I think in a world where like the celebrity book deal is king and everyone else, as I know, Anoni, perhaps you'll know, Ruchira, I hope you will never know because you'll get a big, juicy advance. Advances for non-celebrity authors are tiny. They are disgraceful. You can be a celebrity and you just want to pump out like 11 children's books and you can, and you'll dominate the shelves and they'll pump all the marketing budget your way I thought this interview

was excellent in that she just boils it down to I love writing novels she's clearly not that interested or maybe she is and I'm very ignorant in personal branding she does a couple of these really interesting interviews a year and apart from, just seems focused on writing books. I found it incredibly refreshing and I came away loving her quite a little bit more because she's just happy writing. Can I just say one thing about publishing and it being at odds with her own sentiment about, you know, rejecting growth and productivity and optimising her style and getting bigger and bigger and bigger as the industry would like her to be. I found out that the advance you get on your first fiction book, if you don't make that up, essentially you've ensured that you will never get

a bigger advance on your second book. So the average person, their debut will never realistically be their best piece of work because why would it be? It's your second book so the average person their debut will never realistically be their best piece of work because why would it be it's your first book but the way many advances work for many writers it is almost like you have to do the biggest best sensational piece of work as your first piece of work because otherwise you've set yourself in a coffin when it comes to the amount of money you can earn from that point onwards? Well, it depends because if you say you don't outsell your copy, so the way that an advance works basically for people that don't write books, you get an advance. They normally give it to your installments. You got the first installment when you sign your book deal. You got

the second installment when you deliver the book to your publishers and the last one when your book comes out. But that could be like five, 10 grand just just split into three often you've got a literary agent taking 20 of that then you've got to pay tax on it so it can end up being like very little money and once you out earn your advance so once your book sells enough copies that you make the same amount of money as your advance say it's ten thousand pounds you then start earning like really low royalties if you don't earn that it does mean obviously your second book might not get as much but something could happen in between that first novel and that second novel that a means your your celebrity has got bigger you've become more well known there's more of an appetite for that book you could sell it to

different publishers who might put a higher price point on it so that's not definitive I think what can happen sometimes is someone might get a big advance maybe too big for the like then the next time their next advance it's all just basically really complicated but what I wanted to say off the back of Beth's point was it's interesting you're so right I found this interview with her fascinating and I think about it all the time most people who are writers truly writers in their soul and that's what they want to do are the opposite of people who are creators and creators in the sense of being exhibitionists or actors or like being the face of things writers are often people that like being the face of things. Writers are often people that like sitting in a dark room, like taking themselves away, like creating whole

worlds in their head and their name is at the bottom of the page, but really they don't want to be visibly seen. And what she talks about, and we've spoken about this before as well, is now for anyone in any creative industry to do anything, you do have to do this level of personal branding in order to create a parasocial relationship with audiences so that when your book comes out, your publishing team can market tote bags and other non-essential crap to them in order to build more capital off the basis to make this a big selling moment. But the one thing that fell slightly flat for me was I loved and believed everything Sally said, but she is one of the only authors working right now who can say all of that and do that because she will be making so much money off her books.

And for most people who are jobbing writers or authors, you have to do it alongside a full-time job. There's very few authors, like Matt Haig famously got an exceptional advance for like the Midnight Library, one of those that was like close to a million. But most people are earning, I'd say like 25K for like a good book, that'd be like a good amount, which isn't even a year's salary, which would then, the idea of an advance is it's meant to give you the agency, the time to go in and write your book, but that it doesn't happen anymore. Like inflation has happened, the world is so expensive, we live in a cost of living crisis. And the amount that books of money that authors get is so little that really it is kind of like a dream now to be an author it's like so few far people can do it so I thought it was lovely and I thought it was really interesting and she

was talking about how the way that we want to see women in the world is through this and through that but god she's coming from a place of privilege because not many people have managed to do that it I nodded along as you were saying that because I agree totally. And in the part of the right beginning of this interview, which everyone should listen to, it's fascinating, but she talks about how she's quite disconnected from criticism of her books and the discourse. And she thinks that criticism should take place between the author and the reader, I'm sorry, the critic and the reader rather. And she's separate from that. And I think that's a great idea. But I also wondered whether that meant she is separate now from discussion about authors currently who are trying to chase a little bit of Sally Rooney success. And I have

signed three book deals before I was 30, and none of them exceeded 10 grand. And all of them, to earn that money back is so difficult you are essentially working for minimum minimum wage because publishing houses will know that writers dream of being writers they will take um and actually if you are a reader i hope it still exists there is a spreadsheet that exists on the internet and i hope i can find it and link up the show notes where a lot of big authors including Roxane Gay people of her caliber listed what they made on their recent um or in the last 10 years book deals and were really transparent about it if I can find it I will share it's so amazing some of these great writers had had either

zero advance or a five grand some of them had millions. And it is so fascinating. And it makes me furious because, of course, the stories that we want are from people who can't afford to take off work to write a book, who need an income, who don't have a trust fund or similar, or can't, even as I've done, move home or whatever else it is. And I do think that Sally Rooney is so perfectly positioned to talk about this because she is a very, and maybe it's not, maybe then it's me putting on her to be the moral face of an issue, but she is so privileged in publishing. It would be very good to hear more from her about the disparities in the industry that she's in. I think she just has such a specific and unusual and

unique story and perspective of it that it is just so unlike any other author really it would be hard for her to talk to anything else I guess. One thing that I wanted to platform was there was a piece in The Guardian talking about how Ireland has basically birthed so many incredible writers in the last few years and unsurprisingly it's just that they have a really good um arts council funding that has essentially catalyzed a lot of writers to be able to put out the work that they have which is why if you've thought in the last few years oh it seems like irish writers are having a moment that's why so i think that really touches on what we're talking about, which is the publishing industry is a very challenging

environment financially to make work. And without funding, without publishing taking risks on writers that can't afford off their own backs to write, we're just going to keep going around in cyclical arguments about why does an ex-writer represent me or ex-writer do this. It was so interesting. I had a meeting about something not to do with anything we're talking about but with someone who is a book editor recently and I was talking to her about this and she was like it's so complicated because publishing houses like the big houses are businesses and they need to make money but the people that work in publishing are readers who love books and they're so at odds those things. And the things that publishers or editors

maybe want to find to buy as a book might not be economically viable because of all of these reasons that businesses think. But actually, if you trusted readers and publishers, and years ago when books weren't like fast fashion and things weren't getting churned out so quickly and writers, again, probably actually a lot of them came from a lot of privilege. Either were rich men with wives that were running the house so they had the time to write or whatever either way writers were given so much time and space and money and energy into cultivating them as writers but now it's what's happening is publishing often is going for the lowest hanging fruits in that even with my memoir I was really self-conscious of when I wrote Bad Influence and I spoke about this with the when I got my. I was like, are you just buying this? Because you

know you can sell it because I have a built-in audience. And that definitely was part of it. So all of that is to say, to go back to this thing about celebrities writing books, people getting these book deals, the idea that a lot of editors and publishers will say is, oh, if we do Colleen Rooney's tell-all memoir, we'll definitely make money on that, which means we'll have the money to then go and reinvest in younger, lesser known authors. But that doesn't actually seem to be happening that much. Or if it is, the marketing drive for it is just so hard to get it out there because we're so saturated. And you see it in the podcast world as well with like every celebrity couple now

bringing out podcasts and it's hard to get those independent voices through when the algorithms are so clogged up with these people that already monopolize a lot of the media. So I could talk about this all day long because it is just really sad. But I do find it really fascinating now that lay people are also, because of BookTok and because of people becoming really invested in reading as not only a fun hobby, but kind of a status symbol. I wonder if there will be a reckoning within publishing. I think that's a very good point. I also would say, I think that's it. I think we expect more of celebrities that we want them to be intellectual. We expect more of intellectuals that we want them to be celebrities. And in the interview, Sally really just talked about that.

She's like, there typically aren't women, young women who are in the public eye for being either political or for being intellectuals. They're there for other great talents, which is singing, acting, performance, which is very visual based and it's very about appearance and so she's reckoned with that and I just was like how did you get famous Miss Sally Rooney and I went back I don't I kind of thought she came out of nowhere was this like real wunderkind which is sort of what happened that she was 26 she wrote an essay about being a champion debater, which she was. She was one of the best in Europe. That went, it was 2015. That went viral. She got an email from a publisher and they said, do you write fiction? Send us something. Or an agent rather. Sent something over. The agent sent

it off to publishing houses and she got seven offers when she was like before 26 in her like early 20s this like reading that I was like that is the dream I'm going to speak for all writers here I'm not I don't like to do this but that is the dream right that you're going to be the genius of your generation it's so interesting to actually hear from the genius of our generation and she's like it's kind of not all it's cracked up to be I wonder whether you guys thought this when you were listening whether she sort of sold it as a fantasy and you were like oh my god I wish that was me or whether you were like maybe it's kind of better that the three of us didn't write bestsellers at age 24 because we will be bestsellers or approaching like success and

acclaim later in life in small pockets rather than being like i think it's a cursed chalice i don't know if she's done it really well because she's so bright that she went in and kind of like actively didn't seek out fame so she she talks about her complicated relationship with like the success of normal people as a tv series and how she thought that maybe impacted the young actors that were then thrust into the limelight and she she hasn't courted fame. She talks about writing in a way that's like, I literally have to write these books. I don't know what else to do with it. They come to me and I have to put them down. And the joy I get is from experiencing these lives. Sometimes I think overnight success in that kind of inverted commas way can be a curse. I think with her, actually,

she's got so much power and control, even in the fact that she was like, I actually don't want to option this book right now, Intermezzo, as a TV show. I'm going to say no. That level of control and power and being able to re-narrativize where she's going, whether that trajectory, because she could just keep turning that and making loads of money from optioning it like a lot of publishing as well now I think is about publishing books that will get optioned for tv so I did feel really jealous because I was like god she went in I guess with her eyes wide open and it feels like she's holding the reins on this yeah I agree I think you know what there's there's pros and cons either side. I think it's difficult being in the trenches creatively and just feeling like nothing is working. Should I give this up? I feel like everything is telling me to give this up. But then, yeah, having the level of fame she has

and the expectation to meet the demands of every single reader who picks up her book. And then also before you've even dropped your book, the discourse machine working in overdrive to fire its shots and hope that something lands. And then that might be the end of your name as the millennial writer of our time. That is a fuck ton of pressure. That is awful. But I do agree. I think the level of control you can have over how you choose to engage with the public is something that feels really pertinent especially now where books podcasts scripts everything feels like it's commissioned off the back of you having a massive audience already and it feels like well if I spend all my time making TikToks then when am I going to write if I spend all my time making TikToks, then when am I going to write? If I spend all my time writing, then people are just going to tell me I don't have an audience.

It's this cyclical nature to break into a lot of these industries. Whereas I do really feel a level of jealousy about the fact that you could just tap out of all of that. We obviously all loved Intermezzo and we would love to know what you thought. Have you read it yet? Have you not read it? Are you a Sally Rooney hater? Why? Always interested by that, but they do exist.

You are out there. You can buy it pretty much everywhere. She's everywhere. She's so Intermezzo. Thanks so much for listening to us this week. If you've enjoyed the podcast, and I know know that you have please tell at least one friend and leave us a rating on your podcast app five stars definitely remember to follow us on instagram and tiktok at everything is content pod see you next week