The Interview - Sally Rooney Thinks Career Growth Is Overrated

Episode Date: September 21, 2024

The star novelist discusses her public persona, the discourse around her work and why reinvention isn’t her goal.

From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm David Marchese. The arrival of Sally Rooney's new novel, Intermezzo, this month is absolutely one of the fall's biggest publishing events. Not only for all the readers hungry for new fiction from the 33-year-old Irish author, and that includes myself. But for all the book lovers, again, myself included, eager for the flood of think pieces and commentary that Intermezzo will surely spawn. Rooney is one of those rare authors who's been able to earn a mass readership as well as serious critical attention.

Maybe I should just say attention, period. The popular success is, on some level, easier to understand. Her four novels are beautifully written relationship studies—someone else might dare call them romances—that weave together politics, sex, moral philosophy, dry humor, and a distinctly millennial unease with the state of the world. It's a compelling combo, one that found an even broader fanbase after her first two novels, Conversations with Friends and Normal People, were adapted into buzzy TV

series. The lightning rod aspect to Rooney and her work is a little more mysterious. I'm sure any writer who gets held up like Rooney does as the voice of a generation is sure to be scrutinized, but the outsized amount and the intensity of both the praise and the criticism of her output feels a little confusing, including to Rooney, who, as she told me, would much rather let her work speak for itself. And yet, here's my conversation with Sally Rooney. I was just reading a brief interview you did with The New Yorker that ran in conjunction with an excerpt from Intermezzo. And I think in there it said that you said that it's stressful to publish your work and maybe even more stressful to wait for it to be published. Why is that? Because I can imagine that this is the nice time before you have to worry about how people are actually responding to it or, you know, if it's selling or anything. Now it's like you just got the thing ready to go. Yeah. But the way that books are published means that actually a lot of the stuff that I find stressful is kind of like front loaded. So it happens that, of course, the conversation that

we're having right now and the conversations that I'll be having with other journalists about the book will be happening before the book is ever published. And that means that the part that involves me, in a sense, putting myself out there and trying to work out a way of talking about my book happens before the public has had a chance to read it. And so it's just a weird mental space to be in. I feel like everything that I had to say went into the book and I have nothing left to give that isn't already in the text. Do you recall if it's ever happened where you've paid attention to the discourse around the book and then had the thought like, I wish I had a chance to respond to that? I try, and this may sound insincere, but hand on heart,

I do actually try not to look at the discourse around my work. Of course, some of it filters through and people will just like tell me, you know, things that are being said about my work or whatever. But I do my best not to look at it too much because I think it would lead me down a bad path. And then do I ever feel like responding to it? No, I don't think so. I don't need to be over the reader's shoulder saying, what do you think of that page? I need to kind of accept that at that point my work is done, be it good or bad, and people might respond to the new book. But the first question I had about Intermezzo is to do with the fact that the two main protagonists, the brothers Ivan and Peter, are obviously guys. And obviously, Connell and normal people was a protagonist of that book.

But Ivan and Peter really seem central in a way that men haven't been in your books. And I'm curious if you felt it was a particular challenge to write from a male perspective? Yeah, interestingly, the first voice that came to the page for me in this project was Margaret's voice. So the character who becomes entangled in Ivan's life in the course of the book. So it certainly wasn't that I sat down thinking, time to write a book about men. I have to write a book where the male voice is central or anything like that. I thought that it was going to be Margaret's story. Of course, I knew that Ivan was a big part of that story. But his sort of voice came along rather late in the writing process.

So it definitely was not a conscious project of trying to write about men or trying to write about masculinity. I just felt my way through the story that seemed to emerge when I encountered these characters. And I kind of followed where they led me, which is what I always try to do. Of course, then I had moments of self-reflection and self-consciousness because I was thinking, do I know anything about what I'm writing about? But on the other hand, I think, and again, this is from just having said that I try to ignore all discourse about my work. Nonetheless, it has permeated through, it filters through that I'm aware that people think that my work is heavily autobiographical. And in fact, it isn't.

So it felt like they were just fictional characters, like all my other fictional characters. And I was intrigued by them. I found them really interesting. I liked being with them on the page. And so the question of gender felt very secondary, and it certainly wasn't a conscious theme that I was trying to explore or say something about, as it were. But there were moments where I thought, have I got any of this right? And am I overstepping myself or something? This is not a spoiler or anything, but Peter and Ivan have lost their father. And I was curious about your experience of grief. And if in that instance, you were writing

from personal reflection, or if you weren't, did you feel like it was a particularly difficult task to write into a feeling that deep that you had not experienced? I think that's a fair question, but I've never been conscious in writing about any emotional experience that any of my characters have had of drawing on something that I have felt or known in my own life. The relationship between fiction and the life of the author is a very live relationship in the minds of readers and critics. And it's a completely unknown relationship in my life. I never, ever think about it. Only when I publish a book do I ever even have to wonder what the relationship between my fiction and my own life is. I sometimes feel that my work is like a little bit like what it might be like to be an actor. Like I get very into character and I inhabit that consciousness and that allows me to write about what it is that the character is undergoing. And I'm not in any way saying to

myself, well, I know that it would be like this because I remember when something analogous happened to me and I felt like this. And I think if I caught myself doing that, I'd think there was something wrong with the way that I was working. I think at the moment that I found myself reaching for such a thing, I would think there's something I've lost touch with my character in some way. I'm not going to belabor this because there's a lot of other things I want to ask you about. But do you find yourself having thoughts about the writers that are meaningful to you that it seems like people have about you and your work? No. Really? You don't I'm curiously... It's like you've never read a biography of a novelist you liked or something like that?

I've actually never read a biography of a writer. I've never. And I went... There's some good ones. And people say that there are, and I recommended them on a regular basis. And I think I must have some kind of mental block to reading them. Of course, there are, let's say, natural gaps in my reading, like I wish there weren't, but I think this is more than a gap. I think it's like a resistance. It's something that is like a stubborn lack of curiosity in me.

I don't tend to wonder about the relationship between the writer's life and the writer's work. And yeah, I think that part of that is, I was going to say part of it might be responsive to a sense that that's an imposed relationship that comes from outside and that I want to resist engaging in that. But I think part of it is a genuine lack of interest because before I ever became a published writer,

I also didn't read writers' biographies or even really know anything about writers. I would know what period they lived in, but I would not know anything about...

That's it. Yeah, that's kind of it. And I'm still a little bit like that. So I think, and maybe that's why I struggle to answer the kind of questions that you are very reasonably asking, because I don't read work in that way. Gaza, for example, or abortion in Ireland, you know. So it seems if you're willing to do that, surely you're aware that making your opinions known about these kinds of divisive issues,

you know, sort of like opening up the possibility that people might conflate Sally Rooney and her, your work. How do you think about that? Well, that to me feels like a different avenue of conversation. And it's interesting that to you, those two things feel quite close. And to me, they feel quite different. So I'm interested by that. And I'm actually struck by that. I think to an extent, when we talk about having spoken out against the war in Gaza, having written, as I did about the housing crisis in Ireland,

having written, obviously, about abortion the housing crisis in Ireland, having written obviously about abortion a couple of years ago now in the Irish context, I feel that I have been given a very privileged position in public discourse, particularly in Ireland. I feel that I have the power to intervene in public conversations. And I still feel disinclined to do it unless I feel that there might be something that I could contribute that I haven't seen said elsewhere. And so in cases like that, I do feel that there is something like, for some reason, I'm not, I don't want to use the words moral duty, but I do feel a little bit of an obligation. And then how that relates to my work, I think that my fiction is politically committed in a sense.

I do think that my political beliefs are rooted in a commitment to theality of human dignity and, you know, human rights is through a sort of Marxist framework. And I suppose that I do feel that that's present in my fiction, not that I feel that anybody who picks up one of my books is going to get a political ideology from that, or is going to agree with me about political points they didn't agree with me on before they started reading it. So I suppose not didactic in that sense, but that those commitments run through my work. But what's interesting to me is that you raise the question of whether that invites people to read my work in a personal way. And I think, but what does that have to do with anything? I mean, I feel like my political work is there in public and I can stand by it and I'm happy to discuss it. And my fiction is the same and it's there and I share it with the public and I'm happy to talk about it. And that all feels very separate from my personal life, which I never want to talk about and doesn't feel like it has anything to do with my work. So I think that those feel like three separate things to me. Two of them I can talk about in different ways and for different reasons. And then the third one I can't

or don't want to. But I understand why to you they feel interlinked. And I think that does make sense. There are stylistic aspects to intermezzo that make it different from your past books. But of course, in another way, it's not that different. You know, there's like, people have intense relationships, you know, and they're sort of drawn together, kept apart from each other, trying to get back to each other. You know, they like, I don't know what the term would be, sociocultural setting is not like wildly different. I guess the way I think about it is like, really don't know what the term would be, sociocultural setting is not like wildly different. I guess the way I think about it is like, really any character from any one of your novels could walk into another one of those novels and you wouldn't be like, what the hell

is that person doing here? You know, they would sort of fit. Do you ever wonder if your books are too similar? And do you think about how your writing might change in the future? I think that's a really good question. And I would have to answer it by saying I don't care about my career. So I don't think about my work as belonging to me even really. I think about when I'm writing a project, how do I make this book the perfect version of what it can be? I've got these characters and I feel like they've walked into my life. That's a kind of gift and I love being with them. And I never think about it in relation to my other work. And I never think about what people will say about how close or how distant it is from my oeuvre. And I don't think of myself as even

having an oeuvre. I don't think about those questions at all. And I don't feel myself thinking about my growth as an artist, if you will. I'm skeptical that you don't think about that. Yeah, no, I think it's fair to be skeptical. And I think that there is a huge cultural fixation with novelty and growth. Like, I mean, our whole economic system is obviously built on constant, permanent, ceaseless growth. We all have to grow, you know, everything has to grow all the time, get bigger, sell more and be different. Novelty, you know, reinvention. Those are like the principles of our present culture, almost it feels like. And I don't find that very interesting. I feel like I am so grateful when I get a new idea for a project. And by new, I just mean it has new characters in it. And to me,

I know when you say one of my characters could walk into another of my novels, perhaps that is true, but they haven't. So there is no Ivan in any of my previous books. He is a new guy. And for me, like, that's enough. But I do understand that people might feel, you know, she's repeating herself because it's just another book

about people, same age range, same milieu. Some of them are in Dublin, some of them are in the west of Ireland, and they're traveling back and forth and having these relationships and there is sex and there's talking and they have political beliefs or whatever. Like that's, yeah, that is

all my books. And perhaps it always will be. I don't know. I guess I would say, and I'm wary of saying this because it could sound like I'm trying to compare myself to the great masters of the past. And I absolutely am not. But I suppose what I would say is that when I look at writers whose work has transformed my life, you know, I look at the work of Austen, I look at the work of Henry James, even Dostoevsky, those writers produced work that very much adheres to what you're describing, where it feels like a figure from one of their books could stroll into any of the other novels that they wrote and be very much at home. But each of the novels is its own just world, and it's intense and it's profound and it's beautiful. And of course, that's what I'm

striving for. I want to ask sort of a question more to do with formal qualities of your work. You know, Beautiful World, where are you? Obviously, you were trying things out with, I don't even know the way to phrase, like not conveying interiority in big sections of that book. And in Intermezzo, the Peter sections are, there's sort of like a stream of consciousness feel to them. Like, do those sort of formal experiments, do they come out of character? Or do you have the thought you know this is this is something i would like to try formally and here is an opportunity to do it i think it's the former i think they strictly come out of not only character but a scenario so i think often at the beginning of a

project and and especially in the two books that you've mentioned, my third and fourth, I have found it difficult to know where to begin with the writing process. With this one, as soon as I sort of conceived of Peter, the older brother character, as soon as he kind of walked into my brain, I wrote down what is now the first page of the novel almost instantly. And it's hardly changed. It was like this kind of, and as you call it, a stream of consciousness. It was like a very fragmented, fluid way of trying to grapple with his interiority. And it just started like that and basically kind of went on like that. So there was never a point where I consciously thought to myself, I'd love to have a go at writing sentences like that or trying to construct a scene like that. It was always just how do I get closer or how do I get the reader

to understand what I'm seeing in my head? And I'll do anything to get to the idea. And so whatever language I have to use to get to the idea, I'll use it. Do you feel like you're just trying to get to the idea when you're writing sex scenes? Yeah, I'm trying to get to the idea. I mean, I'm certainly trying to convey the idea. Yeah, because I think what's really important for me, all the way through all my work, is human dynamics, interpersonal dynamics. And so often, the, you know, crucial changes in the dynamic between two people, or more, but usually in my work too, can happen in the context of, you know, a sexual interaction. So when there are sort of crucial shifts in how two people relate to each other, I think in my work, well, those shifts have to happen on the

page. I can't just catch up later and say, oh, something really important happened between them, but I didn't want to write about that. So you just have to take my word for it. That's not always an easy thing to do. It can be a challenge stylistically. It can be a challenge in terms of just what I would call petty personal reasons. It's embarrassing. But I feel like to be true to my work, I have to go there because if I'm committed to writing about how two people can come to mean something to one another, to be a huge part of each other's lives, sometimes I have to go into the most intimate moments that they share. I have to say, also, I feel hyper self-conscious about raising the topic of sex writing with you, because I really don't want to come off as remotely skeevy or anything like that.

That's funny. Your writing about sex is so not corny. Are the writers who you feel like you learned from? Like, do you have a like, do you have friends that you show that writing to? And you're like, let me know if this sounds corny. Like, how do you see? Now, you've set me up for failure here, because if I start talking about how I avoid cringe, you know, a lot of people think I don't. So, of course, I'm going to confidently say, well, here's how... My intention was not to trick you.

Here's how I avoid ever doing anything embarrassing in my work. And it's absolutely fair for people to have the exact response that you've described not having to my work and to say, oh, my God, I'm cringing so much that I can't read the scene. I can't finish the scene because it's so full of words that I find just horrible on the page. I think that for me, it feels like a little bit of a tightrope act. I think all prose writing does actually, but particularly I think those very intimate scenes. One of the challenges that this presents is that my vocabulary becomes very repetitive and narrow in those sections. And that becomes an editorial conversation because I think part of it is I want to convey a sense of repetition in a way. I want to create an enclosed sense of intimacy and sometimes repeating vocabulary can help to create that sense of enclosure and closeness.

But also, I know that that can, with too much of it, become just unpleasant to read and feel just like clunky and wrong. So it's, again, a little bit of a tightrope thing. And there's such a large degree of subjectivity there, both aesthetically and I think erotically, if you want to put it that way. So I just do the best that I can, which is such an unimpressive answer. I'm sorry. And you're, what, 33, something like that? Yeah, 33. Do you have done exceedingly well for yourself? You know, you have an audience, a lot of the, I know you try not to pay attention to the discourse around it, but a lot of it is like framed as, you know, the people have said like first grade millennial novelist or there's cornier phrases. And that's a Salinger for the Snapchat generation is one that comes to mind. I'm just curious if you think about your youth in relation to your work and what it means. It's so difficult to think about one's own youth for lack of comparison, because I've never been

older than I am now. I'm obviously not as young as I was when I started publishing. So I kind of feel like I'm exiting the period of certainly extreme sort of noticeable youth and entering more what I would call normal age, I'm sure that in 10 years, 20 years, I will feel differently about how my youth or my age will say inflected my writing, my position in the culture, and indeed even how my work is talked about than I do now, because it's so hard to have a sense of those things. So I think certainly part of this, and it's interesting how I keep bringing the questions back to the public reception of my work, which I started out by saying I know nothing about and don't have any interest in, which it seems like that was a lie because I keep talking about it,

right? But it's because I'm talking to you. So it's like now I'm being placed back into a position that has started to feel unfamiliar, that I almost feel I don't belong in, that I have a complicated relationship with. And of course, that's like dredging up all these feelings about, you know, my public role. And that's what I keep incessantly talking about while saying, and I don't care about that. I never think about that, by the way. So that's, yeah, I guess that's probably more revealing than I would like. But of course, I do think that my youth has been an element in the reception of my work. And I'm

also aware, of course, that my youth is very much at play in the work that I've written, because I'm very much aware that I belong to a generation that came of age around the financial crisis. And I am aware of how that cultural experience, that generational experience is there in my work. Like I think my character's relationship with housing, for instance, it's been there from the first book. It's not that I sat down and said to myself, I'm going to be a novelist who writes about my generation's relationship to housing or to the housing crisis. That was never consciously on my mind. But of course, it was simply in the air. So I am aware of how generational my work is. But I find myself a

little bit hesitant to speak about it because it can be a difficult topic. In what way? It can be a little tricky to be a young woman in the public eye. And I say that having been a much younger woman in the public eye, like I did it, you know, when I was, I think, 26, maybe when my first book came out. And that's young, in my opinion. I think that there's a huge level of visibility that is accorded to young women specifically. And that's something that I grapple with, the unfairness of that, and my having benefited from the unfairness of that, but also the other side of it, which is the difficulty of hypervisibility. It has been difficult for me on a personal level to manage that level of visibility, which isn't something that I would have always wished to have.

Yeah. No, I think it seems perfectly valid and legible to suggest, as I think you are. Like, you know, there's obviously beneficial things to being famous and successful and, like, things about it that are, like, awful. You don't need to couch that in any— Yeah, but I didn't say that. You said that, just to be clear. Bigger thinking. What do you like to do when you're not writing? What do I like to do? I mean, I read, obviously. I feel like I'm so uninteresting. This is the problem that I

have when I do interviews is that I feel like beyond talking about my book, which I can talk about with some authority because I wrote it. Do you think I'm expecting you to say you helleski? But even that, coming from me, would be like, why is that interesting that she does it? Because I'm just on a human level. I'm not interesting in any way. I'm just like a random person. And I do all the things you would expect a writer would do. Read, watch films, watch TV. I feel almost like there's something in me that resists like being humanized. Like, at least when I talk about my work, I can kind of, I feel I'm holding on to something. It's like, I've got hold of something. And it's like, well, I'm the one who can talk about it because I wrote it. So I feel like I can stand or rather sit here. And it's justified in a way. I need this constant self-justification to feel that I can sit here and talk to you at all. Otherwise I'd be like running away because I, you know, it's nerve wracking. And the only justification I can find is that I've written work that's in the public and you're, you're entitled to grill me about it.

And I should have to come up with answers. And that feels like real. And somehow I get a little bit of shifting sands when I start trying to talk about things that stray from that. I think that's what it is. Yeah. In all your books, the characters, even though the central thrust of the books tends to be relationships between people, the people who are having the relationships are thinking about the biggest questions, you know? Like, how do we live under capitalism? You know, what kind of person do I want to be?

When it comes to the biggest questions, do you in any way feel that exploring what kind of person do I want to be? When it comes to the biggest questions, do you in any way feel that exploring those questions through your work helps you get closer to answers that you find personally satisfying? That's interesting. I had never thought about that oddly I think that I'm so um committed to being with my characters that I sense myself as an almost passive observer following their conversations with one another and their interior monologues, their sort of streams of consciousness. And I don't sense my own participation in that.

I'm walking the tightrope of trying to write it down in prose that I don't hate. You know, that's kind of my job. But of course, there must be some reason why they find themselves drawn to the same kind of questions that I find myself drawn to philosophically, ideologically, interpersonally. So what's the interplay there? I mean when I am writing a project, I am at my happiest. And when the writing is going well, I feel like I have my dream life and I'm so happy. I feel very enriched by what I do. And so there must be some level on which it's not just the satisfaction of a good day's hard work done. There's something maybe else going on, like what you're talking about, that I'm gaining some insight through the sort of wacky mirror of my characters who don't seem to resemble me at all, or through their philosophical wrangling, I myself am getting closer to answers to questions that I

am asking myself. So there's definitely a deep relationship between my work and my sense of being in the world. I suspect that there probably, for me, there probably is something there that I'm learning from my characters in some way, or that by making them confront these problems and these difficult questions, I'm almost confronting them in a camera obscura sort of way, or I'm allowing myself to experience other lives, lives that I haven't had. And I think one of the things that I find haunting or that I find difficult to accept that I think maybe a lot of other people do is that I only get one life. I'm condemned to just being myself and I have to be me until the end. And I find that so weird to get my head around. That's the it. I'm just me. And like, I can never be anyone else.

And in a way, being a novelist allows me to get around that problem. Yeah. You know, my own response to what you were just saying, that you find it haunting that you, you know, only get to be you. I feel so much the opposite. When I'm just thinking about it now,

it actually brings tears to my eyes because it makes me emotional to think and to feel like I get to be me. And there's all this, like I get to have the kids that I have and have the family and I have and have the friends I have and have the life I have. And I just feel like so, like the, just the like sheer gratitude about getting to be who I am existing, given the sheer unlikelihood of that. It's like, how could you possibly be haunted by that feeling? Yeah, but I think that what you're talking about and what I'm talking about might be closer than you think, because what you're describing, I also feel. And especially when I'm in the middle of a

project and I close my laptop, it's the end of the day, and I return to my own life, I definitely feel that sense of indescribable gratitude that I'm alive on this earth, that I know the people who I know, that, you know, my loved ones are part of my life and that I can like look around at trees and that I can experience the sensory reality of the earth that we share. It's unbelievable. And that's something that I think my work actually puts me in touch with because it's like I go into what feels like another life, another world, another mind, another set of problems. Everybody has them. And then when I close my laptop, I'm returned to my own life, my own problems, if you will, and my own circumstances. And I remember what an

incredible, almost unbelievable gift it is just to exist. After the break, I call Sally back to talk about the TV adaptations of her first two books and why she's not planning on doing another one anytime soon. You know, I was seeing, for instance, the extent to which the young cast members became, you know, were really thrust into an extremely harsh spotlight and had paparazzi following them around. And I felt kind of uncomfortable with the level of frenzy. Hi, Sally. Hello. Hi.

You know, there was one subject you raised earlier where, you know, I realized I was nodding along when you were talking about it, but only really understood what you meant in a very general fashion. You had said, you know, it can be difficult to be a young woman in the public eye. Can you tell me a little bit more specifically about that experience that felt difficult? Yeah, and it's difficult for me to talk about specifically because I feel very inhibited by a lot of different pressures. And one of those pressures is that I'm extremely conscious of my extraordinary good fortune in so many ways. So like the fact that my books have been so widely read and discussed,

that's an enormous privilege. Lots of writers don't get it. And perhaps that has to do in some sense with the fact of my youth or even of being a young woman. So I find that like a tough question to answer. It's like I want to be able to gesture to it very vaguely and for everybody to go, oh, of course, we know what you're talking about, without me having to say, and then this happened, and then this happened, you know, and that was so hard for me personally. I suppose, again, to occupy the more abstract general position, I think that the role afforded to young women in the culture at large generally tends to be a very visible role and very image focused and less intellectual. And of course, the young women who are given the most prominent roles in our mainstream culture tend to be sort of not political figures and not public intellectuals and not critics or commentators,

more likely, you know, singers, actors and people whose image is a huge part of their presentation. And then so for me to feel like I'm trying to, that's maybe the space that I'm trying to work within. And sometimes I feel that maybe I'm not legible within that space. And so it's, I sometimes feel people want to read me as something closer to a kind of celebrity figure, because that's maybe the way recognize as well how lucky I am to be in a position where anyone's listening to anything I say at all. But there is that slight tension, I think, for me in trying to assert or occupy a particular position in the culture and feeling like maybe it's difficult to make room for myself there, if that makes sense. It does make sense. It does make sense. I want to ask also about the adaptations of your work. I think the general consensus was that the Conversations with Friends adaptation was not quite as strong as the Normal People adaptation, and you weren't quite as involved in that one. Do you wish you'd been more involved?

No, I don't. I think that the reason that I chose not to be so involved in the second adaptation was because I was working on what became my third novel. And I also felt that the experience of working on the first one had been, like, in so many ways, amazing. The team of people involved in it, you know, but it did also feel like a lot, like a really big job. And then also, of course, when the show was broadcast, that felt like a lot in terms of the amount of discourse that it generated and the amount of media attention that followed on that.

And I felt that that world was not where I belonged. So I was very happy to allow that team to kind of make something new of the book without me needing to be looking over their shoulder. And I think that's what they did. So, yeah, I think for me, I see myself so strongly as a novelist and in a way it was great to have the experience of working on a television show. Um, but it was also a kind of an interesting lesson for me in that I felt like, okay, now I know that, um, my books are where I belong and that's, that's all that I want to be doing. And does it feel at all difficult to, in a sense, give control up of

your stories to other creators? No, it kind of felt like my book is still just its own thing. So that felt okay to me. But also, as I said, the level of attention and public discourse that's attendant on the world of film and television felt quite alien to me. And it felt like the, you know, I was seeing, for instance, the extent to which the young cast members became, you know, were really thrust into an extremely harsh spotlight and had paparazzi following them around. And that felt like, oh my God, my intervention in the culture has resulted in something that I'm really uncomfortable with, like a kind of real invasion of the lives of like young people who are absolutely hugely talented and gifted professionals, but also just human beings. And it felt like I felt kind of

uncomfortable with the level of frenzy around the, yeah. It's like a Frankenstein's monster situation. Right, with the attention, not obviously with the people. But yeah, of course, I did kind of feel, I felt uncomfortable with that. And although I wasn't on the receiving end of that level of crazed attention, I certainly felt like I was getting a little fraction of it. And even that was like way too much for me. Yeah. Is anybody working on adapting Beautiful World? Where are you? No. So I decided not to accept any. So far, I have decided not to accept any offers to

option the rights for that book. For reasons related to what you were just saying? Or why is that? For exactly the reasons that we've just been talking about. And I think, yeah, I think it's, I felt like it was just time to take a break from that and let the book kind of be its own thing for a while. I have one last question. Maybe it's too big of a question to end on, but I think it relates to a recurring theme in your work, you know, how one might live a meaningful life in a time of historical crisis. How do we make our time here mean something? You know, how do we give it value? How do you think about the value of your work in that regard? I mean, I think that's a really good question

and a really difficult question, and certainly one that I constantly return to in my own life and also, I think, in my work directly and indirectly. I feel absolutely convinced that our present, you know, world system is not fit for purpose. I think the rate at which we're destroying our planetary ecosystems is obviously completely unsustainable. And I mean, we have physicists telling us this. We kind of know that there is no way that we can continue living the lifestyles we live under the economic systems that there is no way that we can continue living the lifestyles we live under the economic systems that we have designed and that we continue to propagate. That's a kind of crisis that is extremely pressing. And of course, I'm aware that I've spent three years of my life working on a novel that does not really directly contribute anything to the

struggle against these forces. And of course, I do absolutely question why I've done that. Partly, I think, because I didn't know what else to do. Also, I suppose I tell myself that in the midst of all of this, people need to feel that life has meaning. Like not to become so incredibly overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems that we're facing as to feel that life itself is no longer meaningful and that in fact there's no reason to go on and I don't think that that actually is a very uncommon feeling and I suppose part of what I feel is that art has a role in giving people a reason to go on and that that is an important thing in and of itself like it's consolation for people who are involved in the struggle in some way. But that's a very self-justifying answer because I don't know if that's true.

Yeah, I don't know is the answer to the question. But I suppose that I do feel that the work of art has an autonomy from the world of art has an autonomy from the world of, you know, political urgency. It's not that I think that art is in any way sealed off from ideological concerns, but that it can't be expected to solve political crises and that it has to be allowed to exist anyway, kind of even if it's not good, because I feel like a lot of this would be easy to be more easy to justify if I could say, you know, and thankfully, all my novels are works of genius. But what I will say is they're completely sincere. If they're bad, then they're sincerely bad. Like I genuinely put my heart and soul into them. And that's the best I could do.

And I had to write them. I felt like I didn't have any choice. And also, it sounds like you get real pleasure from doing the work and I feel confident in saying that there are people who get pleasure from reading the work and that's not nothing. Well, thank you. And it's not nothing. Certainly not to me. It's kind of everything.

That's Sally Rooney. Her new book, Intermezzo, will be out September 24th. You can listen to the first chapter in the New York Times audio app that same day. This conversation was produced by Wyatt Orme. It was edited by Annabelle Bacon. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. Original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lozano. Photography by Philip Montgomery.

Our senior booker is Priya Matthew, and Seth Kelly is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Alison Benedict. Special thanks to Rory Walsh, Renan Borelli, Jeffrey Miranda, Jake Silverstein, Paula Schumann, and Sam Dolnick. If you like what you're hearing, follow or subscribe to The Interview wherever you get your podcasts. To read or listen to any of our conversations, you can always go to nytimes.com slash the interview. And you can email us anytime at theinterviewatnytimes.com. Next week, Lulu talks with John Oliver. Do you see your show in the same format that it is, in the same way that it is 10 years from now? I mean, I hope so, if I'm still alive.

You look healthy. I'm going to have to have that statement sent through this building's fact checkers, and I don't think either of us are going to like the answer that comes back. I'm David Marchese, and this is The Interview from The New York Times.