![]() ![]() The best way I can think of expressing this respect is by articulating a political critique of the novel itself as one ultra-left leaning millennial to another. As it happens, though, I have too much respect for Sally Rooney to reduce her work to the status of a mere commodity. In light of this dynamic situation, one might argue that the political content of a bestselling novel is irrelevant because its power lies in its distributional reach that, if necessary, can be withheld. Under globalised capitalism it is the networks of distribution that uphold power structures, and it is here that resistance is timely and crucial. Rooney’s decision, however, casts the question of political usefulness in a different light, suggesting there is more than one way for a novel to have political leverage and impact. Whilst an author’s political stance is an important lens through which to read their novels, these views can be embedded in the work itself to a greater or lesser success. That notwithstanding, her novels have come under criticism from the left itself for what has been described as performative politics that skirt true radicalism. The author has been celebrated as a ‘funny, cerebral Marxist’ in the New Yorker and demonised in the Daily Mail as (hilariously) ‘ultra-left leaning’ and guilty of ‘peppering her bestselling novels with communist ideas’. In an interview with the Louisiana Channel, Rooney muses over the extent to which ‘books have the potential to speak truth to power, to be political texts’. ![]()
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