Episódios
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In this episode I am joined by Professor Alexander Manshel to break down some of the defining characteristics of the literary middlebrow, millennial fiction, and the rise of literary TV adaptations. We also explore the renewed public interest in the identity of the author, and how the belief that Rooney's work is autofiction bolsters both book sales and her cultural prestige.
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What is "the millennial condition", and why does it evoke "malaise"? What do these terms even mean? If anxiety is a normal and expected psychological and physiological reaction to exploitative labour conditions, hustle culture, and the looming threat of climate change, what is the point of pathologizing it as a mental illness? Many (if not all) of Rooney's characters invoke these questions through their own relationships to labour, sexual/romantic intimacy, and friendship. In this episode, Cassandra Luca joins me to interrogate how structures and systems of capitalism negatively impact our personal connections and overall wellbeing vis-a-vis Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You.
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No, but really, what the heck is historical materialism? Professor Sandeep Banerjee from McGill University joins me to break down the basics of Marxist Theory (better known as historical materialism), and dialectics. Sally Rooney is a self-proclaimed Marxist, and there has been a lot of buzz about how her particular style reveals her commitments to this kind of ideology. What does it mean to write 'relationally', and how does Rooney's literary project push back against traditional modes of realism? What makes a novel 'Marxist' beyond attention to class? What does it mean to think about the world dialectically? In this episode, Prof. Banerjee and I think through these questions together vis-a-vis Beautiful World, Where Are You.
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Genee Latreille, an avid reader, communications strategist, and mother of two children joins me in this episode to meditate on friendship, solitude, and the power of love that survives both time and distance in all of Rooney's novels.
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In this episode, Emily Farmer complicates the concept of the "frenemy", typically understood as a strictly oppositional/negational relationship, to a more holistic understanding of the term as something relational and mutually productive. She coins the term "frenmity" (a combination of 'friend' and 'enmity') to describe this specific (and all too common) type of female friendship. The 'frenmity' relationship is not exclusive to Rooney's work (think Bobbi and Frances; Alice and Eileen), but is a trope that has begun to surface in other contemporary novels such as Mona Awad's Bunny, Sheila Heti's How Should A Person Be?, and Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet. Emily further explains how digital technology plays a role in both creating and sustaining the affects of "frenmity" relationships.
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In this episode, I am joined by Tabitha Sparks, a professor of English at McGill University and the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies in the Faculty of Arts. We chat about feminist narratology, the autofictional pressures faced by female authors, and the appeal of complex male characters in Rooney's work.
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In this episode, PhD candidate Marie Trotter and I find connections between the discourse of the infamous "crisis in the humanities" and Alice's authorial identity crisis in Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021). We also explore themes of spirituality, religion, and the search for meaning in the novel.
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