![]() ![]() With all of this in mind, Rooney’s third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, feels at times like an attempt to reassert the author’s authority. It’s fine to argue about how Marxist, feminist, Irish, millennial, or “great” a book is, but when most of the writing about it consists of squabbling over how much and what sort of relevant subject matter it contains, we are doing hype criticism, not book criticism. Worst of all, Rooney has suffered the misfortune of being dubbed “the First Great Millennial Author” in The New York Times, a title that’s not only impossible to live up to but invites invidious scrutiny, making the author accountable for the bluster of critics and publicists. (Rooney herself has said, “I don’t know what it means to write a Marxist novel.”) 2 The Atlantic calls the novel’s politics “ambient rather than explicit,” while Slate considers them not only explicit but satirical. She has been called both “representatively millennial” and “not really engaging with any of the social issues that might make her truly relevant to the millennial moment.” Her works are “an essentially confessional account of female consciousness,” but she is also “hardly that feminist writer we can rally around.” She’s been lauded for understanding “a kind of enduring, hard-bitten Irishness,” a nationality that supposedly “insulates her from the social and cultural conversation going on in ,” even though Rooney, who has a master’s degree in American literature and an Internet connection, says she doesn’t “really have a sense of Irishness, or what that means.” The Guardian suggests that the Marxism of Rooney’s characters is there to signal their elite background. ![]() ![]() Like all popular books, Rooney’s novels have been critiqued through the lens of their author’s various public identities. ![]()
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