On Nostalgia
Rooney's writing makes me feel at home - confrotable. She does this in a number of ways. The setting and the characters she creates echo my reality. The time period of her novels is familiar. She writes withough judgement about her creations. She creates realistic depictions of how people live that at the same time call attention to underlying issues just below the surface - how we live, how we think, what we're missing.
In Normal People, Rooney describes Marianne's "strange sense of nostalgia for a moment that was already in the process of happening". Her writing does this for me.
There are moments in life when you glimpse what life could be. Sometimes it's a moment of peace with your children, on the beach on holiday. Sometimes it's a meetup with the siblings you rarely see. Though the glipmpses are lese and less frequent as you age.
More likely it was a glimpse while at a festival in your teens. On with a good friend on a day witout lecutures, in colledge. For me it usually involved just the right ammount of alcohol. A warm day. A long conversation. A pressure for more.
But you catch a flimpse and its gone. You know it has to do with human connection, with a way to live that is fundamentally different from the way we live now. A kind of life without salaries, without empolyment, without alienation, without obligations. A kind of life that has never existed but could exist.
I spent eight days in a field in Denmar once - it was there in the small, fluid community that sprung up around us.
Some frends and I would have days where we didnt' look at the clock. It was there.
It was there when Laura and I wandered Electric Picnic, just drunk enough, dancing all night.
And there's an echo of it how Rooney's writing feels. Her characters, in their 20s, living real lives, in the real world just ever so slightly removed.
I like art about people in their 20s. It's a fun time in life, when you make countless mistakes. You are nieve about politics, economics and relationships. You are often thoughtless and mean. There's a lot of this kind of art - people feel a lot at that age.
I particularly like art about people who fuck up in their 20s. The Secret History. Scott Pilgrim. Characters oblivious to themselves, to how they're seen by others. Sometimes it's about finding yourself - coming of age. Sometimes it's about totally missing the point. Ships in the night, missed opportunities or self sabotage.
Sometimes it was embarassing and clumsey. Sometimes it seemed so important. Sometimes it really was important.