*"I need to feel that I can make something from my experiences because otherwise I don’t know what they are." Watch the full-length interview with Sally Rooney right here:* ruclips.net/video/ho5ja2trqrs/видео.html We post new videos on the arts every week. Subscribe and hit the bell 🔔 to get a notification when a new video is up!
Agree, but find the older I get - most people have to choose where to focus their light in order to birth a laser. Her books have startling energy in the visions she conjures. Its like the Nobel Laureate said regarding Twitter, something to the effect nothing on there will have relevance in a year let alone a generation.
There she is a year before Normal People on TV, before the pandemic, and she's hammering the importance and fragility of essential workers. At just age 28. The brain on this broad is really something. Hope she's writing for a very long time.
@Bilbo Baggins Insofar as this pandemic's lethality is due in large part to the failings of Capitalism, we can safely say that Capitalism has killed these people. And Capitalism in a wider sense has killed far more than Marxism ever did.
Both of you are wrong. One of you thinks marxism is the cancer of the earth and responsbile for all the worlds ills, the other says the same of capitalism. In fact, under any system, man would still be abusing whatever ideology for excuses to oppress, harm and exploit one another - this is a view of human nature few really understand, but I think both of you would benefit from reading more Machiavelli and Hobbes, and Carlyle, than any more Marx or Rand. Is this really the height of discourse now? Point at X say this is evil - debate. Things and ideologies can't be evil - they can only lay the framework for it. People are evil - words on a page can't be evil, they're inanimate and the product of people.
@Bilbo Baggins but, saying 'Marxism killed more people than this pandemic ever will' opens you up to accepting that everyone who has died under a capitalist system have been 'killed by capitalism', and it follows then that Capitalism killed more people than this pandemic ever will, and more people than Marxism ever has. It's not useful to make that argument, nor is it even necessarily accurate. Hell, you can even say that because the global economy has been capitalist since privatisation first occurred, it would be difficult to say that marxism (another way of describing power) and its derivatives have never existed in a marxist world, they have only existed within a capitalist system... so, i mean, does that mean all deaths under marxist inspired systems should actually be apportioned to capitalism? Its a waste of time to make that claim. The world is much more complex to be simplified in the remedial way that capitalism puts it with the free market of individuals. And if you as a capitalist dont like to accept the failings of hundreds of years of capitalist as 'true capitalism' please point out when where and what IS 'true capitalism', and there, if it exists, we will see failure. I have never seen a free market economy, and if you think you have, you should take a second look. The accademics who celebrate the free market have never seen it, and those who claim to 'run' it have never come close because they know that it would be cannibalistic and dangerous and would be capable only of concentrating power inevitably towards a single entity and that is the path to tyranny.
@@sirhumphreyappleby8399 the default setting of nature is not greed.. if that is what you're implying. Almost all animals exist in communities, with division of responsibilities and the sharing of resources. Animals capable of play, 'down time' or doing things for fun, often also show an ability to sacrifice resources, time or effort for other individuals even when there appears to be or is no rational explanation as to personal benefit. How does that observation fit into the anthropological view that humans inevitably will abuse any system in which they will live? Or do we just discard it because it makes things complicated? Machiavelli explains greed incredibly well, but that is all Machiavelli explains. It is a substantial leap from explaining how greed works to claiming that greed is the singular drive of all humans and nature itself. Perhaps it is an even more substantial leap to claim that and also accept that as an unquestionable basis for social structures, given that humans are capable of creating incredibly complex social structures and self-domestication. If your claim for the value of a system is that it is based on an unquestionable truth, the truth really has to be correct and unquestionable. Rip it up, start again.
@@olliewarren1993 it is entirely about marxism because marxism always leads to the gulags and abject poverty. the brutality and suffering is unimaginable. it's always the end game like this when you push utopian ideologies like marxism & nazism
She is so lucid as to what reading her books feels like. The goal of not just letting the reader know that a person can be profoundly changed by another, but to actually make them FEEL this is achieved sooo well in normal people
Finally, a truly leftist artist owning their completely dominated and "distasteful" opinion about Marxism, social inequality, and the state of the world. Sick of liberals monopolising leftist content, so I am so excited to be somewhat represented by Rooney, and even more excited to see what her wonderous brain does next.
This is a great interview. So much of the other interviews on RUclips with Sally Rooney seem to involve a lot of the interviewer speaking. It’s nice to hear her talk about what she wants to achieve with her books.
The hobby of reading has become aspirational as normal people no longer have the time or resources to read very widely, if at all. Many younger people have second jobs. When your time needs to be traded for income to get by, and that income keeps reducing in terms of actual purchasing power, your spare time is less and less. Those who have spare time to read are affluent, therefore being well read is a sign of affluence, and by extension, having many books is a sign of affluence. Hence the comodification of books, at the expense of stories. They are often more collectors items for display than something you can reasonably spare the time to read. But, as long as people know you have the book, perhaps they will see you as higher on the economic ladder. It's exactly why books are no longer little brown unassuming things like in the 70s, and huge pink hardcover monstrosities laden with marketing slop. They're there to be noticed as much on your home bookshelf as in the shop!
PS. I was born in the 90s, so I never bought a book in the 70s, but I've been to a library, and i can only assume that the world was entirely made of brown fabric pre-1980...
Two words: public library. It's a beautiful institution that welcomes readers from all walks of life. Stop overcomplicating issues and conflating reading with class warfare. It's a cute intellectual exercise, but one not based in any reality.
@@OKjoey86 I think you may have misunderstood my argument. The existence of public libraries does not somehow counter my point - the majority of people have less time to read due to the gradual increase in working hours, either with a single or multiple jobs. As the general population has less time to read, books necessarily must be more intensely marketed and increase in value to have worthile revenues. Hence the rise in the celebrity biography, big books, flashy sleeves, big font, big pictures - easy to spot, quicker to digest, simpler to regurgitate to friends. And that is all to the detriment of literary and genre fiction for which resources are diverted to crap like biographies and 50 Shades of garbage. Yes, people can go get books from libraries, but if people rarely have time to read, how does a library actually help? And how does that influence the trend in publishing? Publishing is moving towards the sale of books as ornaments to collect rather than stories to be digested and enjoyed, and that reflects a decline in standards for ordinary people - we have less time and less resources available for leisure activities in general, but especially reading. The existence of public libraries doesn't change that in any way..they don't effect what gets published and they don't make reading less time consuming.
This interview about the relationship between literature and marxism is very interesting. I've read her first novel and I understand what she means. There are scenes of female intimacy that the "traditional-high" literature wouldn't have accepted. There is a philosopher, Fredric Jameson (a marxist literary critic) that says that in every novel there is a class struggle, al so in the most stupid novel on the market. Every novel has in a spontaneous way a marxist structure. Anyway I like this writer and I find shameful that ignorant people write offensive comments. Maybe those people should read more books.
@@thedeadd.c.207 I was gonna say the same, all books are Marxist? Sounds like trying to push square blocks through triangle holes. Either that or Marxists really like to believe Marxism is a theory of everything instead of just economics.
When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. Yes, it's incredibly shameful that some people may have a different perspective than you and then have the effrontery to express it.
Rooney raises some good points over here that are worth discussing. As Mandel argues in his 'Late Capitalism', the capitalist economy in its current stage (post-Third Industrial Revolution) "trends towards industrialization of superstrucrural activities", nowadays those activities are "organized along industrial lines: they produce for the market and aim at maximization of profit". So, we can argue that within late capitalism there's a socialization of the cultural means of production and everyone does intellectual work, but that doesn't mean that there's a democratization of those means. Its actually the opposite, we see with that process the co-existence of cultural and technological monopolies such as Google, Facebook, etc., and that the cultural products are increasingly produced and consumed massively as commodities, and subsecuently are dominated by the laws of the market, they're fetishized and aim for the self-valorization of value.
What an interesting video.Really insightful view of the world. Sums up the world so succinctly. View of interdependence is so relevant in today’s crisis world
@Bilbo Baggins As Fascism has killed millions? Here in the UK we are tarred with similar killings on a grand scale. Not a part of history to be proud of. Look at the current Fascist Government. Their incompetence has led to thousands of deaths just in the last 10 years. The most recent culling is right now with Covid 19. Unprepared, incompetent, propagandised.
@Bilbo Baggins Tens of millions died in China before Marxism. Russia had famines for centuries. etc. The history and the realities of those countries, and of the world, contributed to what happened.
@Bilbo Baggins Only a Cold War doctrinaire conflates Marx with the regimes that carried out crimes of in his name. Can we blame Christians for the estimated 1,000,000 total dead for the crusades to the East covering the period from 1095 to 1291? For the 5,000 executed during the Spanish Inquisition? For the 8,000,000 that died during the Thirty Years War? For the Church’s support of slavery and colonization? That is clearly nuts to do so. Religion and all ideological thinking should be addressed in the ways it fogs the mind. You clearly need a more mature attitude to a body of knowledge that are tools for understanding the class struggle in the world. Read Marx without a prejudiced attitude.
Literature and basically all art has always been the focus of a small minority of the population. One should be grateful that there are still people who are willing to buy books, whatever motivation you suspect them of having (how can you really know what's in their hearts). At the same time, there have always been individuals who, whatever their class (wealthy or poor), greatly enrich their lives through the arts - to these people reading is as important to their souls as food is to their bodies. I'm putting the emphasis on "individuals", not classes of people. It's individuals, the summation of their experience, who create art and who are there to appreciate it. We are all part of society but at our core we are individuals and if we lose touch with that we just become cogs in the collective machine.
@@TheSasquatchAssassinthat may be, but it nevertheless is completely true. We will eventually lose ourselves if we only see us as a mere part of society and not us as an individual IN society
@@AK-tm3lg "you may be right that the original comment is irrelevant and stupid, but have you considered this other irrelevant and stupid comment". But I'll humor you. We are individuals and a society together all the time all at once. We depend on ourselves and others equally. We are responsible to ourselves and others (through society/community/etc).
@@TheSasquatchAssassin And why is it that my comment is irrelevant and stupid exactly? Would you maybe care to elaborate ? As from where I'm standing and what I wanted to communicate is that I dont't see Marxism as some sort of magical solution for the problems that humanity is dealing with, which is not to say that things should stay as they are! Of course we should take care of one another and of course we must find social solutions, but I think if we start living for society rather than ourselves, then something is going really wrong. Yes, we as humans are social beings, but that doesn't mean we should devote ourselves to a political ideology which ( as we've seen BIG time through history) in the end profits only one - the state- and is just another form of dictatorship.
@@MartiCostaPrat_Eseso_de_SWAG Do not Know. I do get a feeling that besides Orwell, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sinclair etc there were fascists avant guardsts as I understand it: Pound, Celine, Lawrence, Hamsun: I do not know. But hunger is like a study of Raskolnikov, lived, minus the murder. Yes, within working class people you find all sorts. Henry Miller liked "The Decline of Western Civilization" and Krishnamurti. Was he a right winger. I remember he liked the Anti-Christ by Nietzsche a great deal. The point is what they aimed with what they wrote, and how many people they murdered, or, committed crimes against concretely. Neruda was a supporter of Stalin, but considered a leftist. Things things have to begin to be analyzed at a concrete level, and then move on to higher levels of rich detail etc: imo.
Also, Nazism was a response by the Holzerberger, after Brunning, to attempt to divide and conquer red Berlin. Working class people had also been soldiers, their identity as brothers in arms still active, during WWI, and they had used the Versaille Treaty to do away with the German population. German capital took advantage of rallying people, but they had to do it from the right so that the social realtions that hold at work, dictatorial, could expand to the political sphere. The latter a way to avoid Red Berlin the electoral route while holding all the guns, and using all the training, for enforcing the militarization of social relations which is what fascism attempts to advance to continue the system of capitalsit exploitation..
It is an odd interview in that we viewers see her hemming and hawing and thinking as she speaks. that dual process--what she says and how she says it lead me (and others) enhances the substance of what is said. I think most people who see this already believe what she says and have thought about these things at some time or often. One wonders if the packaging of books and interviews like this estrange us even more from reality by our self-acknowledgement of knowing an imagined marxism that we can substitute for an active engaged marxism? I've never heard of her or normal people before but will explore the writings. so thanks!
2:00 The alternative used to be dying a drunk who cares nothing for the accolade's ala Bukowski, or dysfunctional like Dostoyevsky etc. But here you are melting your gold tiara into a plough share. Its also why we applaud you - and Ricky Gervais; to say "I'm here on stage, the gowns are beautiful and the men handsome - but this is a shit show for us to imagine ourselves more useful to the world than we actually are"
I want to say something about that part in which she says that she has not been able to achieve a conciliation between Marxism and her novels. I think this is because it is one of the drawbacks of Marxism that it is only a social theory not an individual theory. I have been thinking about this lately. And I have been thinking of pairing up Marxism with Buddhism.
Here are some suggestions from a Political Economist with an Associates of Arts degree. Economic Science (Marx´s work is hardly propaganda for serious economists) is to literature what physical sciences are to science fiction. Within political economy there is the interplay of the master-slave dialectics. If you read the world socialist website and the struggle over the working day you may get good material. If you can write a book about the oppression of women, or, informed by feminism then you can write one about the lives of their kids, and how they are being treated, or, from the point of view of the brothers of sisters. I think Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky does a great job at showing the Master-Slave dialectic and the struggles that sex workers go through. It is no easy to read it, and think of sex workers as things to exploit. I would suggest reading Emma Goldman´s auto-biography.
I like what she had to say. It is very refereshing. Even here on youtube, you can see the commodification of books. Booktubers often have this is what I bought, 'bookshelves tour' etc.
When pitching romantic novels to "educated" middle-class people it is most important that you dress them (and yourself) up to look as left-wing as possible. You will not be able to do this by writing about the struggles of the working class because the working class are not struggling and your readers are not interested in them anyway. So depict middle class people using each other sexually and associate this with some vague notion about how capitalism makes us think of each other as commodities. You will please everyone and get yourself recognised as a brilliant new talent into the bargain.
Lol! I've just read Normal people. It was very stodgy, stilted and full of insipid characters. Interminable soul searching, mountains are made out of molehills, and you're left wondering why it's so popular.
I read it and thought: cheer up it might never happen. What a disappointment and water of time the book was. It's upper garbage tier fanfiction quality writing at best. Seriously you can read better stories on Wattpad written by high school kids.
I can agree with the first part, that books seem to have become a commodity and that the audiences of art have become narrow. Where I live anything cultural is mainly crowded with retired ladies, people who are creative professionals themselves, and some of these events require invitations or buying yourself in. There are free events hosted by libraries, so it's not like it's all exclusive, but there is a machine that tries to keep itself from running out of gas as we speak. Book sales have made a major dive over the last decade or so, forget about being a poet as a career, so it's only normal that the publishers are trying to re-invent literature. It's not just about money, it's also about providing income to their artists - the writers. To have an opinion is one thing, and I tend to share this opinion when it comes to the exclusivity of art nowadays, how ironically that has turned into a wave of very very mediocre art in a weird attempt to lower the threshold to potential audiences which only provides further evidence that creatives and the general public who generally seem to look for art that is alot like Baroque or Romantic painting, something epic, as proven by the biggest market shares being held by fantasy and sci-fi atm, are completely out of touch with one another - there always needs to be an understanding of why this is happening and in this particular case that's sadly economically driven. You can't just say books should be for everyone when you are so lucky to be published by Faber and also are part of a very particular niche of humanitarian intellectuals that can get anything published at all. The niche that nowadays is almost exclusively represented by women and from the top of my mind a single man called Knausgaard, for the same reasons I mentioned before. Most people don't care about this kind of literature nowadays, it's ancient to put it harshly, and the only way to keep it alive is by sustaining its finances. You can't be a Marxist and negate the economic reality of your own existence.
Very few working class people will read Sally's work though. Not enough time and energy or money for books, especially with the current cost of living crisis. Thats just the reality sadly. She is dependent on the middle and upper classes to sell her books
People who read, read, whatever their economic background or what their day otherwise entails. Books can be had from libraries for free and on dollar tables and garage sales throughout the country. Book sales are obviously dependent on those willing and able to pay the $15-$25 for a new book. The authors and their publishers seem to have settled on that range to sell their books. Neither capitalist nor marxist theories of economics explain us completely. Rather, I think, human nature contains elements of both and the theories are outgrowths of our collective nature. I am glad there are the observers among us with an artistic flair who direct us to look at ourselves while being entertained.
Evie Rasing bourdieu was considered a conflict theorist just as Marx. and I think there is a tendency of equaling everything that is based on conflict theory with Marxism. But very well observed! I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but you are totally right. She seems to be influenced more by bourdieu...and maybe Collins?
For safety and sound structures we are dependent on other people, for food and basic goods we are dependent on the past. "During the long succession of agitated ages which have elapsed since, mankind has nevertheless amassed untold treasures. It has cleared the land, dried the marshes, hewn down forests, made roads, pierced mountains; it has been building, inventing, observing, reasoning; it has created a complex machinery, wrested her secrets from Nature, and finally it pressed steam and electricity into its service." /Kropotkin
Putting aside how great Sally Rooney is, the best example of a Marxist novel that I can think of is The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell. A brilliant novel, an undoubted classic, very funny also, but very very different to Sally Rooney's style.
This is very interesting to listen to, and unlike other leftists (sorry) she's actually convincing (and convinced) when she talks about these social issues.
Interesting views on feminists. It's strange that they would consider independence at all costs, yet not consider what that would actually mean for society.
I am glad I have heard of Sally Rooney. She sounds pretty sensible. Now if only I can find out how the hell one gets a left wing novel published, maybe I will have a chance too.
@@Anhorish Dont know what you mean. I think the books where written with a lot of forethought. And the Godot character makes it more explicit: Vladimir´s first line. The latter taken from an essay of Lenin.
"The democratic concept of man is false, because it is Christian. The democratic concept holds that . . . each man is a sovereign being. This is the illusion, dream, and postulate of Christianity" ―Karl Marx. "To destroy Christianity, we must first destroy the British Empire" ―Karl Marx. “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” ― Winston S. Churchill. .
the first quote seems to have no origin other than being cited in a 1950s US Morality book. It also doesnt fit into "Das Kapital" at all, I suspect that it's not even a real quote, granted that it only appears in American propaganda works that juxtapose it to Hitler quotes
@@phirion6341 Your might be right ? might not be a Karl Max quote, but is there any truth to it ? is the Democratic concept Christian, I would say so, it might have startet pre christianity tho, as Democracy have its roots in Greece Bc. why I also is a bit sceptic about the quote being "real" but the core of Christianity is that we are made in the images of God and therefor have value, the same go for democracy both claim that we are sovereign beings, and that would fit pretty well with the critics of Karl Max, as the believe he had was in contrast to that Etc. in Communism the person is there to serve the state, in democracy the state is there to serve the person, two ways and you might say opposite ways, to look at the world, two poles of reality, now what game would be the best to play ? I would say that history show us that quite clearly, it is like the 20 first century was an experiment of that.
@@Uriel-Septim. I by no means advocate or agree with communist teachings. However, democracy and communism are not direct poles of each other. They are like apples and oranges. Democracy belongs to forms of leadership and decision-making, just like Monarchy, Theocracy etc.. Communism concerns itself with the layout of the state, its economics in particular. All communist variations in their core describe the ownership of its production by the community. In theory, decisionmaking might as well implement democracy if that's what supports said blueprint, but it could be literally anything else. Of course we know that no real communist regime has ever been democratic
She seems very confused, the second half of this is monstrous. She seems to deny any legitimacy to the notion of the individual. She says this all in an abstract way, but the practical consequences of dissolving the individual are terrifying.
The ironic thing is she wouldn’t be the new literary darling if she wasn’t a Marxist even though she claims to be worried about the whole culture she’s benefitting from.
well just go into Waterstones and you're faced with heaps of the stuff.. almost exclusively from people like her... she'd probably think differently if she'd spent het whole life easting Borshct and cabbages...
Ridiculous. You can still criticise society while still participating in it. There is no choice of rejecting capitalism while still engaging with other people because that's the economic system whether one likes it or not. Also, if she hadn't said it here it definitely wouldn't be obvious that she's an outspoken Marxist judging by her books, I was very surprised when I saw this video title. If you think that, you haven't read her books and it shows.
una it’s a fad in academia to be against capitalism. That’s the only place you can make a living by not actually working, but just spouting off nonsense Theory. Maybe she’s just trying to offset the fact she writes commercial tween novels.
If you have the right political views and fit other diversity boxes, you can become the new darling in any industry. She not only an idiot for having anti-capitalist views (capitalilism has brought more freedom, economic growth, innovation through competition and human advancement than any other system by the way, it has its flaws, all systems do, but it's the best system we have right now) she's a hypocrite. If she was a real Marxist she wouldn't be keeping all of her new found wealth, she would be keeping enough for her to live on like working class people, while giving the rest of her wealth away to charities and such. As the saying goes it's easy to be an anti-capitalist when you're rich. Anti-capitalist people fall into two groups, people like Rooney who are doing it to get brownie points with a certain demographic of people and because having the right politics is a great way to gain favour in our current political climate. And the second group are people under 25 who have been wrapped up in cotton wool their entire lives, who get offended by anything and everything, and who hate the reality of life, and the idea that if you want to live a good life you have to go out and work hard to get it. They hate the fact that the wealthy life, where they can sit around the pool all day in an 8 bedroom mansion, drinking champagne all day, isn't just handed to them on a plate, because they managed to get through school and college. As if getting through the first 20 years of life in a world you hate makes you worthy to get shit for free and never have to work hard.
I find "-ist" frameworks of all sorts intellectually suffocating, especially in writers. Framing casual anecdotes in Marxian terms as if this exercise would in turn validate the "analytical framework" elicits too much undue respectability. Might as well try astrology or adventism, they're less pretentious and give a more honest measure of one's intellect.
Anant Sharma I’m guessing you think Hamlet or sonnet 115 or Dvorak’s cello concerto or Don Giovanni or Waiting for Godot or The Odyssey or Monet’s Waterlilies at L’Orangerie or The Mona Lisa or Ives’ Fourth Symphony, or A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu or Rumi’s entire body of poetry don’t go far beyond politics then? They are primarily about the organisation of a society and its economy? Their most important content is political? Transcendent beauty is in touch with the divine, opens a small portal onto the infinite and leaves politics in its earthly, prosaic plane. There are people of course for whom these gates never open, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Sally Rooney’s writing transcends her Marxism, despite her best efforts, because it’s primary interest is relational and psychological, not political.
Classic Max art is never 100% political, otherwise it wouldn’t be art. My point was that it is astonishing to me that an artist would publicly profess allegiance to (or that they think within the framework of) any ideology at all, especially in this day in age, especially Marxism of all things! Anyone who truly thinks things through for themselves, and tries to integrate it into their own life, could never ascribe to someone else’s mental system. Any “ism” that is. The role of the artist is not just to regurgitate other people’s ideas, or even I would argue their own ideology if they have taken the time to concoct one for themselves, but to dance at the edge of what they know or even can know and report back from that edge as best they can. To do this you have to form a new language of sorts, perhaps in each work. To report on the unknown with the language of an ideology, shoehorning it into an existing framework, is to undermine the point of the exploration. Thankfully, Rooney manages largely to avoid this, and interestingly, the Marxist thought that she obviously enjoys in her own life, becomes an occasional part of the background setting of her book Normal People (and its recent adaptation), almost absurdly trivial in contrast to what her characters are experiencing in their inner lives, which is unutterably at the limits of what can be expressed.
@@greatmomentsofopera7170 I think you take a very narrow view of what great art can be. Why were you astonished that an artist professes an allegiance or thinks within a Marxist framework (Or any other ideology). I'm guessing you subscribe to the Fukuyama "ideology is no more" school of thought. NO ONE is saying that a person completely ascribes to 'someone else's mental system.' When someone says "I'm a marxist" they don't mean "I completely agree with everything Marx said and refuse to take another point of view." They instead mean that they generally agree with some basic tenets of Marx. Once again, you assign roles to the artist, "to dance around the edge or whatever." Art is beautiful, what artists do is beautiful. They work in a nebulous field and it doesn't do to pigeonhole them into roles and rules. Someone can produce a great work of art that is 100% political.
@@johnlukacs1170 "György Lukács was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, aesthetician, literary historian, and critic. He was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an interpretive tradition that departed from the Marxist ideological orthodoxy of the Soviet Union"
@@johnlukacs1170 He wrote, amongst many things, about realism and the novel through a Marxist lens. If you're interested, check out his essay 'Realism In The Balance' in Aesthetics and Politics (London: Verso, c.2000s).
Do they not have public libraries where she's from? A library card gets you past the velvet rope of literary high society so prevalent in capitalist culture (which seems to really like Ms Rooney's work, btw); but the catch is you have have to choose, read, and decide how you feel about the books yourelf instead of having someone else dictate those tasks to you, which appears to be her gripe. Also, a marxist novel, whatever that is, is just a novel with a chosen aesthetic and of all the ones in the universe to choose a "marxist" aesthetic does not sound fun.
@@bennnnnjmennnnn Unemployed working class people after the destruction of the productive apparatus of Europe. And the protagonist named Vladimir, and his first line is "Nothing to be done" which refers to Lenin "What is to be done" and it goes from there. Like I mentioned here Marxist Political Economy is to society and master-slave relations what physics, and astro-physics are to science fiction. It should make us more aware as to where we are, what is taking place, and what is possible.
thats always the problem. These so called 'marxists' actually despite the real working classes in Ireland who get up in the morning and do jobs that she'd just sneer at. delusional, privileged and completely out of touch - pretending to be a concerned activist just to look morally superior
@@gerardburke2517 brilliant comment, karl marx famously never worked any sort of working class job. I do think sally rooney is a good novelist, but when she tslks about socioecomics i think she is very out of touch.
@@msexcelskills3630 Sally Rooney is a middle class, well connected, highly educated, university graduate from the most privileged university in Ireland. This cretin wouldn't have a clue about the genuine struggles of working class people. She doesn't care either. She speaks about Marxist only to exhibit her moral superiority. She wants everybody to know how virtuous she is! Rooney's a decent novelist but nothing more, would anybody seriously compare her work to The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn? I wouldn't think so. Its hardly groundbreaking. If she read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn herself - maybe she might learn something about Marxism. Marxism and Nazism are the two disgusting sides of the same Totalitarian coin.
@Gerard Burke lmao so you make the point of class inequality and injust privileges that the middle class have over the working class, and then decry Marxism is an evil ideology. Methinks you are confused.
Self indulgent, respectable middle class porn, Sally knows how to shift books. Her capitalist publishers must be so proud. I take my hat off to her success and her sales patter,
I've heard she has boycotted the translation of her novel into into Hebrew. I support your stand Sally. Ignore the old worn out anti-Antisemitism allegations. World is an ugly place, but we have to stand up to those who want to make it even uglier for the rest. You rock.
YoGirl keepittogether ironic as that what’s she’s saying here she doesn’t want to happen. You shouldn’t feel you’re deserving to be in the literary world. Reading should be and can be accessible to all so don’t feel intimidated by scholarly jargon :-) x
Although I did enjoy the series,the first sexual encounter has been pretty much lifted from the novel “The Spectacular Now “e.g., can we take our clothes off, asking and giving consent,asking to use a condom among other striking similarities.
Marxism? what a disistarous experience for humankind with billions dead. A privileged Irish author should distance herself from this question...it's cringy.. she hasn't left the uni it seems...
@@shnpio well of course capitalism has done good.. ask 850 million chinese for starters and then consider your pc, your smart phone... what of note has been invented under socialsim or communism..? and that is just scratching the surface... Capitalism needs moderation but is the least bad option
She confuses becoming part of the literary world with being part of a class and the idea that putting a book on your shelf would only be superficial in that world. Therefore she would be against a literary festival because it would only be populated by people who want books for decoration. This is patently a lie.
But I believe, she believe, she did signal the "right" virtues, she is clearly educated. "The democratic concept of man is false, because it is Christian. The democratic concept holds that . . . each man is a sovereign being. This is the illusion, dream, and postulate of Christianity" ―Karl Marx. "To destroy Christianity, we must first destroy the British Empire" ―Karl Marx. “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” ― Winston S. Churchill. .
The writer does not want her latest book, "Beautiful World, Where Are You?" to be translated into Hebrew. She joins those who boycott Israel. During the last war with Hamas, she supported the murderous Islamic terrorists. She signed a letter accusing Israel of "apartheid" and calling for the country's international isolation. That anti-Israel attitude will tear her up badly, because Israel is the people of God, it is the apple of His eye. He promised the land to Abraham and his descendants. God spoke to Abraham thus: "Whoever blesses You will be blessed, but whoever curses You will himself be cursed. There is no future for those who hate Israel, for hatred of them is hatred of God. Incidentally, her view has the tinge of anti-Semitism.
*"I need to feel that I can make something from my experiences because otherwise I don’t know what they are." Watch the full-length interview with Sally Rooney right here:*
ruclips.net/video/ho5ja2trqrs/видео.html
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I think it would be amazing if she started a podcast with someone. She has such interesting opinions on important matters!
She hosted the stinging fly podcast while she was editor! :))
Shane Murphy thank you for mentioning this! Should probably check that out then haha
Agree, but find the older I get - most people have to choose where to focus their light in order to birth a laser. Her books have startling energy in the visions she conjures. Its like the Nobel Laureate said regarding Twitter, something to the effect nothing on there will have relevance in a year let alone a generation.
There she is a year before Normal People on TV, before the pandemic, and she's hammering the importance and fragility of essential workers. At just age 28. The brain on this broad is really something. Hope she's writing for a very long time.
@Bilbo Baggins Insofar as this pandemic's lethality is due in large part to the failings of Capitalism, we can safely say that Capitalism has killed these people. And Capitalism in a wider sense has killed far more than Marxism ever did.
Both of you are wrong. One of you thinks marxism is the cancer of the earth and responsbile for all the worlds ills, the other says the same of capitalism. In fact, under any system, man would still be abusing whatever ideology for excuses to oppress, harm and exploit one another - this is a view of human nature few really understand, but I think both of you would benefit from reading more Machiavelli and Hobbes, and Carlyle, than any more Marx or Rand. Is this really the height of discourse now? Point at X say this is evil - debate. Things and ideologies can't be evil - they can only lay the framework for it. People are evil - words on a page can't be evil, they're inanimate and the product of people.
@@sirhumphreyappleby8399 Excellent comment
@Bilbo Baggins but, saying 'Marxism killed more people than this pandemic ever will' opens you up to accepting that everyone who has died under a capitalist system have been 'killed by capitalism', and it follows then that Capitalism killed more people than this pandemic ever will, and more people than Marxism ever has. It's not useful to make that argument, nor is it even necessarily accurate.
Hell, you can even say that because the global economy has been capitalist since privatisation first occurred, it would be difficult to say that marxism (another way of describing power) and its derivatives have never existed in a marxist world, they have only existed within a capitalist system... so, i mean, does that mean all deaths under marxist inspired systems should actually be apportioned to capitalism?
Its a waste of time to make that claim. The world is much more complex to be simplified in the remedial way that capitalism puts it with the free market of individuals. And if you as a capitalist dont like to accept the failings of hundreds of years of capitalist as 'true capitalism' please point out when where and what IS 'true capitalism', and there, if it exists, we will see failure. I have never seen a free market economy, and if you think you have, you should take a second look. The accademics who celebrate the free market have never seen it, and those who claim to 'run' it have never come close because they know that it would be cannibalistic and dangerous and would be capable only of concentrating power inevitably towards a single entity and that is the path to tyranny.
@@sirhumphreyappleby8399 the default setting of nature is not greed.. if that is what you're implying. Almost all animals exist in communities, with division of responsibilities and the sharing of resources. Animals capable of play, 'down time' or doing things for fun, often also show an ability to sacrifice resources, time or effort for other individuals even when there appears to be or is no rational explanation as to personal benefit. How does that observation fit into the anthropological view that humans inevitably will abuse any system in which they will live? Or do we just discard it because it makes things complicated? Machiavelli explains greed incredibly well, but that is all Machiavelli explains. It is a substantial leap from explaining how greed works to claiming that greed is the singular drive of all humans and nature itself. Perhaps it is an even more substantial leap to claim that and also accept that as an unquestionable basis for social structures, given that humans are capable of creating incredibly complex social structures and self-domestication. If your claim for the value of a system is that it is based on an unquestionable truth, the truth really has to be correct and unquestionable. Rip it up, start again.
So much real insight on writing and marxism packed into one video. I love listening to her brain at work. So articulate.
If you want to read about real marxism - then I suggest The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. You might learn yourself something
@@gerardburke2517 bore off
@@olliewarren1993 one of the best books of 20th Century. In another league to Sally Rooney
@@gerardburke2517 gulag archipelago is a fantastic book but it isn't about marxism.
@@olliewarren1993 it is entirely about marxism because marxism always leads to the gulags and abject poverty. the brutality and suffering is unimaginable. it's always the end game like this when you push utopian ideologies like marxism & nazism
She is so lucid as to what reading her books feels like. The goal of not just letting the reader know that a person can be profoundly changed by another, but to actually make them FEEL this is achieved sooo well in normal people
Finally, a truly leftist artist owning their completely dominated and "distasteful" opinion about Marxism, social inequality, and the state of the world. Sick of liberals monopolising leftist content, so I am so excited to be somewhat represented by Rooney, and even more excited to see what her wonderous brain does next.
Josh B thanks for the recommendation I’ll check this one out
@lee lukes What a monumental bellend you are.
@lee lukes Of course you wouldn't know that.
@lee lukes 'Cancel'? What on earth are you talking about? Well you have confirmed it, you are indeed a monumental bellend.
@lee lukes You are a classic example of the Dunning Kruger effect (you can look that up, as it is almost certainly another thing you don't know.)
almost a year had gone by since I first watched this and this remained as one of my favorite interviews of all time.
Many thanks, great to hear ;)
this is my third rewatching
She is the answers and the questions we need so far
She's brilliant. Hope she keeps on writing. Beautiful World, Where Are You is excellent.
Her newest novel is expected to release the 28th of sept and I’m so excited
This is a great interview. So much of the other interviews on RUclips with Sally Rooney seem to involve a lot of the interviewer speaking. It’s nice to hear her talk about what she wants to achieve with her books.
Yeah, lots of royalties, through the medium of Marxist feminist delusions.
The hobby of reading has become aspirational as normal people no longer have the time or resources to read very widely, if at all. Many younger people have second jobs. When your time needs to be traded for income to get by, and that income keeps reducing in terms of actual purchasing power, your spare time is less and less.
Those who have spare time to read are affluent, therefore being well read is a sign of affluence, and by extension, having many books is a sign of affluence.
Hence the comodification of books, at the expense of stories. They are often more collectors items for display than something you can reasonably spare the time to read. But, as long as people know you have the book, perhaps they will see you as higher on the economic ladder. It's exactly why books are no longer little brown unassuming things like in the 70s, and huge pink hardcover monstrosities laden with marketing slop. They're there to be noticed as much on your home bookshelf as in the shop!
PS. I was born in the 90s, so I never bought a book in the 70s, but I've been to a library, and i can only assume that the world was entirely made of brown fabric pre-1980...
Two words: public library. It's a beautiful institution that welcomes readers from all walks of life. Stop overcomplicating issues and conflating reading with class warfare. It's a cute intellectual exercise, but one not based in any reality.
@@OKjoey86 I think you may have misunderstood my argument. The existence of public libraries does not somehow counter my point - the majority of people have less time to read due to the gradual increase in working hours, either with a single or multiple jobs.
As the general population has less time to read, books necessarily must be more intensely marketed and increase in value to have worthile revenues. Hence the rise in the celebrity biography, big books, flashy sleeves, big font, big pictures - easy to spot, quicker to digest, simpler to regurgitate to friends. And that is all to the detriment of literary and genre fiction for which resources are diverted to crap like biographies and 50 Shades of garbage.
Yes, people can go get books from libraries, but if people rarely have time to read, how does a library actually help? And how does that influence the trend in publishing?
Publishing is moving towards the sale of books as ornaments to collect rather than stories to be digested and enjoyed, and that reflects a decline in standards for ordinary people - we have less time and less resources available for leisure activities in general, but especially reading. The existence of public libraries doesn't change that in any way..they don't effect what gets published and they don't make reading less time consuming.
She's something else. I knew it the moment I read the first paragraph of Normal People. The voice of a new generation
Absolutely not lol
This interview about the relationship between literature and marxism is very interesting. I've read her first novel and I understand what she means. There are scenes of female intimacy that the "traditional-high" literature wouldn't have accepted. There is a philosopher, Fredric Jameson (a marxist literary critic) that says that in every novel there is a class struggle, al so in the most stupid novel on the market. Every novel has in a spontaneous way a marxist structure. Anyway I like this writer and I find shameful that ignorant people write offensive comments. Maybe those people should read more books.
I think the reason that people are writing "offensive" comments is because they have read more books.
Because they have read more books, they feel offended by her and her apparent (allocated) success
There's nothing Marxist about novel structure or writing in general. Research before you speak.
@@thedeadd.c.207 I was gonna say the same, all books are Marxist? Sounds like trying to push square blocks through triangle holes. Either that or Marxists really like to believe Marxism is a theory of everything instead of just economics.
When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. Yes, it's incredibly shameful that some people may have a different perspective than you and then have the effrontery to express it.
This is why I love reading “the Great Gatsby” every year during the Derby. Its a wonderful window in time
Rooney raises some good points over here that are worth discussing. As Mandel argues in his 'Late Capitalism', the capitalist economy in its current stage (post-Third Industrial Revolution) "trends towards industrialization of superstrucrural activities", nowadays those activities are "organized along industrial lines: they produce for the market and aim at maximization of profit". So, we can argue that within late capitalism there's a socialization of the cultural means of production and everyone does intellectual work, but that doesn't mean that there's a democratization of those means. Its actually the opposite, we see with that process the co-existence of cultural and technological monopolies such as Google, Facebook, etc., and that the cultural products are increasingly produced and consumed massively as commodities, and subsecuently are dominated by the laws of the market, they're fetishized and aim for the self-valorization of value.
Thats why we need a free market
Wow she is impressive. I haven't read her books but definitely will now.
have u already, just checking. 4 months ago mate... hope u did
@@user-os5sd7sz4v It's on my bookshelf, and in the queue. :) I'll get to it eventually
What an interesting video.Really insightful view of the world. Sums up the world so succinctly. View of interdependence is so relevant in today’s crisis world
i trust her voice
Sally is scarily articulate! What a joy to be able to enjoy her work in different formats.
This woman is special and precious.
@Bilbo Baggins so did, does and will do the capitalism too, I am afraid dear Bilbo (so you truly exist, I am honored indeed, Mr Bilbo)
@Bilbo Baggins As Fascism has killed millions? Here in the UK we are tarred with similar killings on a grand scale. Not a part of history to be proud of. Look at the current Fascist Government. Their incompetence has led to thousands of deaths just in the last 10 years. The most recent culling is right now with Covid 19. Unprepared, incompetent, propagandised.
@Bilbo Baggins YEP, they really do.
@Bilbo Baggins Tens of millions died in China before Marxism. Russia had famines for centuries. etc. The history and the realities of those countries, and of the world, contributed to what happened.
@Bilbo Baggins Only a Cold War doctrinaire conflates Marx with the regimes that carried out crimes of in his name. Can we blame Christians for the estimated 1,000,000 total dead for the crusades to the East covering the period from 1095 to 1291? For the 5,000 executed during the Spanish Inquisition? For the 8,000,000 that died during the Thirty Years War? For the Church’s support of slavery and colonization? That is clearly nuts to do so. Religion and all ideological thinking should be addressed in the ways it fogs the mind.
You clearly need a more mature attitude to a body of knowledge that are tools for understanding the class struggle in the world. Read Marx without a prejudiced attitude.
Literature and basically all art has always been the focus of a small minority of the population. One should be grateful that there are still people who are willing to buy books, whatever motivation you suspect them of having (how can you really know what's in their hearts). At the same time, there have always been individuals who, whatever their class (wealthy or poor), greatly enrich their lives through the arts - to these people reading is as important to their souls as food is to their bodies. I'm putting the emphasis on "individuals", not classes of people. It's individuals, the summation of their experience, who create art and who are there to appreciate it. We are all part of society but at our core we are individuals and if we lose touch with that we just become cogs in the collective machine.
big nothing comment that completely ignores what Rooney is saying in this video.
@@TheSasquatchAssassinthat may be, but it nevertheless is completely true. We will eventually lose ourselves if we only see us as a mere part of society and not us as an individual IN society
@@AK-tm3lg "you may be right that the original comment is irrelevant and stupid, but have you considered this other irrelevant and stupid comment". But I'll humor you.
We are individuals and a society together all the time all at once. We depend on ourselves and others equally. We are responsible to ourselves and others (through society/community/etc).
@@TheSasquatchAssassin And why is it that my comment is irrelevant and stupid exactly? Would you maybe care to elaborate ?
As from where I'm standing and what I wanted to communicate is that I dont't see Marxism as some sort of magical solution for the problems that humanity is dealing with, which is not to say that things should stay as they are! Of course we should take care of one another and of course we must find social solutions, but I think if we start living for society rather than ourselves, then something is going really wrong. Yes, we as humans are social beings, but that doesn't mean we should devote ourselves to a political ideology which ( as we've seen BIG time through history) in the end profits only one - the state- and is just another form of dictatorship.
@@AK-tm3lg marxism is a magical solution.
So articulate and intelligent for someone so young. Inspirational.
"Hunger" by Knut Hansum (unburnt edition), "Road to Wingam Pier", "Animal Farm" The latter not only being Marxists, but Trotskyst.
Wasn't Hamsun a Nazi?
@@MartiCostaPrat_Eseso_de_SWAG Do not Know. I do get a feeling that besides Orwell, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sinclair etc there were fascists avant guardsts as I understand it: Pound, Celine, Lawrence, Hamsun: I do not know. But hunger is like a study of Raskolnikov, lived, minus the murder. Yes, within working class people you find all sorts. Henry Miller liked "The Decline of Western Civilization" and Krishnamurti. Was he a right winger. I remember he liked the Anti-Christ by Nietzsche a great deal. The point is what they aimed with what they wrote, and how many people they murdered, or, committed crimes against concretely. Neruda was a supporter of Stalin, but considered a leftist. Things things have to begin to be analyzed at a concrete level, and then move on to higher levels of rich detail etc: imo.
Also, Nazism was a response by the Holzerberger, after Brunning, to attempt to divide and conquer red Berlin. Working class people had also been soldiers, their identity as brothers in arms still active, during WWI, and they had used the Versaille Treaty to do away with the German population. German capital took advantage of rallying people, but they had to do it from the right so that the social realtions that hold at work, dictatorial, could expand to the political sphere. The latter a way to avoid Red Berlin the electoral route while holding all the guns, and using all the training, for enforcing the militarization of social relations which is what fascism attempts to advance to continue the system of capitalsit exploitation..
It is an odd interview in that we viewers see her hemming and hawing and thinking as she speaks. that dual process--what she says and how she says it lead me (and others) enhances the substance of what is said. I think most people who see this already believe what she says and have thought about these things at some time or often. One wonders if the packaging of books and interviews like this estrange us even more from reality by our self-acknowledgement of knowing an imagined marxism that we can substitute for an active engaged marxism? I've never heard of her or normal people before but will explore the writings. so thanks!
2:00 The alternative used to be dying a drunk who cares nothing for the accolade's ala Bukowski, or dysfunctional like Dostoyevsky etc. But here you are melting your gold tiara into a plough share. Its also why we applaud you - and Ricky Gervais; to say "I'm here on stage, the gowns are beautiful and the men handsome - but this is a shit show for us to imagine ourselves more useful to the world than we actually are"
I want to say something about that part in which she says that she has not been able to achieve a conciliation between Marxism and her novels. I think this is because it is one of the drawbacks of Marxism that it is only a social theory not an individual theory. I have been thinking about this lately. And I have been thinking of pairing up Marxism with Buddhism.
real important statement right there 2:00 i really like that she seems to have strong political opinion
Here are some suggestions from a Political Economist with an Associates of Arts degree. Economic Science (Marx´s work is hardly propaganda for serious economists) is to literature what physical sciences are to science fiction. Within political economy there is the interplay of the master-slave dialectics. If you read the world socialist website and the struggle over the working day you may get good material. If you can write a book about the oppression of women, or, informed by feminism then you can write one about the lives of their kids, and how they are being treated, or, from the point of view of the brothers of sisters. I think Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky does a great job at showing the Master-Slave dialectic and the struggles that sex workers go through. It is no easy to read it, and think of sex workers as things to exploit. I would suggest reading Emma Goldman´s auto-biography.
I like what she had to say. It is very refereshing. Even here on youtube, you can see the commodification of books. Booktubers often have this is what I bought, 'bookshelves tour' etc.
When pitching romantic novels to "educated" middle-class people it is most important that you dress them (and yourself) up to look as left-wing as possible. You will not be able to do this by writing about the struggles of the working class because the working class are not struggling and your readers are not interested in them anyway. So depict middle class people using each other sexually and associate this with some vague notion about how capitalism makes us think of each other as commodities. You will please everyone and get yourself recognised as a brilliant new talent into the bargain.
Lol! I've just read Normal people. It was very stodgy, stilted and full of insipid characters. Interminable soul searching, mountains are made out of molehills, and you're left wondering why it's so popular.
@@Deedee-ee1sg Nice to know I'm not the only one!
I read it and thought: cheer up it might never happen. What a disappointment and water of time the book was. It's upper garbage tier fanfiction quality writing at best. Seriously you can read better stories on Wattpad written by high school kids.
Yes, that sounds like a very workable formula.
Interesting ideas. I quite like her.
Here are a 5 Min. contra argument to these ideas:
ruclips.net/video/NDTbNmUgeXk/видео.html
Rubim Ellmelech shitty video by a guy who only read the communist manifesto and thinks he's an expert on Marx.
I can agree with the first part, that books seem to have become a commodity and that the audiences of art have become narrow. Where I live anything cultural is mainly crowded with retired ladies, people who are creative professionals themselves, and some of these events require invitations or buying yourself in. There are free events hosted by libraries, so it's not like it's all exclusive, but there is a machine that tries to keep itself from running out of gas as we speak. Book sales have made a major dive over the last decade or so, forget about being a poet as a career, so it's only normal that the publishers are trying to re-invent literature. It's not just about money, it's also about providing income to their artists - the writers.
To have an opinion is one thing, and I tend to share this opinion when it comes to the exclusivity of art nowadays, how ironically that has turned into a wave of very very mediocre art in a weird attempt to lower the threshold to potential audiences which only provides further evidence that creatives and the general public who generally seem to look for art that is alot like Baroque or Romantic painting, something epic, as proven by the biggest market shares being held by fantasy and sci-fi atm, are completely out of touch with one another - there always needs to be an understanding of why this is happening and in this particular case that's sadly economically driven. You can't just say books should be for everyone when you are so lucky to be published by Faber and also are part of a very particular niche of humanitarian intellectuals that can get anything published at all. The niche that nowadays is almost exclusively represented by women and from the top of my mind a single man called Knausgaard, for the same reasons I mentioned before. Most people don't care about this kind of literature nowadays, it's ancient to put it harshly, and the only way to keep it alive is by sustaining its finances. You can't be a Marxist and negate the economic reality of your own existence.
Normal people is based im so glad to hear it
She is a genius
Very few working class people will read Sally's work though. Not enough time and energy or money for books, especially with the current cost of living crisis. Thats just the reality sadly. She is dependent on the middle and upper classes to sell her books
People who read, read, whatever their economic background or what their day otherwise entails. Books can be had from libraries for free and on dollar tables and garage sales throughout the country. Book sales are obviously dependent on those willing and able to pay the $15-$25 for a new book. The authors and their publishers seem to have settled on that range to sell their books. Neither capitalist nor marxist theories of economics explain us completely. Rather, I think, human nature contains elements of both and the theories are outgrowths of our collective nature. I am glad there are the observers among us with an artistic flair who direct us to look at ourselves while being entertained.
Some of her comments sound way more Bourdieusian than Marxist
Evie Rasing bourdieu was considered a conflict theorist just as Marx. and I think there is a tendency of equaling everything that is based on conflict theory with Marxism. But very well observed! I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but you are totally right. She seems to be influenced more by bourdieu...and maybe Collins?
Well, although Bourdieu wouldn't call himself a Marxist, Marx’s influence on his work is very apparent. He was also a student of Althusser.
marvelous intelligence at work here.....viva
She has a well-developed brain.
Her whole larp as this marxist is super cringe.
For safety and sound structures we are dependent on other people, for food and basic goods we are dependent on the past.
"During the long succession of agitated ages which have elapsed since,
mankind has nevertheless amassed untold treasures. It has cleared the land, dried the marshes, hewn down forests, made roads, pierced mountains; it has been building, inventing, observing, reasoning; it has created a complex machinery, wrested her secrets from Nature, and finally it pressed steam and electricity into its service." /Kropotkin
This question is just… a novel can be literally everything. Obviously?
What is outlined in this vid used to be called growing up.
Excellent comment
There's nothing at all Marxist about growing up to absolute tool.
The Polity of Beasts. SO American. So pertinent to current events. So common-sensical. SO politically incorrect--and therefore so true?
in absolute awe of her
Base/Superstructure
We are positive because we are ignoring the real suffering
Putting aside how great Sally Rooney is, the best example of a Marxist novel that I can think of is The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell. A brilliant novel, an undoubted classic, very funny also, but very very different to Sally Rooney's style.
I've read two of Rooney's novels, but checked them out from the library.
This is very interesting to listen to, and unlike other leftists (sorry) she's actually convincing (and convinced) when she talks about these social issues.
Interesting views on feminists. It's strange that they would consider independence at all costs, yet not consider what that would actually mean for society.
Legal que vc falou num revolucionário brasileiro.
Love the comments re: independence
brilliant and insightful
Is she not selling her books?
We all know, we just don't talk about it and it's high time people stopped using books that way.
I am glad I have heard of Sally Rooney. She sounds pretty sensible. Now if only I can find out how the hell one gets a left wing novel published, maybe I will have a chance too.
Roxy Katt is that sarcasm? How to publish a left wing novel? Lol. Aren’t those the only ones published these days?
It's not a left-wing novel.
I think Ulysses qualifies. Beckett´s "Murphy" (currently reading it)
On an Irish Lit trip or sheer accident?
@@Anhorish Dont know what you mean. I think the books where written with a lot of forethought. And the Godot character makes it more explicit: Vladimir´s first line. The latter taken from an essay of Lenin.
@@gonzogil123 A quip. A latin name, Gil, and Rooney, Joyce and Beckett all Irish authors.
Is there a 2nd book?
Sally Rooney has written the two novels 'Conversations with Friends' and 'Normal People'.
Have a nice day!
Check out her short stories as well - I've just read 'Mr Salary' and found it really interesting
wow. am i gonna have to read normal people?
"The democratic concept of man is false, because it is Christian. The democratic concept holds that . . . each man is a sovereign being. This is the illusion, dream, and postulate of Christianity"
―Karl Marx.
"To destroy Christianity, we must first destroy the British Empire"
―Karl Marx.
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
― Winston S. Churchill.
.
the first quote seems to have no origin other than being cited in a 1950s US Morality book. It also doesnt fit into "Das Kapital" at all, I suspect that it's not even a real quote, granted that it only appears in American propaganda works that juxtapose it to Hitler quotes
@@phirion6341 Your might be right ? might not be a Karl Max quote, but is there any truth to it ? is the Democratic concept Christian, I would say so, it might have startet pre christianity tho, as Democracy have its roots in Greece Bc. why I also is a bit sceptic about the quote being "real" but the core of Christianity is that we are made in the images of God and therefor have value, the same go for democracy both claim that we are sovereign beings, and that would fit pretty well with the critics of Karl Max, as the believe he had was in contrast to that Etc. in Communism the person is there to serve the state, in democracy the state is there to serve the person, two ways and you might say opposite ways, to look at the world, two poles of reality, now what game would be the best to play ? I would say that history show us that quite clearly, it is like the 20 first century was an experiment of that.
@@Uriel-Septim. I by no means advocate or agree with communist teachings. However, democracy and communism are not direct poles of each other. They are like apples and oranges. Democracy belongs to forms of leadership and decision-making, just like Monarchy, Theocracy etc..
Communism concerns itself with the layout of the state, its economics in particular. All communist variations in their core describe the ownership of its production by the community. In theory, decisionmaking might as well implement democracy if that's what supports said blueprint, but it could be literally anything else. Of course we know that no real communist regime has ever been democratic
What is a public library 🤔
Or getting all your books on a Kindle that no one can see.
She seems very confused, the second half of this is monstrous. She seems to deny any legitimacy to the notion of the individual. She says this all in an abstract way, but the practical consequences of dissolving the individual are terrifying.
but such is society
The ironic thing is she wouldn’t be the new literary darling if she wasn’t a Marxist even though she claims to be worried about the whole culture she’s benefitting from.
well just go into Waterstones and you're faced with heaps of the stuff.. almost exclusively from people like her... she'd probably think differently if she'd spent het whole life easting Borshct and cabbages...
Ridiculous. You can still criticise society while still participating in it. There is no choice of rejecting capitalism while still engaging with other people because that's the economic system whether one likes it or not. Also, if she hadn't said it here it definitely wouldn't be obvious that she's an outspoken Marxist judging by her books, I was very surprised when I saw this video title. If you think that, you haven't read her books and it shows.
una it’s a fad in academia to be against capitalism. That’s the only place you can make a living by not actually working, but just spouting off nonsense Theory. Maybe she’s just trying to offset the fact she writes commercial tween novels.
If you have the right political views and fit other diversity boxes, you can become the new darling in any industry. She not only an idiot for having anti-capitalist views (capitalilism has brought more freedom, economic growth, innovation through competition and human advancement than any other system by the way, it has its flaws, all systems do, but it's the best system we have right now) she's a hypocrite. If she was a real Marxist she wouldn't be keeping all of her new found wealth, she would be keeping enough for her to live on like working class people, while giving the rest of her wealth away to charities and such. As the saying goes it's easy to be an anti-capitalist when you're rich. Anti-capitalist people fall into two groups, people like Rooney who are doing it to get brownie points with a certain demographic of people and because having the right politics is a great way to gain favour in our current political climate. And the second group are people under 25 who have been wrapped up in cotton wool their entire lives, who get offended by anything and everything, and who hate the reality of life, and the idea that if you want to live a good life you have to go out and work hard to get it. They hate the fact that the wealthy life, where they can sit around the pool all day in an 8 bedroom mansion, drinking champagne all day, isn't just handed to them on a plate, because they managed to get through school and college. As if getting through the first 20 years of life in a world you hate makes you worthy to get shit for free and never have to work hard.
I find "-ist" frameworks of all sorts intellectually suffocating, especially in writers. Framing casual anecdotes in Marxian terms as if this exercise would in turn validate the "analytical framework" elicits too much undue respectability. Might as well try astrology or adventism, they're less pretentious and give a more honest measure of one's intellect.
This is unbearable to listen to. Incredibly jejune and tedious. How could an artist be such an ideologue? Great art goes so far beyond politics.
"Great art goes so far beyond politics"
Never heard of a sentence I disagree with more.
Anant Sharma I’m guessing you think Hamlet or sonnet 115 or Dvorak’s cello concerto or Don Giovanni or Waiting for Godot or The Odyssey or Monet’s Waterlilies at L’Orangerie or The Mona Lisa or Ives’ Fourth Symphony, or A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu or Rumi’s entire body of poetry don’t go far beyond politics then? They are primarily about the organisation of a society and its economy? Their most important content is political? Transcendent beauty is in touch with the divine, opens a small portal onto the infinite and leaves politics in its earthly, prosaic plane. There are people of course for whom these gates never open, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Sally Rooney’s writing transcends her Marxism, despite her best efforts, because it’s primary interest is relational and psychological, not political.
@@greatmomentsofopera7170 I appreciate the reply. Thank you for broadening my thought.
Classic Max art is never 100% political, otherwise it wouldn’t be art. My point was that it is astonishing to me that an artist would publicly profess allegiance to (or that they think within the framework of) any ideology at all, especially in this day in age, especially Marxism of all things! Anyone who truly thinks things through for themselves, and tries to integrate it into their own life, could never ascribe to someone else’s mental system. Any “ism” that is. The role of the artist is not just to regurgitate other people’s ideas, or even I would argue their own ideology if they have taken the time to concoct one for themselves, but to dance at the edge of what they know or even can know and report back from that edge as best they can. To do this you have to form a new language of sorts, perhaps in each work. To report on the unknown with the language of an ideology, shoehorning it into an existing framework, is to undermine the point of the exploration. Thankfully, Rooney manages largely to avoid this, and interestingly, the Marxist thought that she obviously enjoys in her own life, becomes an occasional part of the background setting of her book Normal People (and its recent adaptation), almost absurdly trivial in contrast to what her characters are experiencing in their inner lives, which is unutterably at the limits of what can be expressed.
@@greatmomentsofopera7170 I think you take a very narrow view of what great art can be. Why were you astonished that an artist professes an allegiance or thinks within a Marxist framework (Or any other ideology). I'm guessing you subscribe to the Fukuyama "ideology is no more" school of thought. NO ONE is saying that a person completely ascribes to 'someone else's mental system.' When someone says "I'm a marxist" they don't mean "I completely agree with everything Marx said and refuse to take another point of view." They instead mean that they generally agree with some basic tenets of Marx. Once again, you assign roles to the artist, "to dance around the edge or whatever." Art is beautiful, what artists do is beautiful. They work in a nebulous field and it doesn't do to pigeonhole them into roles and rules. Someone can produce a great work of art that is 100% political.
L U K Á C S
what does this comment mean? its my last name and I am surprised to see it here
@@johnlukacs1170 "György Lukács was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, aesthetician, literary historian, and critic. He was one of the founders of Western Marxism, an interpretive tradition that departed from the Marxist ideological orthodoxy of the Soviet Union"
@@johnlukacs1170 He wrote, amongst many things, about realism and the novel through a Marxist lens. If you're interested, check out his essay 'Realism In The Balance' in Aesthetics and Politics (London: Verso, c.2000s).
Do they not have public libraries where she's from? A library card gets you past the velvet rope of literary high society so prevalent in capitalist culture (which seems to really like Ms Rooney's work, btw); but the catch is you have have to choose, read, and decide how you feel about the books yourelf instead of having someone else dictate those tasks to you, which appears to be her gripe. Also, a marxist novel, whatever that is, is just a novel with a chosen aesthetic and of all the ones in the universe to choose a "marxist" aesthetic does not sound fun.
Oakley 👀
Affected, out of touch with life outside of comfy academia. Not her fault, but should stay in her lane
Stop showing this to me when I search for audiobooks
"Waiting For Godot" by Beckett
In what sense?
@@bennnnnjmennnnn Unemployed working class people after the destruction of the productive apparatus of Europe. And the protagonist named Vladimir, and his first line is "Nothing to be done" which refers to Lenin "What is to be done" and it goes from there. Like I mentioned here Marxist Political Economy is to society and master-slave relations what physics, and astro-physics are to science fiction. It should make us more aware as to where we are, what is taking place, and what is possible.
@@gonzogil123 Interesting insight, thanks for sharing
@@bennnnnjmennnnn Anytime.
She is so smart wow. Trinity College Dublin helps create these geniuses!
thats always the problem. These so called 'marxists' actually despite the real working classes in Ireland who get up in the morning and do jobs that she'd just sneer at. delusional, privileged and completely out of touch - pretending to be a concerned activist just to look morally superior
@@gerardburke2517 brilliant comment, karl marx famously never worked any sort of working class job. I do think sally rooney is a good novelist, but when she tslks about socioecomics i think she is very out of touch.
@@msexcelskills3630 Sally Rooney is a middle class, well connected, highly educated, university graduate from the most privileged university in Ireland. This cretin wouldn't have a clue about the genuine struggles of working class people. She doesn't care either. She speaks about Marxist only to exhibit her moral superiority. She wants everybody to know how virtuous she is! Rooney's a decent novelist but nothing more, would anybody seriously compare her work to The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn? I wouldn't think so. Its hardly groundbreaking. If she read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn herself - maybe she might learn something about Marxism. Marxism and Nazism are the two disgusting sides of the same Totalitarian coin.
@Gerard Burke lmao so you make the point of class inequality and injust privileges that the middle class have over the working class, and then decry Marxism is an evil ideology. Methinks you are confused.
Marx was wrong. It’s unbelievable that people still take his ideas seriously
Normally, this is said by people who never read a single word of Marx. Have you?
He understood nothing about human psychology. His fantasies about the working class are rooted in Rousseau.
Riders? Odd
Self indulgent, respectable middle class porn,
Sally knows how to shift books.
Her capitalist publishers must be so proud.
I take my hat off to her success and her sales patter,
I've heard she has boycotted the translation of her novel into into Hebrew.
I support your stand Sally. Ignore the old worn out anti-Antisemitism allegations. World is an ugly place, but we have to stand up to those who want to make it even uglier for the rest. You rock.
Are u mad?
I'm not clever enough to understand her
YoGirl keepittogether ironic as that what’s she’s saying here she doesn’t want to happen. You shouldn’t feel you’re deserving to be in the literary world. Reading should be and can be accessible to all so don’t feel intimidated by scholarly jargon :-) x
How do you know she is making sense?
Although I did enjoy the series,the first sexual encounter has been pretty much lifted from the novel “The Spectacular Now “e.g., can we take our clothes off, asking and giving consent,asking to use a condom among other striking similarities.
Neither is she.....
A truly mediocre writer. Interesting (in the sense that it isn't) that she's the culture war's chosen one.
I wonder is her wallet Marxist!
Hilariously tone deaf.
She discusses snobbishness, selfishness, arrogance in society - there’s no link made to a nineteenth century revolutionary ideology.
Marxism? what a disistarous experience for humankind with billions dead. A privileged Irish author should distance herself from this question...it's cringy.. she hasn't left the uni it seems...
And capitalism has done so much good?
I think your mixing up Marxism with Totalitarianism and fascism
@@shnpio well of course capitalism has done good.. ask 850 million chinese for starters and then consider your pc, your smart phone... what of note has been invented under socialsim or communism..? and that is just scratching the surface... Capitalism needs moderation but is the least bad option
Jayeevee they are made by slaves we profit on other people’s misfortune
Jayeevee also I’m not anti capitalism but I think I hybrid between socialism and capitalism is our soundest way forward
Catholic author looks all around the world…...at every country in the world
Hmmm?
Who can I boycott ?
I know!!!!!!!
Jews
😂
She confuses becoming part of the literary world with being part of a class and the idea that putting a book on your shelf would only be superficial in that world. Therefore she would be against a literary festival because it would only be populated by people who want books for decoration. This is patently a lie.
Get your Id into POLITICS
if you feel so strong! 👈
Кикимора
wtf is she talking about? talking in circles.
Woword
So many words, so little said.
So much said, so little understood.
@@alexbutler9442 my point exactly.
Yeah I know. She basically said nothing.
But I believe, she believe, she did signal the "right" virtues, she is clearly educated.
"The democratic concept of man is false, because it is Christian. The democratic concept holds that . . . each man is a sovereign being. This is the illusion, dream, and postulate of Christianity"
―Karl Marx.
"To destroy Christianity, we must first destroy the British Empire"
―Karl Marx.
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
― Winston S. Churchill.
.
@Will Rich My thoughts exactly
The writer does not want her latest book, "Beautiful World, Where Are You?" to be translated into Hebrew.
She joins those who boycott Israel. During the last war with Hamas, she supported the murderous Islamic terrorists. She signed a letter accusing Israel of "apartheid" and calling for the country's international isolation. That anti-Israel attitude will tear her up badly, because Israel is the people of God, it is the apple of His eye. He promised the land to Abraham and his descendants. God spoke to Abraham thus: "Whoever blesses You will be blessed, but whoever curses You will himself be cursed. There is no future for those who hate Israel, for hatred of them is hatred of God.
Incidentally, her view has the tinge of anti-Semitism.
As has been said countless times: anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism
@@donthasselthehoff5753 Got that right👍 .
Boring ,more Jew hatred from Rooney
Try reading Chomsky...
Boring series of cliches
No
Ehm
I read the Book and found her writing style very poor outside of thé dialogues which are her forte. Sorry.
commies?no
wtf
Smart...
I knew this book was full of Leftist Dogma after watching the series - which was crap BTW
That’s a cynical way of looking at things don’t you think ?
Why?
This comment didn't age well.