Sally Rooney is a lot of things—among them, famous and adored (and disliked, by some).1 The entire apparatus of marketing that’s surrounded her new book, Beautiful World, Where Are You?, has made me feel secondhand embarrassment so intense that it has been at times physically painful. Bucket hats, pop up shops…it was all too much, particularly when put next to Rooney’s own statements to the press about how much she hates publicity and fame.
I don’t mean her statements were disingenuous, but that it reminded me a little bit of going to see Keats’s grave. There’s Keats’s tombstone, with his name left off per his desires (maybe), and then next to it is another grave that basically says, here lies the best friend of John Keats, who is buried to the left, he’s the guy over there. Some wishes are doomed from the start and when you are an author who reliably makes your publisher money your wishes for privacy are especially doomed. Her attitude of compl…
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