“Color and Light”
by Sally Rooney
first published in the March 18, 2019 issue of The New Yorker
I had not heard of Sally Rooney until last year, when her second novel Normal People was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Lee reviewed it for the site (see here). It has since gone on to be mightily lauded: it won the Irish Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, it won the Costa Book Award, it has been longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and last week it was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Lauren Collins wrote a lengthy piece on Sally Rooney in The New Yorker in January, with the tagline that Rooney “has been hailed as the first great millennial novelist.” I think she’s doing quite well!
Here we are with “Color and Light,” and I’m so curious how everyone will respond!
As you can see by my late posting of this, it’s been a busy week, and I have not read this or even skimmed it. Don’t have the first idea what it’s about! Does it showcase a budding author? Perhaps the first great millennial novelist? Who else is in the running for that honor?
Enlighten me and everyone else and please leave a comment below!
Rooney is the real deal,Trevor. That lengthy list of accolades would, I think, be longer still but for a reluctance amongst literary gatekeepers to ignore their worries about perceptions of zeitgeist opportunism, sales and unshowy prose. There seems to be a misapprehension that her subject matter thus far – relationships amongst young men and women – is in any way equivalent to the depth of her insight. It feels to me akin to someone quibbling at Cassavettes for spending too long on Gena Rowlands’ face, or Chekhov for not broadening his canvas, or Gus Van Sant for using shots that are uncomfortably long. Rooney is dealing in perception and misperception, delusion, loneliness, isolation, community, love, identity, fate, persona – all the good stuff. In other words, there’s substance here, and less is very much more. In a few years I’m sure her reputation will be much the greater – for now she’s perhaps too popular for many to buy into any of it. (This is not to say everyone will care for the work – but to dismiss it as trifling is for me far too easy.)
Anyway, Trevor, read it and put me to rights!:)
I have not read anything by Rooney before, but I have heard a bit about Normal People and I can’t say I have been much interested in reading it. But this story overall worked for me. I liked how we have these two characters each trying to figure the other one out and them spending time together in what seems like it might be the start of some sort of relationship, but Rooney resists falling into conventional traps like them having sex after he walks her home from the fireworks, for example. Sometimes in a story with a lot of questions being asked about a character (there are almost a hundred of them in this story) I get the feeling that the author doesn’t know who the character is and so is asking questions of herself about the person and just jotting them down as a substitute for actually developing a character. But Rooney manages to do this is a way that makes it feel more like a natural, awkward, gradual getting to know each other interaction.
.
I don’t know that I quite understand the final scene, specifically what we are supposed to think of how she got the bloody nose and what the relationship between Pauline and the man she is with is supposed to be, but it does seem clear enough that Pauline asks for Aidan to help her and she suggests the hotel might be full to let him know that is what she wants him to say. It’s also clear that Aidan’s reaction is one of being willing to help, but then also deciding he is done with her, although why that is the case is also not really clear. I have a guess as to what that might be, but am no more confidant in that idea than thinking it just a guess. But in the end it does not much matter as the story that leads up to that ending was entertaining enough on its own.
This is a very promising and talented young writer already starting to live up to some of the promise. Does it risk ostentation? Yes. But there’s a sexiness quotient to this story that is hard to achieve.
The opening is detailed and efficient. Class is woven in, as are fame & importance. The lack of quotation marks, while maybe not entirely necessary, was not a distraction. I liked the meta quality of Aidan as an observer of the world, the watcher of life like it’s a play. Later in the story, life is compared to a dream and a video game. There is a lot of determinism in this short story.
The line “Cool night air floods through the open window” stopped me in the early going (floods is for liquids) but for the most part the prose was fluid. Great job editing by the writer and whoever else edited the piece.
The dead mother, the house, the brotherhood & loyalty themes, these are all unpacked cleanly. The unknowability of others, Pauline being described as maybe a screenwriter, sometimes a woman, sometimes a girl, ageless, with different haircuts and different friends and hangers on, difficult to tell if she has her own money or comes from money or just hangs out with people who throw money around; all wise choices.
“Wheelie” is a good word.
She’s good with the non-visual details, this Rooney, the quiet car or the smells of perfume and alcohol (or the non-smell of the ocean). The description of a head shaped like a headache pull, also good, even if the windshield as computer screen is a bit more of a tryhard move.
Aidan’s introspective, self-conscious, self-aware nature and his liminal sexuality are all signs of an author adept at characterization. I like that he doesn’t really comment much on Pauline’s body as a more thoroughly straight/heterosexual male would.
Tech is well-incorporated. Liked the “group chat.”
“She’s coming up fairly often…” is a good line, as is “We don’t really talk about things.” Both Aidan and the author know what’s up, though I would tweak the point about humans being submissive. We’re compliant more than we are submissive.
The something-good-will-be-dead thing after the fireworks scene was the story at its most overwrought, in a Garth Risk Hallberg sense.
Aidan’s recounting of the sex with the possibly married slightly older hotel guest was expertly rendered. His reflection on the people who’d have to cover his shifts if he died is strong too.
The “I liked you exchange” was deftly presented. Really gets at the core of the inexorableness of the reality that they can’t connect (and how, more philosophically, no two human beings can ever really connect/know each other).
The glazed glass moment of consideration is also very good.
Even Aidan’s work-self interaction with Lydia at the end is drawn quite realistically and with great economy.
The anti-climax ending is not a cowardly one.
Apologies to Lee, whose comment above was first but which languished in moderation limbo! I didn’t see it until today, and I wanted to make sure the rest of you didn’t miss it due to my negligence!
I was wondering what had happened to Lee. But I never suspected he would end up a prisoner in your own personal limbo, Trevor!
:-)
No need Trevor – glad the story seems to have gone down pretty well. I agree with Sean on a lot of the particulars. Her novels are deceptively slight and well worth a look.
Lee, the description “deceptively slight” is a good one. I must say, since previously I commented that I didn’t have much interest in her novel, that it’s probably the sense I had that it would be lacking in depth that made me feel that way. But given the quality of this short story and your comments, I probably need to reconsider that assessment.
David: it’s a tricky one as plenty of readers have been left cold by the apparently soapy concerns. Relationships, shallow youth etc. But the acuity of her insight (for me) is what makes them far more than they might at first glance seem. This is a skilled and compassionate artist.
The entire story was written in first person, and the beginning read to me as a screen play, which the female lead, Pauline, purported as her occupation. There was a murky mystery to this story that I found appealing, with well-placed metaphors along the way. Such as the description of the fireworks as a symbolic precursor to lovemaking that never occurs.
Another example: “The house is spacious and, though furnished, appears curiously empty. The ceilings are high up and far away.” I took this as a representation of Pauline.
I thought the ending hurried and unclear, but there is no denying the gift that this young author possesses.
This felt to me like an excerpt, even though I don’t think it is. What others have called simplicity or subtlety, just struck me as rather flat. But….I could see getting interested in Aidan if this continued and he developed. It was certainly readable and brisk, but I didn’t see as much in this as others. Again, though, this site is very appreciated as a great venue for discussion.
Ken, I’m surprised you thought this felt like excerpt. It has about as clear a beginning and ending as you might hope for – starting with Aidan first meeting Pauline and ending with him being done with his interest in her. The story is the entirety of their relationship.
I guess it’s because I didn’t find it that compelling on its own. Yes, it does have a clear beginning and end, it’s not that. It’s just that I could see this becoming interesting only if we kept spending time with Aidan, but not as it was.
This story made me think of John Updike’s early story, “A&P”.
This story is dazzlingly polished, so dazzling that it is hard to see through to the substance within. Somewhere in there, there is probably something that Rooney is trying to clarify for herself and the reader, or at least to portray – something about the confusion of human encounters, the unknowability of others’ intentions. And she is certainly skilled, having pared and honed the thing to a point where there is scarcely an unnecessary word. I find that almost a fault though, all that tamping down and smoothing. Messiness – if that is the right word for the antithesis of smooth glossiness in writing – is becoming rare; a lean, minimal style seems to be admired above everything, even when it comes at the expense of what it is trying to convey. I’m prepared to forgive a bit of wild verbosity, if it comes with some highly original content, but so much fiction these days – and judging by this example, I would include Rooney’s in this category – has a mass-produced feel, a neat, industrialised style, which makes it feel less like a work of art than an assembly-line commodity. I suspect, after reading this, that she has spent time and effort in some creative writing factory – sorry, faculty; the final effect is prose that is faintly robotic, containing no trace that an individual with eccentricities and strange emotions and a beating heart was involved in its creation
Just for the record, Rooney is pretty far outside the American MFA system. Her prose is clean and worked on but I didn’t see it as churned-out or manufactured at all. She comes from a very wordy and poetry-infused Irish tradition and any polish would be coming from the New Yorker editors. If you want a chewier, messier, wordier Irish experience, though, try for contrast Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing. And I would also disagree that minimalist is in vogue. Ray Carver is not the model that’s getting a lot of buzz these days. If anything, sprawling auto-fiction is quite the more discussed in-topic of the moment. If you’re saying the postmodern giants are not as privileged, that’s a fair point. Yes, we’re not really doing big pomo text-bricks like Gass, Gaddis, Barth, Wallace, and Coover as much, though those artists still have weight and gravitas. Not that you were attacking Rooney, zzzmkc, I just felt you misapprehended her voice as that of a factory-line American MFA-er shoehorned into a robotic style and lacking heart. Would love to hear wher eyou find that beating heart? When I think of “heart”y writers I think like John Irving or Henry Miller or Anais Nin or Philip Roth. Is that what you mean?
Thank you SeanH for your response. I’ve tried twice to post my response and each time it has been eaten and I’ve been told I’m not logged in or my identifiers are wrong et cetera. I do seem to have trouble with this site. I bet though that this will appear, as it doesn’t contain anything interesting
zzzmkc: Ha! That made me chuckle. (I’ve had similar issues, not just here, but posting lengthy stuff only to see it evaporate or whatever happens to it.)
Sean H: I can only echo your thoughts. Rooney is doing something quite different to the usual carefully sculpted meh pieces. Plus, as you say, her background is quite different to the usual MFA graduate’s and I can imagine she’d be very mindful of replicating a certain brand of prose. This is not that.
For me, the murkiness of “Color & Light” was compelling. At the same time the mystery of the Pauline character was a tad too convenient. For example the incident with the bloody nose seemed more for effect than coming organically from that which preceded it. This is a powerful and talented writer. I look forward to more from her. In the case of this short story, it is very good but feels at the conclusion more of a tease than fully satisfaction.
The characters in this story could be those in Normal People, a sweet but emotionally blunted boy, a more sophisticated, sarcastic, wounded, sexually daredevil of a girl. Misunderstandings and miscommunication ensue. I think what attracts people to her work is her spare yet fresh voice, with withering, spot-on descriptions, and the view she provides into the inner workings of young people who grew up with smart phones. Don’t we all wonder what they think about when they’re not passively consuming media, and if and how they are fundamentally different to us? And, how these differences will affect the future? A disconnect from their emotions, which seem to pop up like foreign visitors to their dulled psyches, is one aspect that has also been demonstrated in other novels by Millennials. Rooney’s main characters, however, in her two novels, are meant to be brilliant, too smart for their environments, and even though their conversations don’t seem particularly smart or learned, at all, we have to take her word for it that they are unusual cases. That doesn’t seem to be the case in this short story, and I found it difficult to summon any interest in the two characters, who were neither flat nor round, besides the fact that Milliennials in fiction are a new breed of people, and novels written by and about them are what we are going to get more and more, for better or worse.
Summed up: Flat. I could find no reason to care about the characters, events, or setting. There were some decent lines, but overall it felt like the story just had nothing to say. The “sparse” style felt affected — its Zoloft-y emptiness plus the vagueness surrounding all story elements just made the piece a boring read with no thematic payoff. After finishing the first thing that popped into mind was: “So what?”