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“Opening Theory”
by Sally Rooney
from the July 8 & 15, 2024 issue of The New Yorker
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[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”#003366″ hue=”” saturation=”” lightness=”” alpha=”” text_color=””]T[/fusion_dropcap]he third story in this year’s fiction issue of The New Yorker is Sally Rooney’s “Opening Theory.” This is actually a lengthy excerpt from her forthcoming novel Intermezzo, so I may end up skipping it in favor of just reading the book. But who knows — maybe I should read this to see if I want to read the book. Here is how this excerpt begins:
Ivan is standing on his own in the corner while the men from the chess club move the chairs and tables around. The men are saying things to one another like: Back a bit there, Tom. Mind yourself now. Alone, Ivan is standing, wanting to sit down but uncertain which of the chairs need to be rearranged still and which are in their correct places already. This uncertainty arises because the way in which the men are moving the furniture corresponds to no specific method Ivan has been able to discern. A familiar arrangement is slowly beginning to emerge—a central U shape composed of ten tables, with ten chairs along the outer rim of the shape, and a general seating area around the outside—but the process by which the men are reaching this arrangement seems haphazard. Standing on his own in the corner, Ivan thinks with no especially intense focus about the most efficient method of arranging, say, a random distribution of a given number of tables and chairs into the aforementioned shape. It’s something he has thought about before, while standing in other corners, watching other people move similar furniture around similar indoor spaces: the different approaches you could use, if you happened to be writing a computer program to maximize process efficiency. The accuracy of these particular men would be, Ivan thinks, pretty low, like actually very low.
Please feel free to comment with your thoughts below!
The other three stories in this week’s magazine have their own posts which I’ll link to here:
- “The Drummer Boy on Independence Day,” by E.L. Doctorow
- “Kaho,” by Haruki Murakami
- “The Hadal Zone,” by Annie Proulx
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No comments? I thought Salky Rooney had more fans than that!
I read _Normal People_ when it came out, liked it enough, but wasn’t excited enough to read more from her. What do readers here think of her other novels?
I read “Opening Theory” without knowing it’s an excerpt from her latest novel. I liked it well enough as a depiction of the psychology of an initial sexual encounter between 22 yrs old nerdy man with a 36 yrs old professional woman, Ivan and Margaret. I thought the dialog was well written.
The 3rd person narrator began by alternating pov between the two, then maybe a quarter of the way in abandoned Ivan’s pov for Margaret’s for the rest of the story—even though they were together, largely in conversation, most of that time. Apparently wanting to feature Margaret, I could understand the author wanting to give Ivan *some internal introduction, but it seemed wrong and unnecessary not to continue with both. Alternately, Rooney could have made it all from Margaret’s pov, revealing enough of Ivan from observation and dialog.
That’s until I learned it was an excerpt (Oh.) and read some reviews of _Internezzo_ . The novel appears to be primarily focused on Ivan and his brother Peter, with Margaret’s role presumably a much lesser part. One review called this episode with her “one of the great pleasures of this novel”. Really?! At 464 pages, I think I can pass.
With all the genuine short stories they must have to choose from, I do wish The New Yorker would refrain from excerpts.