Pure enthusiasm

Two recent much-discussed-on-the-internet pieces make interesting points of comparison to On Shirley Hazzard: Soraya Roberts on Fiona Apple and Ella Cory-Wright on Sally Rooney. De Kretser’s book is proof that it’s possible to write thoughtfully on a subject you’ve already determined you love. Roberts and Cory-Wright’s essays show that the inverse—to begin from a point of disinterest or even disdain—is more challenging.

Cory-Wright begins by noting her initial resistance to reading Sally Rooney’s novels. When she finally does, she is surprised: “I didn’t like them—in fact, I didn’t think they were very good at all.” This sense of bewilderment strikes me as disingenuous. The author has admitted her envy of Rooney, her contemporary, and this feels perfectly valid: Rooney’s success would of course rankle an aspiring writer. Cory-Wright’s error is not in disliking Rooney’s novels or Rooney herself but in imagining her own jealousy a subject worthy of deeper investigation.
There might be something interesting in a critic probing the nature of their own subjectivity. The author here does not get very far, however. “Rooney never asked for literary snobs like me writing pieces like this,” she writes, which misunderstands altogether the relationship between artist and critic, a symbiotic one whether either party likes it or not. Cory-Wright half-heartedly attempts to reckon with Rooney’s language but later admits: “We’re no longer reacting to the text. We’re reacting to the publicity, the thinkpieces, the tweets, the dinner party badinage.” It doesn’t have to be this way. While it’s true that Rooney has been the focus of a lot of publicity, and half-baked essays, and tweets both piqued and admiring, her work has also been evaluated on its own merits by critics.
If that group has reached consensus (worth noting: They haven’t!), that doesn’t mean the work under discussion is therefore good, merely that it’s been warmly reviewed. This is the crux of my riposte to Roberts’s essay on her dislike for Fiona Apple’s recent Fetch the Bolt Cutters, rapturous reviews notwithstanding. The opening bars make her think: “I am not listening to that experimental shit,” which is fine, but she, like Cory-Wright, seems so dismayed by her own opinion that she has to write about it: “In normal times, having the dissenting opinion is a point of pride. In pandemic times, where all you want is to not be alone, it’s a cause for concern.”
Is it? I don’t disagree that sometimes dissenting opinions are informed by the pleasure of declaring yourself an iconoclast, but I think it’s absurd to posit an inability to like something popular as some sort of problem. Roberts should trust herself and her taste more. No one is required to like Fiona Apple or Sally Rooney or anything else.
Roberts seems to want a criticism of explication, one that can guide her toward appreciation for Apple’s record. She laments that “critics didn’t seem too concerned about inviting me in,” noting of a review that cited Yoko Ono, Steve Reich, and Meredith Monk as touchstones, “That isn’t critical analysis, it’s critical flexing.” I reject the idea that criticism with some intellectual rigor is interested in one-upmanship instead of illumination. I think critics operate in good faith. Roberts worries that going against critical consensus “suggested I was missing some substantial sliver of intellect.” I hardly think that’s true. For what it’s worth, I liked Fiona Apple’s album.

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—Rumaan Alam, Contributing Editor