Sally Rooney is a young Marxist novelist from Ireland, the author of Conversations with Friends, a celebrated debut novel. She has just published a second novel, Normal People, and already it’s a bestseller. Both are being adapted for the big screen. Rooney is among the most successful millennial novelists, and so, the New York Times explains, her characters “are skeptical of the ability of markets to provide people with a decent life.” They also “view human relationships—especially sex—as deeply political.” Rooney’s parents were socialists and frequently repeated Marx’s slogan “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (the Times inserts the ungrammatical “their” for “his”), and Rooney holds to the dictum still.
We’ll take the Times’s word for it that Rooney and her fellow millennials consider sex “deeply political,” but the part about her skepticism of markets makes us wonder: Will her newfound wealth cause her to reconsider her espousal of Marxism? If not, we assume her agent will get the accustomed 15 percent of her book and movie deals—and the rest will go to the poor.
