From Rowling to Rooney - Fame in Fiction

WHAT CAUSES AUTHORS TO BECOME ICONS

The hype machine around the release of Sally Rooney’s new novel, Intermezzo, has been…interesting. Like any star in any industry, Rooney has her superfans who absolutely love anything she releases and she no doubt has her detractors. It’s love or hate with Rooney, but with over 3 million books sold since her 2017 debut, she is one of the most prominent and popular authors of the decade. 

My question is why? 

What makes Sally Rooney and some authors so popular? And what makes other authors less popular? Let’s take an analytical look at any cultural signals or cues that can explain popularity in publishing. 

I’m going to timebox this argument to the beginning of the 21st century. By 2000, we were at book number four in the Harry Potter series. Movies have already been made and JK Rowling has transcended publishing to become a cultural icon, but she wasn’t the only star. 

In 2003, Stephanie Meyer wakes up from a dream that she retells in book form. She calls it Twilight and that series goes on to sell over 160 million copies to date (first book was published in 2005). It was also in this decade that we got The Hunger Games (2008). Not only did Suzanne Collins’ YA novel sell over 100 million copies, it also broke records at the box office and became a cultural reference point for wealth and the ills of capitalism. 

The latter part of that sentence is what intrigues me. Was timing the key? From a cultural perspective, 2008 was the global financial crisis. The young adults Collins was writing to would’ve been keenly aware of a failing financial system and capitalism's role in that failure. From a publishing perspective, the industry was looking for another hit. Twilight and Harry Potter were running their course and it was about time for a new obsession. The timing couldn’t have been better for Hunger Games. 

Timing is one possibility, but I think that’s too narrow. No doubt publishers had manuscripts in their possession that spoke to the times and were strong enough to be bestsellers, but nothing captured the imagination of readers quite like Katniss and Peeta. 

So if it’s not solely the timing, what else could be an indicator? Could the quality of the writing also be a reason for popularity? Or maybe genre paired with the quality of writing? 

If you look at the books that I’ve mentioned so far, all of them have a fantastical or dystopian element to them. These books pull readers out of real life and push their imaginations to new worlds and possibilities. But they do that while still keeping core, human emotions and societal issues as the base of their stories. Twilight is essentially a love story but with vampires and werewolves, Harry Potter has wizards and magic but details themes of death while Hunger Games imagines a society that would give Shirley Jackson chills with a backdrop of inequality and toxic capitalism.  

But genre and quality of writing alone can’t be it. Yes, the authors of these novels share a simple and reletable writing style. The characters are nuanced without being overly complex and the stories are relatively simple to follow. JK Rowling, specifically, leans on some of the storytelling tactics from past authors. The relationship between Harry Potter and his aunt connects all the way back to Hard Times by Dickens. The Worst Witch series by Jill Murphy has a similar boarding school setting and The Sword In The Stone by T.H White tells the story of a child king under the tutelage of a wizard. 

So yes, quality of writing is definitely a thing, but I can’t say the same for genre. Because the other bestsellers of the first decade of the 2000s were anything but fantasy. The beginning of this century also blessed us with two of the most brilliant authors I’ve ever read. Khaled Hosseini and his two forever classics, Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, and in a similar time frame, Jhumpa Lahiri gave us Interpreter of Maladies and Namesake. 

As sophisticated, introspective and the furthest thing from fantasy as these books were, they also sold in the tens of millions. Kite Runner alone has sold over 40 million copies and Interpreter of Maladies won a Pullitzer and has sold over 15 million copies to date. 

Stepping into the 2010s, it’s the decade of 50 Shades Of Grey. I remember working at Indigo (major book store in Canada) in 2013 or so. We had about four shelves dedicated to 50 Shades and we restocked them daily. That series has sold over 165 million copies and has become the decade’s bestseller. And let’s not forget about Gone Girl. Gillian Flynn created a nuanced thriller that has been replicated (or attempted to be replicated) a countless number of  times.  

Okay, books are one thing, but they have a life of their own. Is there something that separates authors, specifically, distinct from the books they create? To answer this question, I think Sally Rooney is a strong reference point because she seems to be building cultural capital in the same way Stephen King and JK Rowling have.

Photo by Teodora Constantinescu on Unsplash

What I mean by that is that her name and identity, separate from her books, has been forming its own brand. Her name recognition is on the rise more profoundly than most if not all authors of the day. How am I measuring that? By a few factors. 

First, the views in her interviews. By and large, author interviews don’t do well on YouTube. Even popular authors don’t receive tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of views; certainly newer authors don’t. But that’s not the case with Rooney. She commands attention in a way that is, or will be, comparable to Brandon Sanderson. And if you know the type of work Sanderson has put into his readership, this is really saying a lot. 

I also measure Rooney’s cultural capital by her appearance or mention in conversations, both online and off. I spoke to a group of 300 high school students over two days and the mention of Rooney’s name caused a stir each time. It’s also difficult not to see her mentioned in publishing and cultural forums online. She has become intriguing and her stature in popular culture will soon rival the popularity of her novels. 

But why? Why has Rooney’s name built this cultural capital and recognition that someone like Jhumpa Lahiri or even Gillian Flynn has not? 

The most immediate curiosity that comes to mind is Rooney’s political views. Rooney is a self-declared Marxist, which essentially means she supports a socialist society (yes, it’s more nuanced than that, but this definition works with how people generally view Marxism). There have already been countless pieces discussing this point of interest. Rooney herself doesn’t shy away from the topic. She’s open about the discourse and her conflicting role as a profit making author supporting a system she opposes. 

This ongoing discussion about Rooney’s politics adds a layer of allure to her character, but we’ve seen politically outspoken authors before. James Baldwin, Virginia Woolfe, and Jean-Paul Satyre come to mind. Slightly more contemporary, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood are known for planting political and societal messages in their novels. Both of these authors also command strong name recognition, but Rooney seems to be on a path to eclipse them both when it comes to popularity. 

So what else can it be? What really intrigues me is history and community. Rooney is part of a millennia long tradition of Irish writing and literature. She is not writing in isolation. Rather, Rooney is the latest stand out among her historical and contemporary Irish author peers, and that literary lineage contributes to her current status as the voice of a generation. 

My personal introduction to contemporary Irish literature came rather late. I read Milkman by Anna Burns in 2018 and felt like I was in another universe. The writing style, the language, the voice, the humour, the sharpness — it felt invigorating for me. But the history of Irish literature goes back far longer than my introduction. 

We can take Irish literature back to the 8th century (even further, but I’m choosing to start here) with The Voyage of Bran. In this epic, Bran is the hero on a journey to the Otherworld being led by a strange guide. More famously, the 19th century is when James Joyce comes to prominence and gives us Ulysses, one of literature's classic titles. Ireland then gives us Samuel Beckett and Anne Enright, two more authors who shaped the country’s literary canon. 

Today, Rooney may be the star, but she’s not the lone standout. Megan Nolan, Michael Magee, Naoise Dolan, Nicole Flattery, Louise Kennedy, and Susannah Dickey are all producing fantastic pieces of writing. The fact that all of the authors are writing at the same time points to another cultural cue that helps authors become popular. 

I can’t help but think of the writers of the Romantic era. Keats, Mary Shelley, Wordsworth, Byron, Poe, Coleridge, Walter Scott were all writing in community at the same time. And whether or not they saw themselves in competition, the mere existence of each other and their writing meant they were in the constant presence of greatness. That type of exposure forces you as an author to push yourself further than you think your creativity can handle. 

This type of community also reminds me of the 80s art movement in New York. This is the era where Jean Michel Basquiat was the Sally Rooney, but Keith Haring and Jeff Koons and many more were producing equally compelling art. The art they created spoke to the times, specifically how the political and social climate was impacting New York City. The city was recovering from bankruptcy, crime rates were high, and President Ronald Reagan was doing Ronald Reagan things. 

I think all of this is what is making Rooney rise to the top. She’s captured something in her novels that speak to the times in a subtle but clear language. Status, privilege, power — these are all themes cleverly woven through all of Rooney’s titles, but masked in simple stories of love and friendship. There are no wizards or witches in her novels, but the storytelling is equally as magical and adds commentary to our present societal structures. In a world that feels collectively chaotic, Rooney’s titles speak to the need for order. Normal People, Conversations With Friends, Beautiful World Where Are You - her titles alone feel average, peaceful, all things that feel absent from the doomsday rhetoric of the dominating online conversations. 

When you pair that with her unique political position, her (seemingly) outgoing personality, the fact that she is writing in community with other great writers connected to a region with a historical tradition of compelling literature, it becomes more clear to see why Rooney is having her moment right now. 

But I’m always interested in what you think. Why do you think Sally Rooney and other authors stand out from their peers who are also writing captivating literature?