Sally Rooney, John Green, and making people more annoying
Both of these authors have been hugely successful, and I don’t begrudge them that. But in each of their stories there are consistencies that, I would argue, have damaged society.
TW: discussions of mental illness including brief references to eating disorders and suicide.
Sally Rooney is one of the most successful authors writing in English, with bookshops dedicating tables to her three novels, two of her books adapted for television, and hoards of fans always ready to praise her work. Of her work, I have read Normal People. In fact, I’ve read it twice — it was on the reading lists of two modules I took at university. I did not enjoy it either time.
John Green is an author of primarily young adult fiction, and was a major figure in shaping the market for many years. His novels The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns were both taken to the big screen, and if you hadn’t read at least one of his books (or at the minimum seen the film versions) then you were completely out of step with the zeitgeist in the early 2010s.
Both of these authors have been hugely successful, and I don’t begrudge them that. But in each of their stories there are consistencies that, I would argue, have damaged society. By which I mean they have made people more annoying.
The two major issues I take with Rooney and Green are their portrayals of mental illness and intellectualism, something which the latter has been far more criticised for in recent years — likely due to how easy it is to dismiss literature on the basis of its target audience. Rooney, however, has so far avoided similar flak (in the mainstream, at least), despite the glaring similarities between the two’s work.
Both tend to follow one or two characters who are simply different to their peers. In the words of Jughead From Riverdale, they’re weird. They’re weirdos. They don’t fit in and, more often than not, they don’t want to fit in. While they may lament their outsider status at times, they love the exclusivity. By not following the crowd they mark themselves out both as the protagonist of the novel and somehow superior to others, something which is often shown through a form of intellectualism and cultural capital. In Normal People, people throw out cultural and literary references and are generally ‘artsy people’. In, well, every John Green novel the main character is quirky and different, with some fun little hobby that sets them apart from their peers. No one speaks as real teenagers do, but rather in some amplified, pretentious way that is at once completely unbelievable and something that readers (and other writers) truly aspired to emulate when Green’s books were at their peak popularity.
The fact that Rooney and Green’s characters are intelligent and quick-witted, good with biting remarks and deadpan commentary, is not the issue; it’s that they’re so painfully snobbish about it. It might come as a surprise, but you can read the classics and not listen to pop music without constantly making reference to that fact. Characters seem to be following the tree-falling-in-a-forest principle. If you read Tolstoy and don’t tell anyone about it, have you really read it? These aren’t people you’d want to be friends with, no matter how magnetically they’re described. They’re the people who corner you at a party and talk exclusively about themselves as you down your drink and look desperately for an escape route.
As we are consistency reminded, these characters are flawed. They’ve got issues. Which leads on to my next gripe with these authors — their depictions of mental illness, and the way in which it becomes an overwhelming character trait.
I’ll admit that Green is a worse offender than Rooney in this department. Normal People dedicates a lot of page space to both Connell and Marianne’s less-than-ideal mental states, and even throws in a few references to suicide and eating disorders to let us know that this is a serious book about serious issues. Yet even these are given little real consideration. Marianne’s eating disorder is hinted at in passing, and is referenced only as she nibbles at a lemon danish. Similarly, Connell’s depression briefly lifts as he rediscovers the wonder of writing. This is seen consistently in Rooney’s novel, with mental illness another way for her to make grander points about capitalism and neoliberalism. These are things that should be talked about, of course, but it makes her characters’ problems ring somewhat hollow in the face of her bigger picture.
But, as I say, John Green’s presentations of mental illness are significantly more abrasive. I don’t believe that Green set out with the intention of making mental illness a fun personality trait, or a sign of being a kooky outsider. From everything I’ve seen about the guy he seems perfectly nice, and he’s discussed at length his own struggles with mental illness. Yet his characters’ mental health issues often take up the majority of their personalities, and are used to excuse any dodgy behaviour on their part. The most egregious example of this is Turtles All The Way Down, the book that made me never pick up a John Green novel again. The protagonist, Aza, is a deeply annoying 16-year-old whose stupid actions and bad decisions are all excused (by her and others) with the fact that she has OCD. I don’t want to come across as one of those puritans who think that media has to be all good all the time with no conflicts of ambiguity, but this is a terrible message to send to the young target audience. Mental illness isn’t a free pass to be a bad person! I recall almost yelling this aloud before writing a (if I may say so myself) scathing review of the novel for my college magazine.
The takeaway from these depictions of mental illness is that it’s an inconvenience, but one that makes you stand out from the crowd. These characters are like kittens who’ve fallen into the bath; soggy, unhappy, but ultimately endearing. Suffering is aestheticised (to varying degrees) and made into a waif-core, hashtag-relateable passage that will be quoted across the internet, held up as something that marks you out as interesting and complex rather than a person who’s genuinely struggling. By trivialising mental illness, using it as a plot device or a way to make a character stand out, people in the real world overuse mental health terminology, pathologising their every action and deeming it a ‘symptom’. Rooney and Green aren’t the main, or only, contributors to this, of course — turning mental illness into a trend is something that’s been going on for years, and seems to rear its head on every teen-led social media platform from Tumblr (evil) to TikTok (diabolical). But they’re certainly not helping the issue.
Green’s novels were the basis for the homogenous blob of young adult literature for a few years, with covers and plots taking inspiration from his wild success. As a result, more and more books featuring characters with shoddily-written mental health conditions and affected tastes ran rampant across bestseller and C-lists alike. And it’s just the same with Rooney’s books. How many promotion tables feature books that are either similarly titled, designed, or plotted to Normal People or Conversations With Friends? Comp lists are nothing new, but the examples of these authors show how damaging they can be in the real world.
Without wanting to sound too harsh, the presentations of ‘intellectualism’ and mental health issues in these novels, with consideration to the fairly young audiences they are aimed at, have made people more annoying as they try to emulate these popular character types. I said earlier that I’m not a moral media purist, but maybe I am — maybe there should be less annoying people framed as sympathetic protagonists. I don’t care if you quote Camus and take antidepressants, it’s not a substitute for a personality on or off the page.
Disclaimer: I am not criticising anyone who enjoys either author’s work! Not am I making light of anyone’s mental health issues. This is just my opinion on how the authors and their novels frame them, and how I personally reacted to them.