Feminized Publishing

The darling of contemporary fiction, Sally Rooney, is also a Leftist political activist. This comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with the inner workings of the publishing industry. When Rooney refused to have her best-selling novel Normal People translated into Hebrew in 2021, she was voicing an opinion which was consistent with the (obviously autobiographical) opinions expressed in that very novel. Israel is a genocidal and illegitimate state, she believes, and the government of Gaza is justified in its murderous attacks against Israelis. This is a view she has restated alongside several other leading contemporary writers since October 7. Rooney believes that it is not only appropriate but dutiful for a fiction writer, and by extension an artist, to voice such views in the public square and in the fiction itself. Her most recent contribution to political discourse is her claim that America is ruining global ecology by failing to sufficiently cut back on carbon emissions, because of, well, capitalism. This is a claim which ignores the inconvenient fact that America’s use of fossil fuels is far more restrained that that of China (famously not a bastion of the political capitalism which Rooney decries).

Why has Rooney, whose prose is unexceptional at best (I include a judicious review of her latest effort, Intermezzo, which could be even harsher) become such a star? One reason for her continued celebrity is that publishing houses are gatekeepers and engineers of what society reads. By “society” I mean young women, who make up the vast majority of buyers of contemporary literature: while about 80% of staff in publishing houses are women (typically of the White Woke and Wealthy variety) and have been for at least the last decade, women account for about 80% of fiction sales. Harnessing the arena of fiction for Left-leaning political activism is not remotely controversial in the mainstream publishing institutions which sell bestsellers to young women, mutually reinforcing the kinds of politics which those women are likely to have. Rooney’s audience of young women are more likely to align with political complaints attacking the USA for being capitalistic, patriarchal, racist, etc., so it’s perfectly unsurprising that she continues to churn out tired woke talking points in order to please that audience. Alienating young male readers or any readers who are not particularly inclined to enjoy this kind of overt platitudinous virtue-signaling in contemporary fiction is not a concern for publishers like Faber, who helped to launch Rooney’s career.