Mr Salary: another Rooney

Sally Rooney and her charm to normal people like us. I think her writing has simplicity, which becomes a special appeal, almost like negative space in photography. As you can expect from her writing, the sexual tension that she crafts hovers anxiously. It doesn’t come across as an electric feeling. Just sad sometimes.

Mr Salary is about a relationship that’s not an actual relationship (again, iconic Sally Rooney). This relationship is one-sided, where one person falls harder than the other person. Power dynamics, one person is more vulnerable than the other. That other person expresses aloofness but enjoys that one-sided attention without guilt, doesn’t initiate much but answers when prompted. Electra complex, unconventional dynamics, Freudian defenses, normal people. Intellectualization and repression. Judgment of everyone else that we dance around and drown in. Cancer cells that look fairly normal, but they are not.

Sally Rooney quotes from Mr Salary:

“Nathan’s physical closeness had a sedative effect on me, and as we moved from shop to shop, time skimmed past us like an ice skater.”

“Sexually I’m very warm and generous, I told my friends. It’s just the other stuff where the frigidity comes through.”

“I’m talking full-scale grief. Most 24-year-olds would leave behind a lot of mourners, that’s all I’m saying. With me it’s just you.”

“Nathan looked at me then as I knew he would. We were predictable to each other, like two halves of the same brain.”