Sally Rooney and the Argument for Imperfect Prose

Present progressive defender till I die

If you've ever been in a writing workshop or, hell, a high school English class, you'll know that the present progressive tense is basically a cardinal sin. I can't count the number of times I’ve submitted a piece with the line “she is standing” only to have it returned crossed out with the correction “she STOOD” written above it in scratchy red pen. This rule is generally accepted, and realistically, it exists for a reason. The present progressive can lead to awkward turns of phrase and a heavy reliance on weaker, uninteresting “to be” verbs—especially in amateur work—but there comes a point in every workshop when a student finally raises their hand and asks: “What about Rooney?”

International best-selling author Sally Rooney loves the present progressive. Her characters are constantly standing, walking, sitting, thinking. It's a distinguishing aspect of her writing style and, well, look at how well she's doing. From having a novel nominated for the 2018 Man Booker prize, to being named one of the Times’s hundred most influential people at the age of thirty-one, Rooney could be considered the epitome of modern-day literary success.

When the question came up in my writing workshop, my teacher admitted that she had never heard of her. To be fair, Rooney’s target demographic does tend to lean towards emotionally unstable women in their twenties, and I suspect that my teacher doesn't frequent Booktok, but upon our explanation of Rooney’s detached, omniscient, present progressive-laden style, she said, "Well, there are lots of popular, poorly-written novels like that. I call them airport books."

This statement was, of course, met by gasps from my class. International bestseller Normal People? An “airport book”? My teacher clarified that she didn't know whether Rooney herself wrote airport books, but the point was that bad books become bestsellers all the time.

The exchange led me to wonder who gets to define whether a book is written well. Before I started university, I loved how Rooney used the present progressive to conjure a distant, almost translucent voice, and only learned it was “wrong” in the classroom. I wasn't the only one to fall in love with her style—her novels have amassed an almost cult-like reader base.

Though Rooney has garnered critical attention, a box still seems to exist around her novels, preventing the more academic literary community from accepting them the way the general public has. One reviewer, Brandon Taylor, critiques multiple aspects of Rooney's novels—some of which I am inclined to agree with. However, I'm most interested in their critique of Rooney’s prose. They write, “There are writers—Sally Rooney perhaps chief among them—about whom it is said with a gleeful delirium, “They don’t have an MFA!” In response, I’ve started to think, after having read a handful of novels by people like this, “Yeah, you can tell.””

This is where we get into that academic sense of superiority, of technical perfection. Taylor goes on to suggest that Rooney’s writing is lacking in proficiency. They explain, “It’s always bothered me that Rooney deploys present progressive when she should deploy simple present.” They add, “From a technique perspective, the novels feel like drafts, filled with the sorts of tics, bad habits, and dead prose that hopefully get ironed out by an editor or, dare I say, a workshop.”

As with anything, there are arguments to be made against Rooney's novels—most notably, her thin, waif-like, "eats half a muffin and throws out the rest" female main characters—but it's clear that her prose isn't one of them. At least, not for readers. This split of opinion between the general public and the literary community is most notable on the Times’s recent “100 Best Books of the Century” lists. When the first list came out, all selected by prominent literary figures, Rooney’s novels were nowhere to be seen. However, when the reader-selected list came out, there she was at number 27.

So what does all this mean? That we toss technique out the window and hail the present progressive as our king? Not necessarily. Like I said, the rules exist for a reason, especially for young, budding writers still figuring out their footing. However, the reception of Rooney’s writing suggests that the rules of literature may not be as clearly cut as we'd like to think they are. It raises a significant question for us as writers—the novelists, but also the essayists, the poets—who are our words for? Our readers or our critics?

Thanks for reading Trina Keeps Trying! You can find my other posts here, and you can read my poetry here. You can also subscribe to receive written works, made with love, straight to your mailbox every week.