the privilege of specialness
This Week in Reading
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
Conversations with Friends centers around Frances and Bobbi, ex-girlfriends turned best friends, in their third year of university. They perform poetry together, Frances the writer, Bobbi a natural star, sucking all of the air out of the room when she speaks. At a reading they befriend an older married couple— Melissa, a marginally famous photographer, and her husband Nick, a moderately successful actor. As they get pulled into Melissa and Nick’s sophisticated adult world, the two girls become enraptured— Bobbi with Melissa, and Frances with Nick, whom she begins to have an affair with.
It is a complicated situation, but it is not the extramarital affair that makes it so, or even the strange open relationship they enter when Melissa discovers it. Rather, it is the way that all of their relationships react and contort to each development. Frances and Nick’s affair may be the center of the novel, but the intimacy and jealousy, both platonic and romantic, that churns between her and Bobbi, is the heart of it.
Bobbi is special. Wickedly smart, stunning, she vibrates with life. Frances recognizes that other people can find Bobbi to be too intense, too abrasive, but it is obvious that Bobbi is someone that sends everyone else into orbit. When Frances reads the Bible, she pictures Bobbi as Jesus. Frances worries that she doesn’t have a real personality, feels constantly overshadowed by Bobbi’s beauty and vitality. She doesn’t seem to mind; Bobbi’s glow is so bright that Frances is happy to bask in its warmth. And while Frances sees herself as second chair to Bobbi’s brilliance, they are undeniably a unit, Bobbi and Frances, Frances and Bobbi.
Some people are just special. You know what I am talking about— I love all of my friends, but some of them have that extra sparkle. Being special isn’t the same thing as doing great things, or living a big life. Special people aren’t necessarily the most anything, they don’t have to be the smartest or prettiest or funniest person you know, but they have some kind of glow, some kind of warmth that pulls people in. Hollywood calls it the X-factor, the French call it je ne sais quoi. It is neither a skill nor an attitude. It can’t be learned; it is simply a resting state that is elevated slightly above the place that everyone else sits. It isn’t fair, but it is what it is. I have some friends that radiate specialness so hard it engulfs you in their presence. They draw people to them like a lantern— everyone seems to like them, people are constantly falling in love with them, giving them jobs.
I will admit, I have a touch of this. It is it’s own kind of privilege. People are exceptionally nice to me. They want to give me second chances, advocate on my behalf. Children are desperate to impress me. Hell, adults feel compelled to impress me. People like to be liked, and they like to be liked by me in particular. I often struggle when I try to find success along the regular avenues: dating apps, mass job applications, formal networking, etc. I tend to be an exception rather than the rule. Things that should not work, do, opportunities fall into my lap, people seem to take pleasure in helping me. I work hard and am smart or whatever, but my luck and successes feel separate from that, feel like a stroke of unearned kindness from the universe.
In the last section of the book, Bobbi calls Frances out, telling her “You think everyone you like is special. When you get to like someone, you make them feel like they’re different from everyone else. You are doing it with Nick, you did it with me once.” But of course, she is special. Bobbi is special, and Melissa is special, but Nick is not special. This is the main flaw of the novel— the central affair isn’t particularly dynamic. That is perhaps the point, though. Nick is handsome, and charming, and accommodating, but he isn’t magnetic. This is probably why he never quite made it as an actor. His own wife says as much in a scathing email to Frances: “I’m sure you find his total acquiescence charming now, but over the course of a marriage it actually becomes exhausting.” Nick isn’t special, but Frances projects her own specialness onto him. With him, it easier to see her own vibrancy, he allows her to see the way her own glow extends onto other people. It is one of the selfish truths of love: we love seeing the person we love happy, but moreover we love knowing that we have the power to manifest those feelings in another human being. And we cede that power back to them in turn, trust that they will use it only for good.
I probably should not have read this book at this exact moment in my life, it prodded at something swollen and raw inside of me. It was a very good novel that falls just short of great, but I couldn’t put it down, and it left me deeply shaken.
Studio-ing
For the last nine months I have been collecting photos of other people’s parking tickets. Seeing that someone else has a parking ticket triggers a strange mix of emotions. A part of you feels pity for the stranger— "poor fucker," you think to yourself. Another part of you, gleeful that it was them, not you, who will be paying $72 to the city of Los Angeles, wants to mock them. "Sucks to suck!" you crow to yourself. Empathy and vengeance, in equal measure-- nothing seems to better define human nature.
I made a book of the photos. It has two covers— one titled "Sucks to Suck" and the other titled "Poor Fucker." It can be read in either direction, but the content is identical whether you read it forwards or backwards.
You can see a full flip through of the book on my website.
If you want a copy of your own lemme know, they are $12 and I’ll ship it for free. (I also have a few copies left of Advice for Crying and I Have Already Died, if you are interested. Same price!)
Further Reading
Other books that were a little gay, that fucked me up in a tiny and profound way: Aquamarine by Carol Anshaw and The Blurry Years by Eleanor Kriseman.