(2025-06-01) Barnett Late Capitalism Flip Flops And Fictional Geniuses

Olivia Barnett on Late Capitalism, Flip Flops, and Fictional Geniuses. I have spent far too much time thinking about an achingly aggravating character in Sally Rooney’s new(ish) book: Intermezzo. I quite liked Normal People. I liked Conversations with Friends, too. Rooney’s characters are charmingly clumsy and real. The writing caught me, and the lives she created were engaging.

Intermezzo is a story about two estranged brothers. The older, Peter, is a serious, womanizing adult. The younger, Ivan, is an awkward, sensitive and difficult chess prodigy. They seem to genuinely dislike each other — though both feel guilty about this.

But I really want to talk about Ivan.

He triggers images of a Silicon Valley man-child. He’s never been very successful with women, but when he meets Margaret, he begins to bloom. She pulls out the tender, sensitive side of Ivan — he loves her. And he begins to share his worldview with her.

His stupid, stupid world view. This is the part I can’t seem to get over. Maybe it’s because this character is so common in today’s girlie books. The elevated, misunderstood main character who begins to drop, like precious nuggets of wisdom, his real ideas about the world. I don’t think it could be seen as anything but the author (Sally Rooney is quite open about viewing the world through a Marxist lens.)

Let’s get specific.

Ivan then begins an internal monologue:
“He happens to know that Darren ... works for a corporate law firm, earning a massive salary and contributing zero, literally nothing at all, to human civilization. ... How so ‘working’? Is this work, standing around uselessly in plastic flip-flops? ... Why can’t Ivan get paid for standing around, if all this money is just sloshing pointlessly through the economy...” (bullshit job)

Does corporate law contribute “literally nothing at all” to civilization? No. I won’t argue it’s all good. But corporate law creates stability. It lets companies collaborate safely. And coordination is a good thing.

I understand what constitutes work could be a philosophical question, but I actually think it is pretty simple: if someone will pay you to do it — or might eventually pay for the results of your efforts — then that is work. Whether that work is morally valuable — to you or to humankind — could be up for debate.

Sure, sometimes VC funding (in particular) seems like sloshing. But they’re not spraying money around completely irrationally — they’re making 100 bets hoping for one 1000x return. For law firms, too, budgets are made, headcount is tracked, someone is accountable. There’s a system. It’s not nonsense. (ah, the sweet innocence of youth; unaccountability machine, principal-agent problem)

Of course our protagonist works at a state-subsidized arts center. We couldn’t have it any other way! She is untouched by the marketplace. I’ll agree with you here, Sally Rooney, money does begin to take on a somewhat arbitrary meaning when the funder has unlimited funds. In the case of a tech company, the goal is to make a profit. If the company is planning on spending more than it makes, forever, it will likely fail

Ivan assures his lady that her work at the arts center has value to him. Which is good news for Margaret. If Ivan gets his way, we all just decide what’s valuable and make up a number.

Ok, if Ivan is meant to be a naive person, then I am fully missing the point of Intermezzo. If I am equating his own words with those of Sally Rooney’s too much then, mea culpa. But I find this hard to believe

Perhaps I am taking this romance novel too seriously? But this irks me.

You shouldn’t base your life or morals on what the economy deems important, but you should understand things are not completely random. There is order and purpose in the chaos. It is a stunning human achievement: millions of strangers growing wheat, refining metal, writing code — all so we can live. The market isn't sacred. But it is astonishing. And to write it off — to reduce it to sloshing numbers and feelings-based labor economics — its lazy and its lame.