two types of intelligence (according to sally rooney)

& a new year's resolution

So I finally read Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends, and it had me thinking about two forms of intelligence: that of the debater (Bobbi) vs the poet (Frances).

In the book, Bobbi has a sparkling rhetorical intelligence that she loves to show off in conversation. She’ll extemporize dazzling arguments about everything from polyamory to Palestine, referencing niche philosophers and political news. Sometimes she’ll advocate for some fun provocative argument, purely for the sake of stretching and showing off her brain.

Bobbi is a force of nature, but she’s also remarkably disconnected from reality. She offers up theories but doesn’t always believe them. She tries to twist her own and others’ emotions and relationships to fit her intellectualized ideas of what they should be, rather than using her intelligence to try to understand what they organically happen to be. Indeed, Frances finds it consistently difficult to confide in Bobbi about her feelings, because Bobbi’s default reaction to messy situations is to judge rather than to empathize.

Frances, on the other hand, is a poet. Though Frances tends to stay quiet in conversation, she writes brilliantly—producing award-winning poems by “[typing] on my computer, hitting the enter key whenever I felt like it.” (Meanwhile, Bobbi cannot write at all.)

Frances’s form of intelligence recognizes and synthesizes contradictory parts of reality. As a poet, she doesn’t necessarily label or judge things; she primarily captures and describes the world and her reactions to it.

The book opens with Frances clearly insecure about her own intelligence (and looks) relative to Bobbi’s. And honestly, I can empathize: I spent much of high school aspiring to be a better debater, idolizing the debate captains who were quick-thinking and effortlessly articulate.

But as the book progresses, Frances detaches from Bobbi and leans more into her natural ability to hold multiple contradictory truths without needing to fit everything into boxes. She leans into her bisexuality, sleeping with a man for the first time. That man is married, and she learns to accept that love is not black and white: he can love her and also love his wife; she can also love and sleep with both him and Bobbi. Sure, Bobbi delivers a brilliant monologue on polyamory that leaves the friend group speechless—but Frances is the one who’s experientially untangling its complexities.

Similarly, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gravitated away from debating and toward writing. I read less philosophy (subjective theories about specific abstract things) and more history (which illustrates how philosophies have actually unfolded over time). I hang out with fewer academics and more business owners (whose theories are constantly stress-tested by the market).

In line with this theme of getting closer to the world: my goal for 2025 is to do less theorizing in my head, and send more thoughts out into the world. For the next 8 weeks, I’ll be posting long-form posts every Sunday and short notes every day!