"even if you beat me" by sally rooney

on reading sally rooney’s entire bibliography and growing up in korea’s toxic academic culture

Feb 11, 2025

PRELUDE

I have to confess…

I’ve never read a Sally Rooney novel. I haven’t even watched Normal People streaming now on Hulu! Or Conversations with Friends starring Alison Oliver, Sasha Lane, Joe Alwyn, and Jemima Kirke also streaming now on Hulu!

It seems like everyone has hopped on the Sally Rooney train and I’ve simply chosen not to get on. Quite frankly, I wasn’t quite ready to feel emotionally devastated by Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar Jones. However, I’ve always been intrigued about her writing and rewatched this interview religiously of her talking about capitalism and how it impacts our modern day relationships with people, which honestly served me really well in college. Her ideas and the way she speaks about the topic really became the starting ground and basis of a lot of my essays, especially for my English lit classes. Thinking about how interpersonal relationships and characters are affected (or ultimately destroyed) by capitalism was totally my jam.

The other day I finally picked up a copy of Normal People and became really curious about how she got her start as a writer. I was really excited to hear that she got her Master’s in American Lit and started submitting essays and short stories online! (Which often means that I can find her essays and short stories online for free without spending more dough on books that will sit on my shelf for ages.) Thus I’ve decided that I’m going to be reading her essays, short stories, and poems before taking on the infamous Normal People.

“Even if You Beat Me” is an essay I’ve actually heard a lot about online. I didn’t know she was a competitive debater but knowing her perspective on Marxism, I was really curious to see how it would relate to her personal experiences or if it even would at all. This essay definitely did relate, and I was actually quite surprised how much I connected it to the story based on my personal experiences growing up in South Korea’s super toxic academic culture as well. More on that coming up…

These are the essays and short stories on my list (the ones I’ve been able to find online): “Even if You Beat Me,” “Concord 34,” “At the Clinic,” “An App to Cure My Fainting Spells,” “Robbie Brady’s astonishing late goal takes its place in our personal histories,” “Mr Salary,” “Color and Light,” and “Unread Messages.”

If you want to read the essay before reading this post you can check it out here on the Dublin Review! Let me know what you think of Rooney’s short story~

WORDS

Sally Rooney’s essay “Even if You Beat Me” reflects on her experiences as a competitive college debater. The story begins with a recounting of a bus accident in Chennai, India, where Rooney was attending the World Universities Debating Championship. The accident introduces us and leads us to her introspection on the insular and privileged world of international debating competitions.

Rooney describes her initial fascination with the debating community during her time in university, portraying a rigid environment where success equated to popularity. The older students at championships captivate her in their movements, presence, and manner of speech. However, as she climbed the ranks to become to number one college debater in Europe, she begins to grapple with the realization that her successes mean very little outside of the competitive debating sphere. Furthermore, she comes to terms with her own desperation to be liked and seen by others through “academic success” at any means necessary.

What struck me by the story was this “any means by necessary” mentality that reminded me of my time in a Korean international school and short stint on my Speech & Debate Team. Firstly, there is the sense of isolation. Not only is there a physical isolation due to the nature of competitions being so international and worldwide, but also the privileged bubble that is built for these debaters to not have to actually actively engage with the communities of the competition’s settings, such as the debaters’ disgust at the disillusionment that is presented by the bus breaking down in Chennai. But there’s a secondary distance between the debaters and the content of which they are discussing. She recounts a time where she wins a debate using information she knew was incorrect about Bosnia in front of a group of Serbian students. Rooney reckons with this immoral nature of the “game” that allows her to rely on her excellence in composure and stature to win by any means (even if it isn’t true). I felt this rang very true for my time in Debate where despite the overwhelming amount of information, data, resources, finding the truth or an effective, possible solution was not the answer so to speak. The way to win was to create a clear argument despite what you believed in and compose yourself in a certain manner.

Then, Rooney speaks to the unspoken sexism that lurks in debate. She notes how women are criticized for their tone and manner of speech much more than the men who instead are marked on the content of their arguments. In the world of competitive debate being able to deny any sort of vulnerability and maintaining control was rewarded. This begins to affect her on a personal level where she describes being unable to take any credit for her own wins and hard work, instead thanking her co-debaters or coaches for their help. Despite feeling uncomfortable by this kind of affirmation, she searches for a kind of validation and avoids this emptiness, choosing to continually join these competitions as a judge for a while before leaving it all behind for good.

Success doesn’t come from within; it’s given to you by other people, and other people can take it away. In part, this is why I stopped competing. I didn’t want to give up the feeling of flow, that perfect, self-eliminating focus, but I didn’t want to perform it for points any more. Academic life had presented me with much the same problem: I thought about things only as hard and as thoroughly as my grades required. Maybe I stopped debating to see if I could still think of things to say when there weren’t any prizes. To a greater or lesser extent, I am still working on that.

“Even if You Beat Me” explores the conflict between the allure of success and the search for genuine purpose and meaning. At a certain point she makes these amazing points that 1) participation in any kind of game gives you a new way of perceiving others (a method of ranking others and placing your own self-worth against others in a disingenuous way) and that 2) success doesn’t come from within its given to you by others and thus it can be given away at any point. What was it all for? Rooney recounts a time she won a small cash prize and a bottle of absinthe at a competition, feeling like the richest and most popular person in the world at that moment. Highlighting how in life popularity and wealth are assigned to trivial accolades and attached to arbitrary objects.

I was a little thrown off and confused by the end at first but Rooney ultimately emphasizes how it was her - her abilities, her skills, her commitment to the sport - that deserved to be recognized and didn’t have to give away the credit of her work or shy away from compliments. Although a small part of her started debating in search for validation, along the way she had to learn how to reclaim her own sense of self. I read this as a personal proclamation that this was all her own doing - to debate and to win - but also her own decision to ending this chapter of her life as well.

But I’m not nineteen anymore; I don’t need to make people feel comfortable. In the end, it was me. It may not mean anything to anyone else, but it doesn’t have to – that’s the point. I was number one. Like Fast Eddie, I’m the best there is. And even if you beat me, I’m still the best.

What did you think?

[banchan]

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