Book review: Notorious for her acerbic and roaming, restless prose, Lauren Oyler wields her pen as a sword and so is rather feared by writers under her scrutiny. Oyler’s reputation as a formidable critic was in large part established by her trenchant London Review of Books critique of acclaimed writer Jia Tolentino’s 2019 essay collection Trick Mirror. A reasonably regarded debut novel by Oyler, Fake Accounts, largely concerned with life on the internet, followed in 2021. An Oyler essay is considered indispensable by both fans and detractors – probably roughly equal in number depending on your algorithm.
The internet is stressed here solely because it is there that Oyler seems, primarily, to dwell. No Judgement, her debut collection of essays, comprises six pieces that examine the literary form of autofiction, anxiety, the reviews website Goodreads, the ethics of gossip, the rise of vulnerability as a cultural precept, and living as an American in Berlin. Although on the face of it each of these is a subject worthy of consideration, here they seem more concerned with Oyler herself: her gripes, grievances and selfhood appear inseparable from, if not actually overdetermined by, her life online.
That the pieces are therefore more aligned with the personal essay mode would be fine were the collection not pegged as criticism. “No judgement,” Oyler remarks in her introduction, is an oft-cited preface to a claim that produces, and derives from, its opposite: a “discursive shield”. We all make judgments despite our protestations otherwise, she writes.
She was prompted to write the book “from what I perceived to be misunderstandings and fallacies spreading in cultural criticism and commentary, and a resulting feeling that I must say something to attempt to intervene, as futile an endeavour as that may be”. This is reason alone to write a book, but there’s a problem. Oyler opens each essay with a promising premise and the gesture of an argument. But the essays, over 40-odd pages, rapidly disintegrate into various digressions and asides. It’s a shame, because Oyler has elsewhere shown a keen mind and acuity in turning out a very good sentence.
Essay collections remain in perennial demand; those from millennial women have enjoyed increasing popularity over the past decade in particular, and the question of what an essay ought to do remains at the forefront of any appraisal of its form. An essay should feel alive, searching and nimble in its inquiry; there should be the sense that the author is thinking on the page and leading both themselves and the reader into new domains of insight, knowledge and possibility. Oyler’s definition of an argument appears reducible to things that irk her for reasons fickle, pompous, lacking self-awareness and highly subjective while making largely unsubstantiated claims to objectivity.
The role of the critic, of which Oyler is no doubt keenly aware, includes remaining open to having their mind changed over the process of writing a text, showing this in their workings and, most notably, not being more interested in themselves than the object under scrutiny.
Gossip is a subject regularly debated online, including whether it is or is not a pastime rooted in a feminist ethos of undermining traditional networks of power – for example, the “whisper networks” of the #MeToo movement that brought down powerful men. In her essay, Oyler traces academic theories of gossip through to the history of the former media conglomerate Gawker, which helped usher in the era of (media) gossip as news rather than the news itself. People not worth gossiping about are boring, she declares. She doesn’t consider a) why anyone might today be interested in the history of Gawker in a book, and b) why people might actually view what remains of their privacy as a currency worth holding on to and find gossiping online tedious and idle.
In her essay on Goodreads, Oyler dispenses a cursory history of the star rating system, characterising those reviewers labouring for free as lamentable when compared with paid “professional critics”. She “finds the concept of plot oppressive”, among other declamations.
She does, however, prove insightful on the status of criticism as a form unremittingly under threat. As she does in elucidating her belief in the value of high art, of rigorous intellectual appraisal, of being well read and the importance of well-informed aesthetic judgments. But she takes far too long to get to the point and loses the reader with her facile tone, the unnecessary complexity of her prose notwithstanding.
In “Why Do You Live Here?”, Oyler details her life as an expat in Berlin, oddly enthralled by her status in the city and oddly proud that she’s not learnt German. She rues the fact that she has to make small talk with Germans outside bakeries. While tabulating the many reasons one might learn the language of one’s adopted country, she entirely misses the possibility that it might be a question of respect. This is, for Oyler, a fusty, old-fashioned virtue.
There are, of course, numerous moments of insight and genuine interest in No Judgement. Oyler is clever and quick-footed, having a sagacious grasp of language and technique. But she seems genuinely uninterested in the world beyond the screen. This is the fundamental problem of writing a book concerned with varieties of online discourse: by its nature, it is designed to pass with haste, and as such, rarely demands substantial (or otherwise) critique.
Any author’s stifling convictions, or careless dismissal of popular ideas and phenomena in the world, draw scepticism. One example is Oyler’s identification of “vulnerability” in contemporary culture and the requisite demand that it take primacy in our relationship with ourselves and others. There is a “tyranny” of vulnerability in emotional life, she writes. “When a society agrees en masse that it must dress up a bit of common sense, or a nice bit of Freud, as a newly revolutionary idea, something not very revolutionary at all is going on.” This is an interesting and salient subject and could, and should, invite thoughtful analysis, but Oyler instead provides a thin argument and, at times, ridicule, including toward those who might make genuine use of, say, the TED Talk of author Brené Brown.
In her essay on autofiction, Oyler thinks that the form, which predates social media, has come to dominate the literary landscape precisely because of its relationship to social media. It suggests we can construct prefigured knowledge of the author – including their politics – as expressed through their online persona and social media accounts.
Although the burden of proof is not accorded to authors of fiction, as it is non-fiction, the fictional “I”, Oyler suggests, “is always truer than it purports to be, and the non-fiction less”. Is this a pass Oyler has issued herself for her lack of seriousness throughout the book?
In essence, No Judgement amounts to a catalogue of dislikes lacking cogency and sincerity, leaving the reader wondering who, or what, all this is for.
But for writers and critics especially, the book is worth reading for the warnings it holds. It reveals the dangers of unchecked self-satisfaction shifting from one’s online life – where such a condition is nurtured and encouraged – to the pages of a book and mistaking one’s unsubstantiated opinion for fact, all the while ironically winking along.
