The ‘brutal, bloodbath’ reviews of literary ‘it’ girl Lauren Oyler that sent the internet alight
A literary critic famous for her scathing reviews of well-known writers such as Roxane Gay and Sally Rooney has had a taste of her own medicine after her latest book got completely scorched in a viral review.
Lauren Oyler — the prominent American literary critic who also wrote a 2021 novel titled Fake Accounts — recently released her debut essay collection, No Judgment. Of course, the title is deliberately tongue-in-cheek. The impetus for No Judgment, Oyler writes in the introduction, came from a “growing agitation about 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 endeavor as that may be.” The collection of six essays concerns her opinions on gossip; the apparently unfair five-star rating system of Goodreads (where readers panned her novel, leaving it with an overall rating of 2.8); vulnerability and its place in journalism; Berlin (where she now lives, on and off); the concept of autofiction; and her own anxiety.
Oyler herself has been widely acclaimed as the “it girl” of literary critics. Her work — comprising largely negative reviews of popular books that critics had otherwise almost universally praised — has appeared in a number of prestigious publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times and Harper’s. Her review of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist on the now-defunct site Bookslut memorably included the line: “I have always hated Roxane Gay’s writing,” while her 5,000-word takedown of Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror allegedly crashed the London Review of Books website.
Oyler had, in other words, accrued quite a following by the time No Judgment was published. That’s why, when Bookforum published its own jaw-dropping review of the essay collection, written by Ann Manov, social media responded in a very big way.
“Much like Oyler’s debut novel, Fake Accounts, with its Women’s March plot, long meditations on social media trolls, and thirty-nine-page parody of Jenny Offill, No Judgment is already dated, even before its release,” writes Manov in the opening paragraph of Bookforum’s now-widely circulated review, which is making the rounds through literary circles online. And that’s just the beginning; indeed, it’s one of the kinder sentences. Manov claims that Oyler’s self-obsession prevents her from being able to meaningfully engage with any of her chosen subjects: “Practically all topics addressed in No Judgment lead back to Oyler.” And when Oyler does present a coherent opinion, Manov writes, it is all too often unexciting, unchallenging, and incapable of “ushering readers, or Oyler herself, into new territory, or new thought” — such as when Oyler proclaims, without examples, that Marvel movies are bad.
Oyler describes herself as “a snob, highbrow” and an “elitist” who enjoys “an unfamiliar vocabulary word” and can identify “a decent percentage” of a museum’s permanent collection by sight. There is some consternation online about whether such proclamations are intended to have been made in jest. In a recent sit-down with Interview magazine, Oyler claimed that she is not entirely serious when she claims such feats of intellectualism for herself; instead, she says, she is trolling the reader. Whether that argument is entirely believable is for the reader to decide. Manov tracks Oyler’s references through the internet and claims that most of the research for No Judgment came from the first link on Google or Wikipedia.
“Oyler clearly wishes to be a person who says brilliant things — the Renata Adler of looking at your phone a lot — but she lacks the curiosity that would permit her to do so,” Manov continues. The Venn diagram of people searching “Lauren Oyler” and “Renata Adler” on Google is actually a circle.
Niche corners of the internet immediately dubbed Manov’s take on No Judgment a “brutal bloodbath” and the “Mortal Kombat of book reviews.” There was a distinct air of glee about many who shared it. Some users on Reddit saw the panning of Oyler’s book as the natural consequence of her own scathing reviews. Others questioned whether Oyler is simply the latest victim of being “woman’d” (a phrase meaning when everyone stops liking a prominent female figure at the same time, coined by another rising “it girl” in the literary sphere, Rayne Fisher-Quann.)
Not all reviews of No Judgment were as negative as the Bookforum piece. Yes, the Washington Post did refer to Oyler’s debut collection as “predictable and facile” and “criticism as a lifestyle brand” under the devastating headline “Lauren Oyler thinks she’s better than you”. However, The Nation found it to be a lucid and contemporary take on the misgivings about the internet age, while the New York Times lauded some essays in No Judgment as ambitious and outstanding. And clearly, Oyler isn’t entirely surprised that her essay collection has caught the attention of other critics in the worst possible way. Speaking to Interview magazine, she says: “If I want people to pay attention to me, then I have to accept the unfortunate drawbacks of that situation.”
Much like any chronically online discourse that’s battered to death by literary snobs, it’s easy to ask the question: “Who cares?” Funnily enough, Who Cares was the originally mooted title for Oyler’s essay collection. At the start of her Bookforum review, Manov states that “perhaps that title should have been retained.” The sentiment was echoed in a widely-liked tweet as controversy raged on social media: “I got all the way to the last few bits of that Lauren Oyler interview mag piece and then I paused and said, aloud, ‘oh my god I don’t care’ and closed the tab.”
The irony of people flocking to read and share a takedown piece about a critic whose own takedown pieces went viral themselves isn’t lost on many. Indeed, Manov has now simply become another name in a cycle of literary acerbity. One biblical proverb tells us: “Live by the sword, die by the sword.” One former “it” girl — Heidi Montag — once said: “Congratulations to anyone who has ever written a book.” Oyler might do well to ruminate on the sentiments of both.
