Lauren Oyler Knows Her Image
With her new book of essays No Judgement, Lauren Oyler explores a culture of optics
In her latest book No Judgement, critic Lauren Oyler is concerned about optics. In the six essay collections of critical and personal essays, the throughline of all the subjects she covers – the utility of gossip, literary criticism in the age of Goodreads, the cult of vulnerability, being a German expat, autofiction — is about the crafting of a public image. It’s a subject that Oyler herself has been familiar with in her decade-long career. There are many people who view the writer as the sharpest critic of her generation with her searing reviews on literary titans like Jia Tolentino, Roxane Gay, and more. For other people, she’s a writer too high off her own supply, a contrarian posing as a savant.
I spoke with Lauren Oyler in early March about No Judgement and about her reputation as a critic.
The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
You start No Judgement off with an essay about gossip and its role in society – both negative and positive. What gravitated you to that topic?
I worked for Broadly and I noticed a lot of trends in feminist media, in particular probably around the time that the #MeToo movement happened. I sort of noticed everybody was really talking a lot about gossip and was basically like “gossip's good,” this kind of a contrarian take where it's like: actually, everybody said this was bad, but that was sexism and in fact, it's good. Like women need gossip.
And I was sort of noticing people talk a lot about gossip as if it was 100 percent always a good thing. So I started thinking about gossip more broadly. I sort of had a lot of my twenties working in the media in New York City. I was thinking a lot about Gawker whose tagline used to be: “Today's gossip is tomorrow's news” and was sort of unapologetic about using gossip as a tool for their reporting. So I was thinking: I wonder if I can make a link between Gawker and the #MeToo movement?
And from there, I sort of did some research and found actually, it's a quite clear line from Gawker to the #MeToo movement to sort of like the “Fake News” Trump era moment. I define gossip in the book as a story – or a set of stories – that is presumed to be mostly true but has not been verified. So you use your reporting skills to figure out the truth. And so obviously there's gonna be a relationship between the media and gossip. So basically that essay was sort of a very recent history of the media told through the lens of gossip.
You yourself have been the subject of petty chatter throughout your career due to your writing. Do you like the idea of being polarizing?
That's interesting. I mean no, it's not my primary goal. If we're being honest, I'd prefer everyone to be like: “Lauren's the best.” “I love Lauren.” “She's amazing.” “Let's give her a million dollars.” That would be the ideal situation.
People make a lot of assumptions about me that I can sort of make work. Like people assume that I'm like, really mean. So then I meet them and they're like “You're really, really nice” and I'm like “Oh, thanks!” That is definitely better than like everyone thought you were really nice because you're pretending to be nice on Instagram and actually you're a huge bitch, right? That's much worse. And then everybody's sort of secretly talking about how you're like a real asshole and like you don't tip at restaurants and stuff like that is way worse.
But I also think, for better or for worse, I'm not willing to lie or be dishonest in my writing, and because of the way that this sort of media works and the way that social media works a lot of people are just not going to like that. There are all sorts of assumptions and misconceptions that go into them not liking that. But if my priority is being honest, which it is, then I just have to accept that, yes, it's going to be polarizing. And the happy other side of polarizing is some people hate you, but some people really like you, and some people really appreciate your work. And so that's very fulfilling and encouraging always.
Your essay “My Perfect Opinions” reminded me of when Pitchfork re-rated a bunch of their previously low-rated album reviews a few years ago and how that was the beginning of when I began to question the utility of the rating system. What made you look into that?
I was thinking about Goodreads and I tried to talk to people at Goodreads and they basically were really hard to get ahold of and they didn't really want to talk to journalists. Then I talked to a friend of a friend, Adam Dalva, who's the beginning anecdote in that piece. Adam Dalva had basically gamed the Goodreads algorithm 'cause he was like “I wanna be the top critic on Goodreads.” He came up with a system to do that and a lot of it had to do with the star rating and strategizing what kinds of books you're gonna give star ratings to. This was nice because it was concrete evidence that all this stuff is sort of bullshit.
I was like where does this come from? I started looking it up and this history is super fascinating. It comes from the beginning of travel guidebooks at the turn of the 19th century in England when the middle classes, the bourgeoisie were traveling more farther distances, and unlike aristocrats, they weren't traveling for many months at a time. They only had a certain amount of time to see Italy or wherever they were going. So this woman, Mariana Stark, devised a rating system where she could basically help you prioritize what sculptures and things you're going to go see on this trip. It's just a standard guidebook that we all recognize now.
Learning that history, I was like oh actually there's an argument to be made here about class.
It's the same with all works of art that are using a star rating. It's like, I can only read one book a month. I'm going to want to get the best book that I can because it's not that much time to read.
And so I just sort of tried to tease out this conversation and historicize it a bit which I found to be quite fun and just try to understand why everybody cares so much about Goodreads and I hope I sort of like explained that, I guess.
It's also interesting to think about the way that criticism has been reduced to a sort of endpoint of a discussion rather than a further contribution to one. You said that as an writer yourself that you would love to go back and forth with the critics cordially, but that historically has never been how criticism works.
Part of that idea that you shouldn't reply to your critics is purely strategy. It's like, if you're a debut author, you want to sell books, you're not famous so you don't know if you're going to sell lots of books.
Also, there's a PR situation too, where generally speaking, you don't want to draw attention to a negative review. You want to draw attention to a positive review and you want to pretend like the negative reviews don't exist so that.
But I just don't want to live in a world where all cultural production is happening through the lens of PR or what sells. Also, nobody knows what sells. Controversy sells. Drama sells as well. If you can have an even fight between an artist and a critic and people pick sides, maybe everybody wins.
I just made a radical maneuver or like put my money where my mouth was the other day.
Cause I got this quite bizarre review of this No Judgment in The Guardian in which the critic suggested that I wasn't tall. She called me a “poor little squirrel.” It was just sort of an offensive review that I did purposefully draw attention to and I felt like I didn't have that much to lose by arguing. I wasn't arguing with her. I wasn't going to send a letter to the editor. I just sort of tweeted.
I wouldn't do that with every review. I'm not going to bicker with somebody because they think, I don't know like my Goodreads essay is too long. I'm not going to like dispute that online, but if you call me a poor little squirrel, yeah, you better, you know, you should be ready to fucking fight. I grew up in West Virginia. I know how to fight.
You write an essay about autofiction, and I wonder how much autofiction is about an author just wanting to mythologize themselves. Because we think about, for example, the celebrity memoir as a classic way for celebrities to further their narratives, but a celebrity in and of itself is already this mythmaking machine, whereas authors even, some who might be famous, don't have that sort of machine to create this image of themselves.
I find that a lot of writers really want to be writers. Autofiction is obviously a great vehicle like it's writing something about being a writer is one definition of it. I think if you did want to have a kind of myth-making project then that would be a good way to do it. But the thing is I think some of the worst auto fiction is so boring – and when I say boring, I mean, it's not going deep.
I write about this in the essay, there's an appeal of autofiction, which is just prurience, right? It's the same as the appeal of watching someone have sort of a minor nervous breakdown on social media or watching reality television. Like you want to know their secrets. That's also why I think like there's a strong relationship between gossip and autofiction because the way that you take in the information of both is the same. You sort of assumed it to be true, but you don't know which parts are true and you don't know where the bias is coming from.
But I guess I would also say like, what is wrong with a myth-making project? I don't know that there's not necessarily anything wrong with like making a myth out of yourself as long as the myth is good, right? I would consider that almost sacrificing yourself for the benefit of the myth.
But the way I see autofiction working is like the author sort of puts himself in the story and then uses their public persona in some interesting way, or that's the way that it should work.
You write that you still don't know what draws you to a career in criticism. Has finishing the book brought you any clarity?
That's a great question. I don't know. I enjoyed writing the book much more than I thought that I would. I procrastinate a lot, as I say in the book. I have lots of anxiety around writing. Writing this kind of criticism allows you to sort of like go down rabbit holes and research whatever sort of comes to you. It did reaffirm my desire to write criticism in a way that I think I was talking about earlier. I found I was getting quite tired of writing book reviews for magazines. It's just sort of the same structure, the same format, the same style. I think what I like about writing and what I always wanted to do as a writer is experiment with form, experiment with style, and like, see how far I can take certain stylistic formal principles while still being entertaining, while still being accessible, and fun to read. I think that if criticism is very frustrating for many reasons, it's also like that challenge is quite rewarding because it's not. It's not seen as a place where you can be as an experimental or as creative as like fiction or poetry or things like that.
