Dear Wags,

I come not to bury Lauren Oyler, but to praise her. Or, at least, to contextualize her.

A quick recap if you aren’t following the discourse: Oyler, a cultural critic and novelist (Fake Accounts), recently published a collection of essays called No Judgment. Many book critics really hate it. Two reviews were so scathing that some Oyler defenders accused them of woman shaming.

Which is odd, since both reviewers were women. “All of the fruit Oyler picks is so low hanging she would do better to leave it rotting on the ground,” wrote Becca Rothfeld of the Washington Post. She wasn’t finished. “Her essays contain not arguments or judgments so much as advertisements for a conspicuously edgy personality."

Over at Bookforum, Ann Manov devoted used about 4,000 words to hone a shiv: “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.” 

That’s a great line. If you pay attention to this sort of thing, you know Oyler built a modest reputation panning work by prominent female writers. The joke of No Judgment is that Oyler is avowedly judgy. Well, live by the sword, etc. Still, there’s a sentence in Manov’s review that’s especially venomous and revealing. After quoting her target at length, she writes, “Having been a teaching assistant in the department Oyler is so proud to have matriculated at, I am familiar with the less-than-Herculean intellectual labors needed to get an English degree from Yale. But I digress.”

Oh, the humblebrag, where would we be without you? In a few words Manov establishes that she's also an ivy league insider who knows a Yale English degree is lame. What a snotty, brittle little club we’ve entered. At least Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer went to fun parties.

But now I digress. Oyler annoys a few people in that sisterhood, which only burnishes her esoteric celebrity. She is talented and braggy about it. Quite possibly, she’s not as clever as she thinks. That’s unattractive, but aren’t women supposed to stop hiding their light under a bushel? If you have a conspicuously edgy personality, why not advertise it? In any case, there was a lot to like about Oyler’s debut novel. I particularly related to Fake Accounts because I, too, was once a young expat in Berlin.

One of the attacks on No Judgment is that Oyler’s research is just a collection of Wikipedia skims. Well, I did a little Oyleresque reportage myself, and found out she’s a product of Hurricane, West Virginia, pop. 6,846. Now, I’ve never been to Hurricane, but I’m guessing it’s not an easy commute from there to the Algonquin Round Table. Oyler graduated at the top of her public high school class before heading off to New Haven. She’s a striver being brought down a peg.

I don’t have a Wikipedia page, but if I did, it would say that I hail from New Windsor, New York, where I attended Newburgh Free Academy, a lofty name for a very ordinary public school. I worked hard and went to Smith. I understand the anger and yearning of kids from the sticks when they find themselves in elite circles. And I know the shaming they get when they’re judged too smart for their own good.

People are entitled to dislike Oyler’s work. Still, there seems to be something else going on —that primal need to hack down a tall poppy, especially one that sprouted in an unfashionable neighborhood. I do wonder if it scares some established critics to see someone with the same credentials give their world the finger. In another age, angry young men were celebrated in the literary world. Why not angry young women?

I’m older, if not wiser, than Oyler and her critics. I’m past giving the literary world the finger, or needing to put an upstart in her place. Bomb-throwing is a sport Oyler will probably outgrow. It might serve her many critics to ask why she started hurling projectiles in the first place.

Yours ever,

BKP

Knife by Salman Rushdie

Sir Salman’s account of surviving the 2022 attempt on his life comes out today. I made sure to have my copy delivered digitally so I could dive in early. These Meditations on an Attempted Murder are about the particulars of a terrible incident —Rushdie was stabbed by a fanatic just as he was about to give a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution—than with how the writer has adapted to life shadowed by threat. Rushdie ruminates on the summer morning in which he “experienced both the worst and best of human nature, almost simultaneously.” He dedicates this elegant work“to the men and women who saved my life.” In surviving violence, he’s an inspiration to us all.

Committed by Suzanne Scanlon

Why do so many brilliant women experience debilitating mental illness? Scanlon, author of the acclaimed Promising Young Woman, has spent long and short stints in psychiatric care. Her memoir examines her difficult path to recovery and the inspiration she drew from the great and troubled lives of writers such as Marguerite Duras, Sylvia Plath, and Janet Frame. Not enough has been written about their experiences in a society that often dismissed them as madwomen. Scanlon sets out to set the record straight. It’s a beautiful and meaningful endeavor. 

Did I Ever Tell You? by Genevieve Kingston