Ha ha! Ha ha!, Obituary of a quiet life, Internet culture, Black box, Frost, Shakespeare (3x), Zola and the modern novel, teaching poetry, LLMs

The irregular review of reviews, vol. V

I added two Substacks to my recommendations, A Year of Bach and Notes of an Aesthete. Both are excellent and deserve your attention.

My podcast with Ben Yeoh is now live, covering talent, late bloomers, literature, John Stuart Mill and more. And don’t forget to book tickets for my Interintellect salon, Shakespeare’s Inadequate Kings.

For paid subscribers, the next Shakespeare Book Club is 12th May, 19.00 UK time Much Ado About Nothing.

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Ha ha! Ha ha!

Most of the reaction to Ann Manov’s review of No Judgements, Lauren Oyler’s new essay collection, hasn’t been about Oyler’s book as much as it’s been about writing culture, literary culture, whether we ought to have “mean reviews”, and so on. (Freddie deBoer defended Oyler, but did so in terms that I suspect she herself would find repellent.) For some, the woman who once wrote a review that was titled “Ha ha! Ha ha!” is getting some karma. For others, it’s a sign of the way reviewing culture is just a chain of people trying to make a name for themselves by taking down prominent writers, so that they can become prominent enough to get harshly reviewed. Both sides tend to think that “being mean” isn’t acceptable in a review. I disagree. Manov’s review is good and the responses to it don’t always deal very closely with the specifics. Oyler’s earlier “mean” reviews were also fine (though they are not, on the whole, as good as people think). If a book is bad, we should say so, especially if it is being widely praised. People spend their money on books. Artistic standards matter. Take them down when they deserve it. That Oyler got Oyler’d, as it were, isn’t especially relevant.

One way Oyler has divided opinion by being openly elitist. Many critics have quoted one passage in particular where she is openly snobbish about her tastes and habits (she knows all the permanent exhibits in museums, etc). Oyler says they have fallen for her trolling. In a recent interview, this was linked to another sort of ironic trolling Oyler undertakes: boasting about herself.

OYLER: …the idea that we shouldn’t be using irony is ridiculous, because it allows you to express this ambiguity. Everyone wants there to be a judgment, everyone wants you to be like, “Is it bad or good? Are you pro or against?” And it’s very limiting if you’re any kind of writer, but particularly if you are a funny writer.

PHILLIPS-HORST: This came up when I was thinking about you in Berlin. When people ask you what you do, what do you say?

OYLER: I flip my hair and I say, “I’m the preeminent and most widely read critic of my generation.” And they’re like, “Really?” And I’m like, “Yeah, according to The Sunday Times UK.”

This isn’t irony, at least not of the sort Oyler thinks. Telling people you are the most widely read critic of your generation with obvious irony isn’t actually very ironic. It’s just a double-bluff, cover for showing off.

Social scientists call this counter-signalling. Most people quote praise of themselves non-ironically, to signal their quality to others. Once you reach a high-enough level, this sort of thing is no longer acceptable: if you are truly high status, you don’t need to go around quoting the Sunday Times to prove it. That looks aspirational, not accomplished. So, instead of signalling, you counter-signal; instead of boasting you self-depreciate—you ironise your accomplishments. This is the same thing as the richest people wearing the most causal clothes. They are such big shots, they don’t need to boast. Not showing off is how they show off.

Similarly, up-and-coming writers tell anyone who will listen about even the smallest praise they have received from more prominent writers and outlets (signalling their quality, aspiring to status). The preeminent and most widely read critic of her generation can’t do that without losing status, so she quotes it “ironically” at parties and then relays the story in interviews. She can tell you about it, but only casually, only ironically. Thus counter-signalling achieves the same thing that signalling would. And if you object, you are accused on not understanding irony, or of missing the fact that you were being trolled.

The truth is that ironising the Sunday Times quote is just good-old-fashioned self-deprecation as a form of showing-off. As Samuel Johnson said, “all censure of a man’s self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare.” Is Oyler trolling, or is she, like Fraiser Crane, making merely her overt snobbishness charming and entertaining as a way of preserving her status in a culture that is increasingly uninterested in that sort of thing?

When trying to explain why she writes criticism, Oyler says,

I would like to say that dedicating any time or energy to criticism comes from a belief in the importance of art. I fear making this claim would be a bit too valiant for me, so I will cite some other people doing so.

Her quoting the Sunday Times is the same trick. Oyler’s oblique praise of herself isn’t oblique enough: her critics have a point. Not least, because in Oyler’s most famous essay (she is said to have crashed the London Review of Books website twice), Oyler made this exact point about another writer:

In order to solve the problem of her possible wrongness, she adopts an elevated version of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist programme, constantly contradicting herself and referring to her shortcomings, among which are attention seeking, a desire for control, and equivocation. But where Gay’s ‘flaws’ were supposed to serve as proof of her humanity and therefore provide support for the feminist project of recognising women as humans, Tolentino’s are calibrated for success in a media culture in which acknowledgment equals absolution and absolution is seen as crucial to success.

Tolentino and Oyler have different “flaws”, but Oyler is absolutely “calibrating for success in a media environment” where ironic acknowledgment of one’s snobbery is a way to get attention as a highbrow. Oyler goes on to say that Tolentino talking about her flaws in the media is a cynical way of selling more books. Tolentino’s attempt to disguise her commerciality was met with Oyler’s trademark scorn.

The failings she neglects to mention in the actual book — a bestseller — she managed to cover during the media attention she received around its publication in August, when she wondered ‘if the work that brings me the most meaning in life (writing) will always necessarily bring me deeper into the clutches of the things that I hate (capitalism, and a way of being in which external incentives seem more important than internal ones)’. To quote the actually peerless Helen DeWitt, who, when she couldn’t find a publisher for her difficult novel Your Name Here, sold PDFs of it through her website: ‘Ha ha! Ha ha!’

Oyler’s right that so much of what passes as a critique of capitalism is hollow, promotional (and we can add badly informed). But she is not different. The whole schtick of the title is that Oyler very much is making judgements, but they aren’t very significant: Goodreads reviews aren’t very reliable, auto-fiction is fine actually, and the business of telling people to be vulnerable is bullshit. This isn’t criticism, it’s just another series of op-eds on familiar topics, written in a manner that garners more attention for the how than the what, the voice than the ideas. But Oyler is supposed to be a real critic, one who makes serious judgements, not just one who writes to grab attention. Wasn’t that the whole point of the book?

Oyler said in an interview when her novel Fake Accounts came out,

Books are products. Many of those we talk about aren’t doing anything except making money, and the thing that’s interesting about them is how they operate in the world, not what they’re commenting on.

Oyler wants it both ways and Manov’s review called her out. Personally, I find all of this rather dull and wish she had devoted one of her chapters to writing about Mating by Norman Rush, a novel she admires. Oyler would be the first to roll her eyes when editors complain that “books coverage” gets no clicks, but here she is not covering books. If you can’t beat them, join them I guess. Just make it ironic and troll them when they don’t get it. Ha ha, ha ha.

Obituary of a quiet life

The obituary form puts a particular pressure on what matters, on what should be remembered and praised, but what does one say about a life that aimed to carry on in the background, that had no interest in a name in newsprint or an award on the mantel? Ray Harrell, son of Jim and Cora, was content to sit still and watch the breeze scatter the leaves? Ray Harrell, sergeant first class, arranged the bills in his wallet in descending order? Ray Harrell, survived by Grace, whistled the same invented tune year after year while searching for the right nail in the shed? I filled in the expected details and sent the obituary to the newspaper, but I knew it wasn’t right. It captured nothing of the life he lived. What I returned to in the days after he passed, as the ladies from church covered the table in casseroles and Grandma slept in a bed alone for the first time since she was 19, was the sheer audacity of a quiet life.

Just splendid.

Explaining the internet

Katherine Dee is right about everything. One of the better writers on Substack.

The Black Box

An extract from Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s new book about the ways in which racial identity has constructed, both within and without the black community. “the tradition of Black thought is most correctly described as a series of contentions, many of them fiery ones. And fire, as the greatest Black intellectuals have always known, can generate light as well as heat.” As well as being worth reading for its own sake, this is an interesting essay if you have recently read Erasure by Perceval Everett or watched the film adaptation American Fiction.

Robert Frost

“‘The Road Not Taken’ has nothing to do with inspiration and stick-to-it-iveness; rather it’s a melancholic exhalation at the futility of choice, a dirge about enduring in the face of meaninglessness. If you read Frost for the snow, but don’t feel the cold, then you’re not really reading Frost.”

Shakespeare in original pronunciation

Skip the first three minutes, fascinating afterwards. (Video) Try this video also.

Counting Lovers

Line counts of different Shakespeare characters compared, based on how often the characters speak to each other. Readers of this blog do not need to be told that Romeo and Juliet is an ensemble play in which the nurse plays as considerable role as any of the protagonists. Nor is it a surprise to learn that Anthony and Cleopatra speak more to each other than any other lovers. Still, an interesting analysis.

Words, words, words

A third Shakespeare link! It’s too long, but has many interesting sections. This is an especially good observation. “The most lingustically distinctive dramatic writers, in our era and country, are prose poets of the curt back-and-forth, like Aaron Sorkin or David Mamet. Theirs is often brilliant work, but, like Hemingway in fiction, they foreclose more possibilities than they exploit. They are always efficient, never effusive. The murderers in Macbeth trade a staccato volley of words, too. But Shakespeare never fetishized that one effect into a whole style. He possessed all the effects and chose among them as his material required.”

Zola and the modern novel

The editorial note under the link to Brandon Taylor’s new LRB piece about Zola is a better commentary on the history of the modern novel than most of what you can read elsewhere. Also, Taylor’s Zola piece is splendid, read that too.

Using LLMs to understand what makes writers distinctive.

I wish I was smart enough to fully understand this. Talking to ChatGPT helped me get my head around it.

Teaching poetry to children

A teacher’s account of their experimental approach to get their pupils excited by poetry. It’s easy to quibble with some of the approaches taken (why should we teach them to write poetry rather than read it?), but there is so much enthusiasm and internal motivation it’s hard to disagree with the general tenor of the approach.