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?