Photograph by Carleen Coulter.

The one time I met Lauren Oyler in person was in New York in the spring of 2018. I had been closely following her work as a critic and admired her intelligence and fearlessness. That exuberant night, she sat mostly quietly, with a look of anger, through a long evening at a bar, which ended late, outside a pizza restaurant, over greasy slices. She was the girlfriend of a friend of mine, who was the reason I was there. The next day, I learned that after they had gone home, she had dumped him. All of this made a deep impression on me. Not pretending to be having a good time. Some sort of power she embodied, just sitting there stonily. I have a terrible memory, but I remember that night—and her at the center of it—so vividly.

That spring, it seemed like everyone was talking about her hyperarticulate critiques of Roxane Gay, Greta Gerwig, and Zadie Smith. She was unafraid to use the full force of her critical eye to scrutinize even those artists who were mostly widely praised. Several weeks after we met, she wrote a defense of my novel Motherhood in The Baffler, responding to various prominent American female critics who had negatively reviewed the book. I wrote to thank her, and in the years since, we developed a correspondence and a friendship.

Three years ago, she published her first novel, Fake Accounts, about a young woman who flees to Berlin and interrogates her relationships and herself, while a Greek chorus of ex-boyfriends occasionally chimes in with corrections to her self-mythology.Her new book of essays, No Judgment, contains six pieces, all written specifically for the book. She thinks about the history of criticism in the form of star ratings on Goodreads; about gossip and anxiety. I was struck by the pleasure vibrating from these essays; the evident joy she takes, and freedom she feels, in writing and thinking in the essay form. I was eager to ask her certain questions outside the structure of our friendship. She is a critic I admire, with strengths that feel different from my own; in other words, someone to learn from.

INTERVIEWER

I want to begin by asking you generally about the pleasures of writing—when did you discover them?

LAUREN OYLER

The first things I remember writing were journals and daily writing assignments in school, and then there were the private blogs I kept as a teenager. I think I wrote those online just because I preferred to write on the computer as soon as that was available. I was always a good typist and it was the dawn of the social internet, but I kept the blogs locked, or whatever we used to say, so the point was just that I wanted to be able to write fast and emotionally while talking to people on AIM at the same time. I don’t know if I found the pleasures of writing uncomplicated, even at the time—writing was a compensation prize for the various anxieties and miseries I experienced, and I kind of still feel that way. I wanted to be a painter, which I am not naturally talented at, but I always had a natural talent for writing and a unique relationship to language, and for some reason I kept developing it. You’re not supposed to say this—you’re supposed to say, “I am so lucky to have a career, I am no better than anyone else.” I know many very naturally talented people who aren’t ambitious, and I admire and sometimes envy them, but I have been very ambitious since I was fourteen years old. I don’t know why. Read More