No Judgment: Essays
Lauren Oyler
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
No Judgment: Essays
Lauren Oyler
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Her sense of humor is present, as is her agile thinking. But fans of blood sport won’t find much here to satisfy their baser appetites. Far from incendiary, the book is cleareyed and grounded.
Her essays contain not arguments or judgments so much as advertisements for a conspicuously edgy personality. She is beloved for her unrepentantly implacable persona, but a persona is always at risk of calcifying into a shtick.
The book was originally to be called Who Cares, and perhaps that title should have been retained. Who cares, really, about any of this?.
Although I’m revealing my inane approach to sidebar commentary...this holds true for much of No Judgment: My excited underlined passages or comments of 'haha' and 'omg so true' and 'okay, fair' balanced out with many an annoyed 'uh no' or 'oookay'.
If you are a person who spends an inordinate amount of time reading articles you found through X (né Twitter), you will likely be familiar with many, if not all, of Oyler’s reference points.
This uncertainty within Oyler — I don’t care what you think! But I can’t afford to be unaware of what you’re thinking! — is engrossing because it’s more often dialectical instead of just an expression of ambivalence.
Oyler has a talent for cutting through hype and getting to the nub of things.
The rarefied niche into which we’re about briefly to wiggle. It is an airless place.
Oyler is frank, fierce, funny, and brilliant; her brainy, passionate criticism exhilarating..
Will please Oyler’s admirers.
An essay is the opposite of a tweet: it allows for complication, doubt, space to breathe. And in this collection, Oyler, one of nature’s contrarians, does the opposite of what most people do online: she cartwheels gracefully through a series of reverse virtue signals (vice flashes?). She’s suspicious of popular opinion, Ted talks, vulnerability and rising above. She likes snobs, Henry James and talking about people behind their back. Brilliant.
Deep thoughts.
Irreverent.