I’d Like to Report a Murder

Lauren Oyler “rode the internet’s appetite for a well-argued pan to prominence.” A Goodreads user claimed that all subsequent reviewers of Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake lived “in the shadow of Brandon Taylor’s vicious takedown” of the same title. Pioneer Works brought together Oyler and Taylor—”merry combatants [who] have written and received tough reviews, and even sent a couple strays at each other over the years”—for a fascinating, therapist-moderated conversation about publishing negative book reviews. There’s plenty here for the lit-gossip readers to pick over, including discussions of favorite writer takedowns and Oyler’s feelings about being “the Renata Adler of looking at your phone.” But the heart of their exchange concerns the way in which an American craving for violence asserts itself in literary discourse. “I’ve started getting threats,” Oyler says. “I’ve never had them before, and I’ve been on the internet for my whole adult life. I don’t love it, but obviously I’m a literary critic and I’m going to get murdered.”

When I started writing reviews, people would say, “oh, you cannot write a takedown. You’ll ruin your career. Everyone will hate you. Then when your book comes out, people will say bad things about it. You have to be nice.” And I find that to be a shallow way of thinking about literary culture.

The first time I wrote a big flashy takedown, I was 24 years old, and I remember a few of the writers who said nasty things about me online were older than me, around the age I am now. Those people had children at the time. It is sort of uncouth, I think, to participate in the social media ecosystem past a certain age.