From the celebrated national bestselling novelist and critic, a groundbreaking collection of essays exploring the state of cultural criticism and what meaning art has in our ever-challenging world.
Lauren Oyler has emerged as one of the most trenchant, influential, and revelatory critics of her generation, a talent who famously skewers and celebrates literary works with unsparing acuity. Her writing—acerbic, prismatic, and staggering in its genius and forthrightness—has crashed the London Review of Books website twice. Oyler delights in using her biting insights like a crowbar, whether smashing shibboleths in her essays or shattering conventions in her first novel Fake Accounts. But what is the significance of being an author, critic, and social media personality in today’s fraught world; how do these fragments form a whole and what is the relevance? Lauren’s classic Oylerian response: Who cares?
In this blistering, irreverent, and very funny manifesto, Oyler takes genuine pleasure in dissecting the forces that shape her life, as well as ours—our deeply-held notions of what constitutes the contemporary American experience. My Perfect Opinions takes on the political and cultural roots of joy, the psychology and influence of “hot takes,” the rise of autofiction, and the elusive state of “cool.” Oyler argues that art and ideas aren’t “necessary”—but they matter implicitly. Explaining to readers, and herself, why—what “the stakes” are—has always been the goal of her writing. In this, her luminous and sometimes mind-bending first book of nonfiction, she encapsulates the world we live and think in with precision and care—delivering a witty, provocative, and brilliant work of cultural criticism as only she can.
