Fake Accounts
by Lauren Oyler
It’s so good.
I feel like I could have written it.
This is not meant as a statement on my ability. Or its lack.
But.
It’s effortless.
Imagine watching the Olympics. You see a peak athlete breeze through a mile. There is no context.
“I could run like that.” It skews your understanding of how fast a person should be. So you lace up some New Balances where the heels are worn down to a forty-degree angle, and attempt to push out an easy six-ten-for-four. Ten blocks out from the apartment, and reality sets in: a nine-minute mile would be a blessing. How much further is a mile, again?
Fake Accounts does that, but for writing.
And so I return to reviewing books after generous paternity leave, and the first time I strap on my running shoes I’m pitted against Fake Accounts? Quelle horreur! No glory for me, no place at the podium. I’m just lucky to be invited to the race.
My notes read as follows:
There is more off the page that we get mere wisps of, that the world beyond what we see is commented upon, and unbounded reality that is not contained within the pages
this is to say, i want the narrator of Fake Profiles (sic) to exist; to continue to “produce content”; are there sequels and serials to works of literary fiction?
Instagram-style internet writing chapters were reminscinent of Visit from the Goon Squad’s powerpoint, something i enjoyed
Then a long digression into multivolume fantasy, as I was—and still reading am—plowing through The Wheel of Time. Irrelevant. Cut it.
A double handful of quotes follows:
I had thought, then, before accountability became a word everyone used, that explaining oneself and one’s motives was an appropriate addendum to an apology, that an explanation was almost better than an apology, because an explanation gave you something to do beyond accept or reject; it allowed you to understand.
Cue the “I’m in this image and I don’t like it” or “it me” or some other pithy meme from three months ago.
I knew I wasn’t going to get anything real out of him, that it would be pointless to try and get him to sit down and explain. But there’s something I didn’t mention before. I wasn’t going to mention it at all, because it’s embarrassing, the way it reveals my trifling concerns, what I keep track of, what upsets me. But it’s critical to the story, and to leave it out would be self-serving. As a writer you have to think of the reader.
And then I outlined a discussion of how much I loved the narrator, in an “I want to bookmark their blog and involve it in my daily website checks, a la 2002 internet” way.
Cut it. Again. Because it is not flattering to say that the voice of Fake Accounts could write about anything and I would love it. That starstruck tone lands as hyperbolic at best, disingenuous at worst, and might imply a lack of interest in what the plot of the book actually was (this is not the case, I very much enjoyed the plot, as well).
The people in New York were petty and hypocritical in a way that made me feel isolated no matter how many I spoke to, I said, citing the journalist and the roommate. Everyone i knew suffered from vicious bruxism because of stress and all the dentists explained this by failing to mention, when recommending mouth guards, that you could purchase one for $30 to $40 at the drugstore rather than pay $350 to $700 for a custom dentist-produced version. I don’t want to go into more detail about the healthcare system because it’s far beyond the scope of this discussion. “Also, the subway is terrible,” I said. “It’s an insult. And you can’t even flirt with people on it anymore because everyone is looking at their phones.” I could have gone on and on. I’d never really cared about New York the way other people did, never romanticized fire escapes or exposed brick or the days when you couldn’t get a cab to take you to Brooklyn.
My wife sent me this picture of her and some coworkers at a work function: it could have been from this book, I think.
I’d write it, if I were me. I’d read it, if I were you.