These big takedown pieces - whether it’s Oyler taking down Roxane Gay or Manov taking down Oyler - aren’t really literary criticism as much as they are complicated forms of in-group status signaling and competitions for cultural capital. Everybody always wants to be cooler-than-thou and the best way to position oneself is to take a scalp from someone higher in the pecking order. They’re also a way for the society of critics writ large to decide they’re done with a particular conceit - Mean Girl Reviews are so mid-2010s, and we’ve now effectively communicated that by Mean Girling the preeminent Mean Girl Reviewer. It’s a deeply cynical way to operate, from a strange and toxic little subculture obsessed with navel-gazing and fixated on petty internecine feuds rather than actual literary analysis. But hell, publishing and criticism has always been like this. In an industry that nepotistic and with so much unearned hype thrown around, it’s probably healthy to kill your heroes every few years. And if they’re gonn…