You’ll have noticed one obvious tic that features in many (but by no means all) of these gruelly essays: “There is a…” It’s emblematic of a voice that I’ve come to think of as the ‘Impersonal Universal’. Gruel doesn’t talk like a real person talks, but like a hammy actor doing ‘wise poetess on the mountaintop’. Whilst saying little about itself, it declaims grandly upon the human condition. There is a white-noise generality to its insights, an uncanny vagueness that makes the mind glaze over. It is never funny. There are no surprises, true confessions or controversial moments. It is a description of the human average.