Favourite books revisited: Rob Doyle’s edgy reading list

‘Male writers now are the opposition party, and that may not be such a bad thing for them.’ So Rob Doyle writes in this addictive self-portrait/collection of reviews. And if male writers are now in navel-gazing opposition, ousted by a landslide of female talent, judging by this book Doyle is one of their most reactionary members, still in thrall to those outmoded frontbenchers who were long ago elevated to the Lords: Nietzsche, Huysmans, Bataille, Houellebecq, Amis Jr. His themes (male heterosexuality, aggression, drug use, alienation, philosophy) and consciously euphonious style reek of what he, in a scathing passage of self-reflection, calls a ‘desperate desire to be edgy’. And, by the norms of contemporary fiction, they also render him to many modern readers ‘toxic, misogynistic and violent, an unfortunate blot on the literary scene’.

Having spent two novels and one short story collection establishing this reputation, Autobibliography is Doyle’s self-justification of sorts — a guide to the reading that ‘formed’, ‘deformed’ and is now ‘reforming’ him. At its core are 52 pieces originally published in the Irish Times in 2019. Every 340-word column considered a favourite book of Doyle’s published before the 21st century, but each is here followed by an italicised addendum — either an additional reflection on the work in question, an excerpt from Doyle’s lockdown life (these addenda were written roughly between February and May 2020) or simply a further piece of self-examination. Though it owes much to Geoff Dyer, the format is a creative one and lives up to its grandiose title, the reader bobbing between sips of criticism and confessional autobiography. Different Rob Doyles from different periods of his existence disclose themselves and then disappear, creating a narrative of intellectual and sentimental growth from three decades of his reading life.