Living in the golden age of navel-gazing

If you are under 40, you probably already know of Joel Golby. He writes stream-of-consciousness personal essays and the satirical ‘Rental Opportunity of the Week’ column for Vice. For older readers, think, say, William Leith or Caitlin Moran. For even older readers, think maybe Thurber, Perelman or Dorothy Parker. And for the truly ancient, see Hazlitt?

Self-obsessed, self-vaunting, self-deprecating, self-excoriating: there is, of course, a long tradition of highly personal, witty, scratchy, sniffy essayistic writing going back to Montaigne and beyond. And we’re currently living through a Golden Age of Hot Take Navel Gazing. Sometimes it seems like every other book is a collection of sad, wry, funny reflections by some sad, wry, funny columnist. Golby is among the best.

There is a reason, of course, for all the recent blether, just the same as there was a reason for Hazlitt – technology. As Elizabeth Schneider wrote in The Aesthetics of William Hazlitt (1933):

Thanks to the rapid growth of the reading public, the development of steam printing and improved facilities of distribution, magazines multiplied […] and became appreciably larger; and this condition, with the consequent demand of editors for more, and for more original, material, gave the essayist licence to ramble as never before.

If the printing press gave essayists the licence to ramble, then the internet has seemingly made it compulsory for all: everyone now has in their pocket the means of production and distribution.

But in order to rise above the incessant sound of the burbling masses and monetise the musings – to get your column in Vice, say – you still need to have something special to mark you out, some kind of shtick. Golby’s thing is his obsession with the minutiae of everyday life, and the simple fact that he’s very funny, which certainly helps.