When Lauren Oyler’s review of Trick Mirror—a 2019 essay collection by New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino—was published in the London Review of Books, the sudden influx of readers crashed the magazine’s Web site. Oyler, sharp and merciless, did what no other reviewer would: criticize the beloved writer. In addition to criticism, Oyler, 33, has written a novel, Fake Accounts, and now an essay collection, No Judgment, which published on Tuesday. Ahead of her book tour, Oyler answers our questionnaire about what she packs, eats, and buys while traveling.
Last flight you took?
Mumbai to Berlin, with a layover at Charles de Gaulle because there aren’t very many serious direct flights from Berlin.
What do you wear to the airport?
Baggy jeans or pants, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt, all black, plus a strange, small bag by the Finnish textile designer Johanna Gullichsen that I carry all the important stuff in. It doesn’t count as a personal item because you wear it across your chest. I look like a bouncer with a cool purse, basically.
How long before your flight boards do you get to the airport?
A bit more than the recommended amount of time, so 2.5 to 3.5 hours. I’m very neurotic, and I’d much rather wait at the airport than wait to go to the airport.
Check bags, or carry-on only?
This is a fraught question for me because since I was a child, I’ve had a recurring stress dream about packing: time is running out and I can’t decide what to bring. The smaller the bag, the more freaked out about packing I become.
In any case, if it’s possible, I just take a carry-on because it’s obviously the better thing to do in every way. I will happily check a bag full of new purchases on the return flight, if necessary. I was recently traumatized when Air France lost the suitcase containing all of the best new clothes I’d bought in Paris, as part of an airport-wide baggage malfunction at CDG. I jokingly but seriously felt like I was being taught a cosmic lesson for shopping too much—also a fraught activity for me—and I promised I would never buy an expensive shirt again. But of course they brought me the suitcase within a week.
Favorite airport?
Everyone in Berlin misses Tegel Airport and reflexively hates the new airport, which opened in 2020 and is a generic, large, vaguely European-looking space with bad restaurants, whereas Tegel was sort of quirky and interesting architecturally (hexagonal) and designed for the convenience of a much smaller turnover than it ended up having. You didn’t have to walk through a mall to get to your gate, and the airport was basically in the city.
Otherwise, SFO is disturbingly nice and has a great little museum-exhibition area. Zurich Airport looks like a parody of Switzerland in the 80s, which I appreciate.
Item you can’t fly without?
Maybe nothing? I think I could even manage without headphones.
Do you take any drugs or drink alcohol to fly?
I’ve dabbled successfully in Xanax, but not as a policy. I’ll usually drink before or during an evening flight, but that’s because I drink most days.
First class or coach?
Coach.
Window, middle, or aisle seat?
Aisle. I need to feel like I can escape, even if I’m also necessarily trapped on the plane.
How do you pass the time on the plane?
In my life on land, I have a fairly tortured relationship to writing, but I love writing on planes; the heightened emotions, lack of Internet, and sense of extra or dead time are conducive. I always want to watch movies but end up preferring to read or write.
Do you buy Wi-Fi?
No. It barely works, and I like to feel free of it.
Favorite airplane snack?
Raisinets.
Do you eat plane food?
I pretty much always eat it, though I’ll skip a bad salad or anything else that seems like it could harm me. If I remember when booking a ticket, I ask for an Indian vegetarian meal, which tends to be the best, and you get it before everyone else. Not to go on and on about My Big Trip to India, but the Indian food on my Air France flights to and from Mumbai recently was probably the best airplane food I’ve ever had. They served a beautiful masala chai and a little bottle of pear liqueur at the end of the meal.
Do you talk to the people sitting next to you?
No, but sometimes they talk to me, and I tend to listen to whatever they want to say. A plastic surgeon on a flight from Milan to Berlin told me that the word “suddenly” occurs in Dostoyevsky 4,000 times. “Do you know who I am reading?” he continued. “A woman! Virginia Woolf! Mrs. Dalloway. A whole year in a day.” I appreciated that. He gave me his card.
Shoes on or off on the plane?
On, mostly.
What do you do when turbulence hits?
I used to get very afraid, but I learned some apocryphal thing adults tell children about turbulence—that it’s almost never the cause of plane crashes—and since then I’ve been better at feeling basically fine. I also learned that climate change is making it much worse!
Worst part of the flight?
When you’ve taken off and are in the air, but they haven’t turned off the fasten seat belt sign yet.
First thing you do when the plane lands?
Check my phone and stand up. If I have no cell service, I lament. I know you shouldn’t stand up, but it’s a guilty pleasure.
Advice for travelers?
The first time I really left the United States, when I was 19 and going to Paris for a week with a friend who had a free place to stay, my mother, who hadn’t ever really been out of the country, either, told me, “Spend all your money—you might never get to go back.” Of course I was thinking about this constantly after Air France lost all my Parisian purchases, several trips to Paris and 14 years later. It’s sort of horrible advice, but in the right spirit. If you have the opportunity to go on a trip, you should take it, and while you can do many wonderful things in any city for very little money, you shouldn’t be cheap just for the sake of it. She’s right that you might never get to go back.