In 2017, at a time when Vice Media was reaching an irreverent peak and virality was the currency of writers, the name Joel Golby became synonymous with a particular genre of local journalism. He was Vice’s most read writer; He had a boyish sense of humor tempered by the self-deprecating British attitude, and was elevated by his ability to transform crude or mundane things (pubs, house parties, landlords, drugs) into clever reflections on modern life. His article about “101 ways to ruin a party” remains one of the funniest articles on the internet. His style was so distinctive that I once bought a cocktail menu from an east London bar and was convinced Golby had ghost-written it. I asked the bartender, and to my surprise he said yes, they were friends.
Like every young writer celebrated, Golby is described as the voice of his generation. Dolly Alderton, herself the “millennial answer to Nora Ephron” (appropriate for Elizabeth Day), called Golby the “millennial answer to David Sedaris.” Golby was given a TV column by the Guardian. When she published her first book in 2019, a memoir of sorts with 21 personal essays, it was blurred by Sharon Horgan (and Russell Brand). Golby called it Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant, an unsettling title that put off most critics. But he is nothing if not self-aware: he said in an interview that although the title was funny at first, it quickly became “extremely annoying” and that, despite his initial misgivings, not changing it was “the ultimate form of self-ownership.”
This seems to be the spirit of his second book, Four Stars; again a memoir of sorts, presented chronologically through reviews of various moments in his life, with star ratings appended. Golby reviews the trivial and concrete as well as the important and abstract, from almond croissants (100 stars) and Howard Leight earplugs (five stars) to the phone call in which the Guardian editor fired him for using a column to fantasize about Victoria Pedretti. actually more than just reviewing The Haunting of Hill House (zero stars).
It was said that it was this phone call that sent Golby into a self-loathing funk. He began to question money, purpose, friendships, the fragile armor of masculinity, and the raw pain of losing his parents at age 25. As in Brilliant… It is on these subjects that Golby displays his undeniable talent as a writer. , who can extract relatable reflections from the absurdities of daily life. Killing a houseplant (zero stars), for example, prompts him to consider the “deep inky poison that lives inside me” and sheds light on a question that troubles us all: Am I a ‘good’ person or a ‘bad’ person? His obsession with vitamin supplements leads to thoughts of male hair loss, urinary incontinence and fertility.
Reviews with understated dialogue are the most revealing, especially those about his level-headed friend Michael, who berates Golby for sending emojis to a mutual friend who’s just lost his mother: just because you’ve faced pain doesn’t mean you know it How can I help a friend with theirs? Similarly, when Golby responds to a boyfriend’s breakup with a joke about unfollowing her ex’s Instagram, she offers a brief but poignant look at male bullying. His friend replies: “I’m actually pretty upset about that, man”; Golby passively watches the ‘typing’ notification flicker for “a really long time” until his friend finally settles for “But yeah.” One of Golby’s final studies, an imagined conversation over a beer with his late father, is heartbreaking in its subtlety.
However, the comic filler is heavier. Great… Golby was at his weakest when he started spreading rumors about killing evil landlords or listing every property he rented. While Four Stars has its moments to make you giggle – it describes reacting to the phrase “sleep hygiene” with “the kind of creepy, low-brow laugh goths teach themselves to make instead of making love” – the slapstick humor becomes tiresome. A review of a self-recorded interview while eating a limited-edition Big Mac and drinking large amounts of weed gum would only be interesting if I were high, too. I felt like reviewing a paper cut was scraping the barrel.
And after querying some intriguing details with Golby’s publisher, it was quite surprising to discover that many of the “memories” here, such as the fateful phone call to the Guardian editor, were in fact fiction. Golby was never fired. Semi-fictional memoirs can work with larger goals, but inconsistencies arise when so many episodes of Four Stars are deliberately banal or seem to exist as mere vehicles for Golby’s punchlines.
As the number of books by young, star authors followed on social media increases, you begin to wonder whether their editors are too confused to do their job properly. Tightly editing the jokes and cutting out some of the goofier filler segments altogether would have allowed Golby’s natural comedy to shine. I also wonder if anyone at the very young age of 36 can actually justify two memories; though that might explain why Golby had to make some of this up.
Four Stars: A Life Examined is published by Mudlark, priced at £16.99. To order your copy for £14.99, call 0808 196 6794 or visit: Telegram Books