I wasnt scammed by Caroline Calloway

My review of Caroline Calloway’s Scammer. It actually arrived.

For the better part of ten years I’ve been a Caroline Calloway watcher. I remember scrolling her Instagram on our trampoline in Summer 2014. I remember reading the infamous The Cut ‘I was Caroline Calloway’ essay by her bad art friend Natalie Beach, in the shared tutor office at my University job, in September 2019.

Caroline Calloway is part New York it-girl, part ‘Gatsby of Cambridge’, part internet problematic not-fave. Scammer is her first published book, but it wasn’t supposed to be her first book.

Calloway has been compared to (albeit unfairly as she’s never actually committed any crimes) Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey for her ‘scams’. These include badly organised Creativity Workshops where tickets sold for $165 and participants could drink out of mason jars and listen to Calloway talk, selling snake oil, and that Scammer was meant to come out in 2020. However, Scammer wasn’t supposed to be Calloway’s first book. Her first book was meant to be And We Were Like/School Girl, but as she detailed in Scammer, Calloway never actually planned to write it. The book fell through after she didn’t turn in any drafts, owing $100,000 from her cancelled book deal. She eventually paid it back with money earned from OnlyFans (whilst repaying $40,000 of New York rental debt). This is very much a Calloway tldr, if you’re interested in finding out more, google it bestie.

So with all of that, why did I buy Scammer? Because I’m bad with money and love gossip. I didn’t initially plan on buying Scammer, as I didn’t want to give her my money. But, the reviews online seemed overwhelmingly positive, and I wanted in. I’m not sure if those reviews read the same book as me. Maybe it was the reviewers who scammed me, not Caroline.

I ordered Scammer June 15, and it arrived September 1. A series of self-described vignettes, the memoir comes in at 157 pages, 68 chapters and no contents page. Described by Calloway as a ‘daybook’, I finished it this past weekend, to the soundtrack of Taylor Swift’s Midnights. It felt like a fitting soundtrack, as both feel slightly unfinished, somewhat unrelated but tangentially pulled together stories from evenings past. I like Midnights and I like Scammer. But neither are particularly compelling pieces of art on their own, it’s their creator that gives them excitement and interest.

Scammer is dedicated to Lena Dunham, who owns her life rights (and who apparently already has written a script!), and I truly believe that only Dunham could tell Calloway’s story for all its girlhood, glamour, convoluted chronically online millennial, upper middle-class white girl-isms.

Calloway can write well. There are many pretty, compelling, albeit long, sentences. But she reminds us often that more of that will come in her next book. The book felt rushed and at times reactionary to Beach’s own book of essays published in June 2023, something which Calloway acknowledges. She had to get her book out before, or at least the same time as Beach.

Calloway’s style of writing is reminiscent of being an influencer, in that she lets you into her life just enough so you feel like you know (and want to be) her, but she still keeps her secrets. This is easier to pull off when you’re writing Instagram captions and talking on podcasts, but it’s harder in a book, never mind a memoir.

At the beginning of the Scammer, Calloway introduces us to her family, her childhood and her lack of kneecaps. These were good stories, her family lore seems incredibly interesting, but we never got to hear much about it. The tales from her Cambridge days and early experiences of fame are compelling and have some good insights. Her reflections on how her Adderall addiction impacted her relationship with money, her partners and her friendship with Beach were honest and engaging. I wanted to enjoy the earlier parts of the book, it’s where we know the least about her, but her rushed and scattered storytelling made it feel peripheral.

A serious case of ‘Main Character Syndrome’ Calloway has placed herself in many different social scenes of the last decade. Aristocrats and children of the rich in the UK, nepo babies in US private schools and colleges and more recently the Dimes Square New York scene. It’s an interesting group for Calloway to associate with. Distanced from her liberal cross-Atlantic Instagram days, post-’cancellation’ Calloway doubles down on her problematic side by associating with the hipster right-wing. Furthermore, the impact of Dimes Square and Red Scare outside of New York and deeply (even too deep for me) online circles, renders it unrelatable and its impact lost on many readers. Whilst Calloway has always been ahead of online culture (buying instagram followers before it was cool, to kick-start her account in 2013) for most of her career, associating her self with Alex Jones associated podcasters is not the best the way to remain relevant.

Calloway’s relationship to sex and class throughout the book is another interesting issue. How she collapsed into her dorm roommate’s ‘double ds’, her reaction and description of Beach’s rape and the ‘illiterate Florida men’. As Celebrity Memoir Book Club discuss, her descriptions of sex are at times uncomfortable and not always important to the story. Someone smarter than me should do a class analysis of this, or Calloway herself.

It’s in the final third of the book Calloway is at her peak. Her writing is best when talking about the internet and contemporary culture. Her tales about celebrities such as John Mulaney, Mindy Kaling, Lena Dunham and Beach’s Ryan Murphy Netflix deal, are excellent tales. Calloway understands what it means to be a white girl online in the 2010s. However, her ability to be self-reflective seems to only exist in certain contexts, there’s no mention of her alleged racism and anti-semitism.

Calloway likens the book and her listing off celebrity associations (John Mulaney, Ziwe, Margaret Qually, Julia Fox, Maude Apatow) to The Andy Warhol Diaries. This is an apt comparison and I think a better way to approach Scammer than a traditional memoir. It’s a blurry collection of moments written with intrigue but also centring herself in the culture by her association to other famous people.

Throughout the book, Calloway teases that she’ll release And We Were Like, and that Scammer is the memoir she needs to write before she releases her great novel. I get why she had to write this before And We Were Like. I relate to the crippling perfectionism that results in delayed deadlines and incomplete chapters (hello thesis writing). As Calloway states, she needed to just finish something, even if it’s not her best work. Her writings on St Andrews and Cambridge are compelling but feel like only a glimmer of what was happening. Scammer doesn’t so much leave the reader wanting more from a sequel, but it wanting more from this book.

Scammer is a good book if you are interested in millennial white girl internet culture. Whilst I enjoyed the book, I don’t feel like I understand Calloway anymore than I did before reading it. If she releases And We Were Like, maybe then we’ll get more of Calloway’s well written-written reflections on her life, and maybe then we’ll finally be able to understand Caroline Calloway.

Delta Gatti

Update: 2024-12-03

PicoBlog

I wasnt scammed by Caroline Calloway

Delta Gatti

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