boston.com News your connection to The Boston Globe
Brainiac - What's happening in the world of ideas
Jan Freeman writes The Word column for Ideas.
Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based writer, editor, and multimedia producer.
Christopher Shea writes the Critical Faculties column for Ideas.
Ideas Mailbag
Send the Brainiac bloggers a comment on a post.
Name:
E-mail:
Your comment:
See the latest Ideas stories that appeared in The Boston Globe.
 Visit the Ideas section
Week of: November 11
Week of: November 4
Week of: October 28
Week of: October 21
Week of: October 14
Week of: October 7

« Philosophywatch, week of Nov. 7-13 | Main | Matsu-zowie! »

Monday, November 13, 2006

N+1 and its critics

Fiction writer, book critic, and sometime Ideas contributor Keith Gessen was interviewed last week by the New York Inquirer about another of his undertakings, the literary-intellectual journal n+1. (NB: I have contributed to n+1; and I've written about n+1 for Ideas; and Keith mentions my forthcoming n+1 essay on what I call the "Argonaut Folly.")

n1new.jpg
Gessen (standing) and other n+1 editors
Diego Uchitel for The New York Times

In the comments section over at The Valve, an n+1 reader says that Gessen's interview responses sum up what he dislikes about the journal:

There’s something about the editorial combination of "we are the only ones who will get harsh on writing that we don't like, no one else does that" and "we only write about contemporary lit, not about those dusty old dead people" and naive politics that is deadly enough to overcome some of the merits of the individual essays, which are occasionally very good.

Gessen -- not interested in dusty old dead people? This is misguided, to say the least. For example, check out Keith's great essay about Alexander Herzen from the Oct. 30 issue of The New Yorker, here.

Sponsored Links