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| Editors | Lisa Borst,Mark Krotov,Dayna Tortorici |
|---|---|
| Categories | Culture,Literature,Politics |
| Frequency | Triannually |
| Founder | Keith Gessen,Benjamin Kunkel,Mark Greif,Chad Harbach,Allison Lorentzen andMarco Roth |
| Founded | 2004 |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | Brooklyn, NY |
| Language | English |
| Website | nplusonemag |
| ISSN | 1549-0033 |
n+1 is a New York–based Americanliterary magazine that publishessocial criticism,political commentary,essays, art, poetry, book reviews, andshort fiction. It is published in print three times annually with regular articles being published online. Each print issue averages around 200 pages in length.
n+1 began in late 2004,[1] the project ofKeith Gessen,Benjamin Kunkel,Mark Greif,Chad Harbach,Allison Lorentzen andMarco Roth. The magazine is described by Gessen as "likePartisan Review, except not dead". It was launched out of a feeling of dissatisfaction with the current intellectual scene in the United States, with the editors citingThe Baffler,Hermenaut, and the early years ofPartisan Review as inspiration for their magazine.[2] Each of those magazines embodied the age where the "little magazine" was a veritable institution and a major center of innovation in arts and politics.
Their outlook is most frequently summed up by the last lines of their first issue where the editors proclaimed: "it is time to say what you mean".[3] Yet in the third issue, criticJames Wood responded to criticism of his negative criticism and, singling out this quote from issue 1, stated: "The Editors had unwittingly proved thegravamen of their own critique: that it is easier to criticize than to propose."[4]
The namen+1, conceived in a moment of frustration, comes from an algebraic expression. Harbach recalls that "Keith and I were talking, and he kept saying, 'Why would we start a magazine when there are already so many out there?' And I said, jokingly, 'N+1'—whatever exists, there is always something vital that has to be added or we wouldn't feel anything lacking in this world."[5]
Their mission is somewhat informed bycritical theory, to which they readily admit the attraction and limitations. In an article on theory, the editors said: "The big mistake right now would be to fail to keep faith with what theory once meant to us."[6]
Their stance embraces theory but keeps a careful distance from the academicization of theory: "Theory is dead, and long live theory. The designated mourners have tenure, anyway, so they'll be around a bit. As for the rest of us, an opening has emerged, in the novel and in intellect. What to do with it?" In this vein, they make frequent references to theFrankfurt School, often criticize the commodification of culture, and speak positively of writers such asDon DeLillo.
Each issue ofn+1 opens with a section called The Intellectual Situation,[7] which criticizes aspects of the current intellectual scene. For example, in the first issue, they calledMcSweeney's a "regressive avant-garde";[8] in Issue 18, the editors criticize "the Rage Machine" in which "tech corporations beg you to say your piece for the sake of content-generation, free publicity, hype, and ad sales".[9] They have also criticizedThe New Republic,The Weekly Standard, and literary figures such asDale Peck. This is followed by a short Politics section. Most of each issue consists of fiction and essays. Issues then close with a review section, which consists of reviews of books, intellectual figures, and pop phenomena.
The magazine has received mixed reception. Generally,n+1's detractors decry the editors' youth and perceived elitism. As the magazine is purportedly an effort to engage a generation in a struggle against the current literary landscape, such elitism seems counterintuitive to the ideals upon which the magazine was founded.The New Criterion critically asked, "is your journal really necessary?"[10] and accused them of exaggerating their own importance. TheTimes Literary Supplement wryly satirized Kunkel's quote, "We're angrier thanDave Eggers and his crowd", and compared that quote against their third issue's unsigned article about and titled "Dating".[11] Literary editorGordon Lish has called the magazine a "crock of shit".[12]
Others have appreciated these very qualities, writing favorably of the boldness of the project itself and the sincerity and enthusiasm of its contributors. CriticA. O. Scott ofThe New York Times commented on this in a feature article on the new wave of young, intellectual publications in a September 2005 issue ofThe New York Times Magazine, saying thatn+1 was trying to "organize a generational struggle against laziness and cynicism, to raise once again the banners of creative enthusiasm and intellectual engagement" and that it had a feel that was "decidedly youthful, not only in [its] characteristic generational concerns — the habit of nonchalantly blending pop culture, literary esoterica and academic theory, for instance, or the unnerving ability to appear at once mocking and sincere — but also in the sense of bravado and grievance that ripples through their pages".[13] In a review of Gessen's novelAll the Sad Young Literary Men,Joyce Carol Oates referenced the author's founding of "the spirited intellectual literary journaln+1".[14]
Vox described that magazine as "Deliberately anachronistic like an artisanal pickle shop, but with a cosmopolitan flair — like a pickle shop that also sells kimchi."[15]
Beginning in 2006, with the publication ofPS 1 Symposium: A Practical Avant-Garde, n+1 introduced then+1 Research Branch Pamphlet Series, later known as then+1 Research Branch Small Books Series. This self-published series expands on the concerns of the magazine, and focuses on topics as disparate as "life and reading" in early adulthood, feminism, hipster culture, and the collapse of America's financial system. There are six titles in the series in addition toA Practical Avant-Garde:What We Should Have Known: Two Discussions,What Was the Hipster: A Sociological Investigation,The Trouble is the Banks: Letters to Wall Street,No Regrets: Three Discussions, and "Buzz", a play byBenjamin Kunkel.No Regrets, comprising conversations among women writers about their reading, was praised byNPR as "intimate and erudite",[16] butThe New Republic, gathering its own panel of women staff writers, criticized the book's discussion of a so-called "secret canon" as being insular.[17]
In addition to the Research Branch'sThe Trouble is the Banks, the n+1 has published several works concerning the financial crisis and theOccupy movement. In 2010, n+1 collaborated with Harper Perennial to publishDiary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager, a series of one-on-one interviews between Gessen and "a very charming, very intelligent"[18] member of the finance industry that explore the origins and effects of the financialization of the economy.[18] Some sections of the book had been published online and in the magazine from 2007 to 2010.[19]New York Times book reviewer Dwight Garner called the book "thoughtful, funny and unpretentious"—"an urbane if frazzled chronicle of shock and despair".[20]
With direction from Astra Taylor and Sarah Leonard,[21] n+1 built on this discussion of the financial crisis and its fallout with the publication of theOccupy! Gazette, "a semi-regular, forty-page tabloid newspaper inspired by the Occupy movement".[22] The Gazette featured interviews and panels, as well as firsthand reporting from Occupy demonstrations around the United States.n+1 ultimately published four issues of theOccupy! Gazette, in addition to one special issue published in May 2014, "Free Cecily!", which covered the arrest and trial of Occupy organizer and protesterCecily McMillan.
In 2011, in collaboration with Verso,n+1 publishedOccupy! Scenes from an Occupied America, edited by Astra Taylor and Keith Gessen, along with "editors fromn+1,Dissent,Triple Canopy andThe New Inquiry". The book featured commentary from Taylor, Mark Greif, Nikil Saval, andRebecca Solnit, alongside reprinted remarks made atZucotti Park byJudith Butler andSlavoj Žižek. Taylor, Greif, Gessen, and others contributed segments entitled "Scenes from an Occupation," which reported the day-to-day conditions atOccupy Wall Street; "Scenes from Occupied Atlanta" and "Scenes from Occupied Boston", among others, reported from their respective locations around the country.London School of Economics professorJason Hickel praised the book for its timeliness and "moments of excellent insight", but noted that the speed with whichOccupy! was published limited the depth of its analysis.[23]
n+1, in 2014, initiated a publishing partnership withFarrar, Straus and Giroux subsidiaryFaber and Faber. The first publication,MFA vs NYC:Two Cultures of American Fiction, explores fiction's gravitation toward the academy in over a dozen essays from writers includingDavid Foster Wallace,George Saunders,Elif Batuman, andFredric Jameson. The editor ofMFA vs NYC,Chad Harbach, introduces the book with his essay of the same title from Issue 10 of the magazine.The New York Times praised it as a "serious, helpful and wily book," citing the various and intimate insights into the writing world that the book provides, from its "excellent miniature portraits ofFrank Conroy andGordon Lish" to "its gossip and confessional essays".[24]MFA vs NYC has inspired various responses throughout the literary world, notably Junot Diaz's essay inThe New Yorker, "MFA vs POC".[25] There are two additional books in the Faber and Faber series:Happiness, an anthology of selected works from the first ten years ofn+1, published in September 2014; andCity by City, a collection of some previously published pieces from n+1's online series of the same name (2015).
