MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

Somewhere in Brooklyn, n+1 editor Keith Gessen was writing a note to the Orthodox Jewish lawyer whose taillight he had smashed while returning the Budget rent-a-truck in which he had retrieved Issue 6 from the printers’ warehouse—a fine illustration of the go-to, D-list spirit, by the way, because you don’t need me to tell you that Jann Wenner isn’t driving to Pennsylvania twice a week to pick up the new Rolling Stone. Meanwhile, on the West Coast, the n+1 panel discussion continued to generate interesting controversies and exciting revelations, including the disclosure that the tall mysterious man in the black dress, whose early departure had captivated the imagination of so many audience members (see previous post), was actually the D.J. for Saturday’s n+1 party.

All too often, as a writer, one never learns the identity or motivations of the various striking figures who leave early during one’s readings. Why did they come? Why did they leave? Where are they going? It all just finds its way onto the list of “life’s little mysteries.” So I was delighted, for once, to have my constant thirst for knowledge so unexpectedly satiated. “I’m going to write about this on my blog!” I announced.

Now here is the thing about the guys at n+1: they don’t like blogs. (You can read about it in “The Blog Reflex,” in Issue 5’s “Intellectual Situation”; or just Google “the blog reflex” to learn about the lively reception of this piece in the blogosphere.)

It emerged that Mark Greif is particularly unenamoured of blogs because, in addition to despising the internet, he also hates memoir, first-person narration, and subjectivity. (When I asked whether my blog was an exception, Mark looked kind of depressed: “Actually, I’m quite concerned about your blog.”) Mark dislikes subjectivity, on the grounds that it impedes analytic thought.

Other panel highlights included Chad Harbach’s characterization of the n+1 website as the “product of its own self-hatred.” An “ugly” collection of malfunctioning links and “messed-up archives,” Chad explained, the n+1 site is universally despised, including by its editors. As it happens, I actually kind of like their website. They almost always have good obituaries (a trend started by Marco Roth’s obituary for Jacques Derrida, a work notable for its subjectivity: it’s about how Marco took a seminar with Derrida on “hospitality,” and missed the date of his own in-class presentation on “the Book of Jonah and its contribution to the rhetoric of hospitality”). Even when no famous intellectuals have died, there is a new article every week. E.g., speaking of subjectivity, I recently enjoyed Justin E. H. Smith’s “Freispiel, Berlin”: the diary of a philosopher on a research fellowship in Berlin, where his furnished apartment turns out to come with a Terminator 2: Judgment Day–themed pinball machine:

“With pinball, it is not at all clear what the theme of the game—Terminator 2: Judgment Day, in this case—has to do with the game itself. Am I supposed to be the Arnold Schwarzenegger character, or am I supposed to be fighting against him? How could this ever be determined when ‘I’ am a perfectly spherical metal ball?”

Anyway—at some point in the panel, I suggested that the n+1 web site might have less self-hatred if they put ads on it, because making money can be good for self-esteem. In this way I learned that certain n+1 editors are strongly opposed to the idea of online ads. Apparently, they only want to make money from subscriptions, print ads, and tote bags. (Well, also they ran an ad in the back of Issue 5, something like, “Reader, has life given you more money than you think you deserve? Give some of it to n+1.” I think they are still waiting to hear back from the philanthropic community.)

Something about the combination of “self-hatred” and refusal to take money struck me as somehow unnecessarily Dostoevskian—and also, under the circumstances, kind of confusing, since the point of the Berkeley event was largely to get people to subscribe to n+1, and the only way to subscribe to n+1 is through their website. They were basically like, “Uh, our web-site sucks, the links are all broken… the subscription page, however, works remarkably well.” This got some laughs, but were they confused laughs?

I don’t know. I was confused. For me, there was something melancholy and poignant about the whole thing—particularly given n+1’s Financial Situation (which is such that it usually prohibits paying their writers). n+1 was actually doing well for a while, in the months following their unexpected write-up by A.O. Scott in the New York Times magazine (“Babel in California” is briefly and enigmatically mentioned as a work “that would make Mary McCarthy proud.” “What is that supposed to mean?” I remember my mother asking, on the telephone). This was back in 2005, when n+1 was run from the home of then–business manager Allison Lorentzen. (It was, incidentally, Allison’s ex-boyfriend Kurt, now a grad student in the German department at Berkeley, who got us the room in McCone Hall.) When Allison reached her threshold of willingness to share her apartment with the n+1 editorial board, operations were relocated to Keith Gessen’s living room; all too soon, however, the unforseen influx of n+1 interns necessitated the rental of an office, it being deemed unacceptable, as Mark put it, to put interns in a situation where they might see Keith Gessen in his underwear. Now they have “overhead.”

The next post will conclude the story of the n+1 Bay Area tour, and will feature appearances by both Keith Gessen and the really tall D.J. in the black robe.

Tags: d-list, events, Keith Gessen, n+1, venerability "Joan Silber"

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2007 at 8:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.