Comments on: Dear Keith Gessen: "What is This Intellectual Mumbo-Jumbo??"

By: bmichael

bmichael — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:08:18 +0000

This is the greatest literary feud since Scocca/Grief.

By: joeclark

joeclark — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:16:11 +0000

Please â€“ donâ€™t give it another moniker. N+1 is bad enough. N+! is much worse. (And seems like l33tspeak!!!111!!!oneoneone)

By: 6h057

6h057 — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:25:05 +0000

What's wrong with little brown dog food?!

By: sailor

sailor — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:05:53 +0000

Love how this range war of ideas was waged here and not on Gawker.

Who?

By: MisterHippity

MisterHippity — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 02:56:34 +0000

Brave N+1 World

By: Abe Sauer

Abe Sauer — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:06:56 +0000

AND Yale.

By: Bittersweet

Bittersweet — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:45:22 +0000

Didn't Nietzsche do "me first" better a while back? Look how well it worked out for him, crying over horses and all.

By: Tulletilsynet

Tulletilsynet — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 23:08:00 +0000

Chairman Keith addresses his longsuffering lieutenants holed up in the barren hills, few but resolute, confident of ultimate victory over the running blogs of imperialism.
"Comrades! You have been invited to this forum today to exchange ideas and examine the relationship between work in the literary and artistic fields, and revolutionary work in general. Our aim is to ensure that revolutionary literature and art follow the correct path of development …"

By: Emily

Emily — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 03:02:10 +0000

thanks! my party is going to suck!

By: notwavingbutdrowning

notwavingbutdrowning — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:57:32 +0000

KG, blog comment: What *is* true on the whole about bloggers versus n+1 editors is that bloggers have refused to take what we used to call "the long march through the institutions."

Choire: I think you've got your marching orders.

By: notwavingbutdrowning

notwavingbutdrowning — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:53:32 +0000

I'd add that his discussion of women is just as off-putting: simplistic, ill-informed and (yes) repressively sentimental.

By: whygreenberg

whygreenberg — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 02:44:02 +0000

Oh yeah, and beyond what Dickdogfood commented, this too.

By: whygreenberg

whygreenberg — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 02:43:24 +0000

Spot on, Dickdogfood.

By: Kataphraktos

Kataphraktos — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 01:14:18 +0000

URGENT: We need to find out WHAT THE FUCK D.R. ADAMS AGGREGATED FOR HIS Q-BERT PIECE AND DROP LASER GUIDED BOMBS ON THIS SOURCE AT ONCE.

For all mankind.

By: Tulletilsynet

Tulletilsynet — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:30:39 +0000

These people are self-important children and the spankings Scocca and Abe gave them were undeserved kindnesses. There were actually a couple of nice insights in Greif's already adequately trashed recent piece. Problem is, we all already read "Notes on Camp."

As for the less derivative portions of this sage's "ongoing investigation of what happened to our modern utopia," here's one sample that Gessen offers:

"The utopia of television nearly came within reach in 1992, on the day cable providers announced that cable boxes would expand to 500 channels. Back then, our utopian idea rested on assumptions both right and wrong. "[Original boldface suppressed.]

An essayist who can make po-faced pronouncements about what might have brought about "the utopia of television" is already a person everybody can afford to forget about, no matter how well he executes the task he set himself.

And what shall we say of Gessen, who regards Greif as the next GWF Hegel, only more difficult, knotty and translated-from-the-German-sounding? Oh sorry, it's already been said several times above.

By: zidaane

zidaane — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:10:48 +0000

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMILY!

By: davidwatts

davidwatts — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:47:14 +0000

And now the tens of n+1 readers who are not already awl contributors have been drawn into your leviathan.

By: The Epicurean Dealmaker

The Epicurean Dealmaker — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:32:06 +0000

Pardon — "combine." My non-Harvardosity is showing. Ahem.

By: The Epicurean Dealmaker

The Epicurean Dealmaker — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:30:20 +0000

If nothing else, I vote we give Greif, Gessen, and N+1 each an honorary avocado for providing the material for excessively excellent making-fun-of-ness in these here pages.

Whether they choose to combined their avocados and create guacamole, I posit, should be left entirely up to them.

I am not judgmental.

By: slinkimalinki

slinkimalinki — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:17:53 +0000

seconded. even with the extraneous about.

By: My Number Is My Address

My Number Is My Address — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:16:40 +0000

This. Very well put.

By: pattycakes

pattycakes — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:52:45 +0000

i thought he had two of everything? what about GMO's? How did they get on there? they are MADE not to reproduce! gah!!!
(sorry, i was raised without religious practice by an ex-catholic and an ex-jew whose entire sex and drug talk was comprised of this: "don't ever do PCP".)

By: NominaStultorum

NominaStultorum — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:47:01 +0000

YOU'RE TEARING ME APART GESSEN

By: atipofthehat

atipofthehat — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:42:01 +0000

Thanks–didn't mean to seem that way. I'm sorry if the tone seemed inauthentic or patronizing. This is actually stuff that interests me, so when I think about it or write about it, I try to lay it out (for myself or for anyone) as simply as I can (without oversimplifying, if possible). As to what's inauthentic, that's just what gets me so interested: how much out there is a fake version of what it claims to be?

A Russian concept seems to fit these inauthentic things pretty well, calling out "the falsely important" and "bogus profundities": a fun page of a strange site at link. http://doggo.tripod.com/doggposhlust.html

By: Moff

Moff — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:24:28 +0000

@kitten: See? The magic was really inside you all along!

@Semper: Oh yeah, and all the unfictional dystopias too.