There was a full house on hand last night at New York's Housing Works Cafe and Bookstore for an Occupy Wall St. panel organized by n+1, Brooklyn's hometown literary journal. The panel was larger than advertised, totaling seven in addition to moderator and n+1 progenitor Keith Gessen. A healthy mix of contributors were on board: there was the earnest, washed-up political wonk who'd been sleeping in Zucotti Park for a month now, the filmmaker who'd been downtown since the very first meeting, the SEIU representative and the education policy activist; there were youngs and olds, students and professionals, seasoned organizers and first time protesters. READ MORE

Here are some thoughts on the consecutive rise of two Ryans. Ryan McGinley is the young superstar photographer who became famous in the early 00s. Ryan Trecartin, four years younger, began getting attention in 2006 and became art-world famous circa 2009. In their ways and work, the Ryans represent two adjacent micro-generations of gays. Christopher Glazek writes: "McGinley helped to elevate a necrophiliac vision of mute youth into the universal condition of downtown existence.... Now the new Ryan has negated McGinley’s negation, superseding the gym bunny-heroin corpse dialectic entrenched since the 1980s." In light of Trecartin's videos—which are girly, brash, multi-ethnic, screechy and hilarious—McGinley's snapshot-stylized pale thin hipster butts running through fields of wheat oddly start to become the images that seem ridiculous and fake and aspirational and advertorial.

It seems like Chad Harbach is everywhere right now. His debut novel, The Art of Fielding (the advance for which you probably heard about) is getting great reviews—as well it should. The book, about a college baseball phenom and his season, is a singular, smart, endlessly charming read. I talked with the author and N+1 editor earlier this week; Harbach being a Wisconsin native, we met up at the famously Packers/Brewers/Badgers-centric bar Kettle of Fish in the West Village. READ MORE

If you say "Michael Chabon, Michael Chabon, Michael Chabon" in the mirror that is the Internet, Ayelet Waldman appears. With an axe. Katie Roiphe—whose first book, You're Actually Just a Whore: Raping Doesn't Happen at College, was so ridiculous that she should never have been published again—wrote this week about her mother's newest memoir, which sounds like a captivating racy tale of bed-hopping in 1960s literary New York, thought it's also an excuse for Roiphe to further her latest interests, the perceived virility or flaccidity of the male novelist. In related news, there was an n+1 party this week.

Here are the last few thousand words on the topic of a new essay by Mark Greif in n+1. (The piece, On Repressive Sentimentalism, was published last week. I pointed it out to fellow readers while I was still digesting it. Later, Awl contributor Tom Scocca criticized it strenuously. N+1 editor Keith Gessen replied via his Tumblr, which I briefly addressed here.) Among other things, there was some confusion about "us" versus "them": who was a reader of n+1 and who was an Internet barbarian? (Who was both? *Raises hand slowly*) Anyway. And now, a couple of things about what follows, which is an extended correspondence, via email, between Scocca and Gessen. First, you're not actually encouraged, by anyone involved, to read it. Second, you are encouraged to engage in deep, calming breathing if you do choose to read on, particularly if you respond. Third, well, it's your afternoon, spend it however you like! READ MORE

Oh hi Keith Gessen, READ MORE