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Fiction ChronicleNovember 2008 Beside the golden door by Stefan Beck On All the Sad Young Literary Men by Keith Gessen, A Mercy by Toni Morrison, Home by Marilynne Robinson, and Netherland by Joseph O'Neill. God’s mercy on the Sad Young Literary Man! When Keith Gessen’s debut came out in April—the second book, after Benjamin Kunkel’s Indecision (2005), to emerge from the editorial staff of n+1—it was received less charitably than he’d hoped.[1] Sure, Jonathan Yardley and Joyce Carol Oates praised it; one might think that ample encouragement for a first-time novelist. But just because Grandma finds your sailor suit adorable doesn’t mean you won’t get Indian burns on the playground, and before long the cruelties of the media website Gawker had Gessen crying in the sandbox. “I think deep down inside,” Gessen told an interviewer, “they know that we’re right. Because we are right. And we will bury them.” For we, read the “generational struggle” Gessen represents. ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 27 November 2008, on page 30 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Beside-the-golden-door-3938
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by Stefan Beck On The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta, Zone One by Colson Whitehead, The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco & Cain by José Saramago. by Stefan Beck On The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Slim by Jonathan Coe, Emily, Alone by Stewart O'Nan, Swamplandia! by Karen Russell & The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. by Stefan Beck On Freedom, 03, A Visit from the Goon Squad & Dogfight, A Love Story. by Stefan Beck On The Privileges by Jonathan Dee, Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett, The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris & The Ask by Sam Lipsyte.
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