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. For they, read the critics, whatever their complaints, of Gessen’s book. One Gawker commenter finished his boast: “in remainder copies of our crappy novels.” But guess what? I come to praise Gessen, not to bury him. In All the Sad Young Literary Men he’s accomplished a near-Wavian satire of his New York City milieu, and, whether or not that’s what he intended, such an achievement speaks to an undeniable eye for detail and ear for dialogue. He has captured the zeitgeist and served it to us raw and bloody.
Gessen’s story follows three young men—Mark, Keith, and Sam—as they beat on (and off), borne back ceaselessly by ripple upon eddy of inconvenience. What they have in common is a desire
