"The Drift is missing these bravura first-person essays that N+1 did really well"
So is n+1, I'm afraid. Personally I think most of their perceived decline is just the decline of this whole thing - it's not clear that there's such a thing as a star essayist who wasn't grandfathered in from an earlier era. I also think though that, as tiresome as people will find this, n+1 has been really badly hurt by their narrowing range of acceptable political views. My two favorite essays of theirs ever are Yang's "Face of Seung Hui Cho" and Eli S. Evans's "Don't Say No" - neither of which they would ever publish today.
Oh man, when I was in college (2012-2016) n+1 really made an impression on me and there was a set of essays I'd frequently re-read until just the last few years (at some point the shock wears off I guess). The Intellectual Situations "World Lite" and "Against the Rage Machine" were just exactly how I wanted to be able to write. I spent so many years following up on writers approvingly mentioned in "World Lite". Sarah Nicole Prickett was writing for them sometimes those days and her essays "The Ultimate Humiliation" and "The Stanford Letters" are still for my money the high point of the era's online feminist writing. (I don't get the sense she was launched by n+1, but wow. So great).
Jeanne-Marie Jackson's "The African Novel of Ideas" was honestly a bit hard to get through but she's the real deal, immersed in literary traditions in multiple languages, and I was glad they published her. Mara Smith on the 2016 primary is basically the only thing I've read about it that felt nontrivial. "The Tax Man" by Imraan Coorvadia about....corruption in South Africa, the ANC, and his family, is one of the best things I've ever read. I always really respected the sense that n+1 wanted to not be provincial, and wanted readers to know something meaningful about countries they probably didn't know much about. And the sense of humor! n+1 is *funny* - I loved "Editorial Debates" and "The Rest is Indeed Horseshit" series for reactions and behind the scenes.
There were definitely more inert pieces - I remember a long one on Tao Lin that only had one line I liked, Tortorici's piece on instagram I saw people recommending on twitter but I didn't get anything out of it, and a first person essay called Rhodocycles felt like a total waste of time. Much later when I had a stable address and salary I subscribed to the print edition; the main thing I remember from that was "Good Night, Boa Vista", an amazing first person essay about refugees, economic migrants, and the relationship between Venezuela and Brazil. Battistoni's first person piece about grad student unionizing is a bit overrated for me - too long, too meandering - but "Your job as an organizer was to find out what it was that people wanted to be different in their lives, and then to persuade people that it mattered whether they decided to do something about it. This is not the same thing as persuading people that the thing itself matters: they usually know it does. The task is to persuade people that they matter: they know they usually don’t." is....fantastic.
Tl;dr I started reading n+1 probably after the peak but while it was still an electrifying introduction to the contemporary writing world
The "So What?" section is the one I keep turning over. The Zeavin and Scherlis pieces you single out don't answer it by analysing. They see the strange thing clearly enough that the first-person voice can just hold it. Which makes me wonder whether the ones that fail are less under-analysed than under-seen. When the attention is exact enough the significance takes care of itself, and when it isn't, no amount of analysis rescues it. Great article, thanks for sharing.
Do you anticipate doing a review of The Point? I have a soft spot for it, because it came together shortly after I graduated from the U of C, and I would be really interested to hear what you think of it!
Oh man, Bob Avakian. I have heard of n+1 and probably even read some things from it over the years, but now I am going to have to pick up the recent issue with the Avakian cult essay in it just out of sheer curiosity, even if the whole isn't as good as the earlier parts.
Very interesting! I can’t stand the condescension of N+1 but I agree that their achievement is objectively impressive.
The main way N+1 affected my life was that I happened to attend Ephemerisle the year after N+1 wrote a supercilious takedown of Ephemerisle. So lots of people at the event were frightened and angry the instant they learned I was a writer 😹
"I am extremely tall (99% percentile), my daughter is only 95% percentile. Her daughter will probably be even shorter. That’s how life works. Good things get worse."
Gee, thanks a lot, Ms Tall-is-good. Reach down till I can poke you in the snoot. Lovingly.
On the "star essayist," I too was enthralled and thrilled back in the day, in my case, by Marc Greif, among others. Thank you for the memories, @samuelmather. I hope the star essayist as a phenomenon is not gone. Or, if it is, then my fervent wish is that it come back.
When you think - y'all reading this, not just @samuelmather - about the *prototypical* star essayist, what comes to mind?
Do they have an active social media presence or none at all? Did they go to the right schools or does it not occur to you to ask? Do they publish frequently or infrequently? Is their style arch, down to earth, elitist, journalistic? Do they lay traps in their writing or are they straight-forward and earnest? Do they say "y'all" in order to lay such a trap? Do they get meta on everything or avoid doing that?
Do they espouse the current ideology, perfectly crystalizing the intellectual foundations for, and making the most elegant expression of, the opinions that 90% of New York intellectuals take on board more or less thoughtlessly? And if they do that, does everyone recognize in these essays their own thoughts, and say, "Yes, that's what I think but I didn't have the words?"
In other words, do they epitomize the current paradigm, whatever it is? Or do they, instead, challenge the current paradigm which 90% of New York intellectuals mindlessly mouth at apartment parties? And while challenging the current paradigm, do they still lay it out in a perfect crystallization while also showing how ridiculous, dangerous, thoughtless, hypocritical and self-serving it is? And while they are exposing the flaws of the current paradigm in this way, do they still find readers who say "That's what I think, I just didn't have the words?"
Nell Zink wrote a short essay for N+1 once that has since disappeared (or maybe it was the Millions... but at the time she was publishing a lot in N+1) Anyway, it was about how to become a novelist. Written in the form of a sharp (because Nell Zink always is) and heavily spiced (one point on the list was to the effect of: "hem and haw about your novel for a year, write two sentences, and then fuck off to Yaddo and finish it in two weeks. No one will tell you, but this is actually what everyone basically does." Which just sounds entirely too authentic to be left in the wild. If anyone else can attribute it for me, I lost the link years ago, but I know it still exists.) This was after the changeover, but it was immaculate. And I'm pretty sure the piece ruffled some feathers somewhere.
Oh, and plus one back around 2010 or 2012 was amazing. But the founding editors are no longer there. I think that’s partly the reason for the decline. If you Google their names, you’ll know that they’re doing bigger far bigger things right now. I’m still in touch with some of the old editors. It was the first magazine I was published in back in 2012.
Enjoyed this. Want to raise a flag on behalf of Nicholas Hamburger, a fascinating author whose first two (very long) works of fiction appeared in current iterations of N+1 , to their great credit. Hamburger's stories can be found here: https://www.nplusonemag.com/authors/hamburger-nicholas/
"The Drift is missing these bravura first-person essays that N+1 did really well"
So is n+1, I'm afraid. Personally I think most of their perceived decline is just the decline of this whole thing - it's not clear that there's such a thing as a star essayist who wasn't grandfathered in from an earlier era. I also think though that, as tiresome as people will find this, n+1 has been really badly hurt by their narrowing range of acceptable political views. My two favorite essays of theirs ever are Yang's "Face of Seung Hui Cho" and Eli S. Evans's "Don't Say No" - neither of which they would ever publish today.
they stopped answering my emails like eight years ago (I'm Eli S. Evans)!.
LOL! Best comment in the thread
https://naomik.substack.com/p/n1?r=fm61l&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=296594717 I posted in the main thread even though I was responding to your comment and Samuel Mather's.
Oh man, when I was in college (2012-2016) n+1 really made an impression on me and there was a set of essays I'd frequently re-read until just the last few years (at some point the shock wears off I guess). The Intellectual Situations "World Lite" and "Against the Rage Machine" were just exactly how I wanted to be able to write. I spent so many years following up on writers approvingly mentioned in "World Lite". Sarah Nicole Prickett was writing for them sometimes those days and her essays "The Ultimate Humiliation" and "The Stanford Letters" are still for my money the high point of the era's online feminist writing. (I don't get the sense she was launched by n+1, but wow. So great).
Jeanne-Marie Jackson's "The African Novel of Ideas" was honestly a bit hard to get through but she's the real deal, immersed in literary traditions in multiple languages, and I was glad they published her. Mara Smith on the 2016 primary is basically the only thing I've read about it that felt nontrivial. "The Tax Man" by Imraan Coorvadia about....corruption in South Africa, the ANC, and his family, is one of the best things I've ever read. I always really respected the sense that n+1 wanted to not be provincial, and wanted readers to know something meaningful about countries they probably didn't know much about. And the sense of humor! n+1 is *funny* - I loved "Editorial Debates" and "The Rest is Indeed Horseshit" series for reactions and behind the scenes.
There were definitely more inert pieces - I remember a long one on Tao Lin that only had one line I liked, Tortorici's piece on instagram I saw people recommending on twitter but I didn't get anything out of it, and a first person essay called Rhodocycles felt like a total waste of time. Much later when I had a stable address and salary I subscribed to the print edition; the main thing I remember from that was "Good Night, Boa Vista", an amazing first person essay about refugees, economic migrants, and the relationship between Venezuela and Brazil. Battistoni's first person piece about grad student unionizing is a bit overrated for me - too long, too meandering - but "Your job as an organizer was to find out what it was that people wanted to be different in their lives, and then to persuade people that it mattered whether they decided to do something about it. This is not the same thing as persuading people that the thing itself matters: they usually know it does. The task is to persuade people that they matter: they know they usually don’t." is....fantastic.
Tl;dr I started reading n+1 probably after the peak but while it was still an electrifying introduction to the contemporary writing world
https://naomik.substack.com/p/n1?r=fm61l&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=296594717 I posted in the main thread even though I was responding to your comment and DeBoer's.
The "So What?" section is the one I keep turning over. The Zeavin and Scherlis pieces you single out don't answer it by analysing. They see the strange thing clearly enough that the first-person voice can just hold it. Which makes me wonder whether the ones that fail are less under-analysed than under-seen. When the attention is exact enough the significance takes care of itself, and when it isn't, no amount of analysis rescues it. Great article, thanks for sharing.
In terms of what changed, Marco Roth wrote a piece about that very thing in The Point a few months back: https://thepointmag.substack.com/p/serpents-in-the-garden
Do you anticipate doing a review of The Point? I have a soft spot for it, because it came together shortly after I graduated from the U of C, and I would be really interested to hear what you think of it!
Oh man, Bob Avakian. I have heard of n+1 and probably even read some things from it over the years, but now I am going to have to pick up the recent issue with the Avakian cult essay in it just out of sheer curiosity, even if the whole isn't as good as the earlier parts.
My mom followed this guy back in the 70s and 80s. I didn’t know he was still causing so much havoc.
Very interesting! I can’t stand the condescension of N+1 but I agree that their achievement is objectively impressive.
The main way N+1 affected my life was that I happened to attend Ephemerisle the year after N+1 wrote a supercilious takedown of Ephemerisle. So lots of people at the event were frightened and angry the instant they learned I was a writer 😹
"I am extremely tall (99% percentile), my daughter is only 95% percentile. Her daughter will probably be even shorter. That’s how life works. Good things get worse."
Gee, thanks a lot, Ms Tall-is-good. Reach down till I can poke you in the snoot. Lovingly.
On the "star essayist," I too was enthralled and thrilled back in the day, in my case, by Marc Greif, among others. Thank you for the memories, @samuelmather. I hope the star essayist as a phenomenon is not gone. Or, if it is, then my fervent wish is that it come back.
When you think - y'all reading this, not just @samuelmather - about the *prototypical* star essayist, what comes to mind?
Do they have an active social media presence or none at all? Did they go to the right schools or does it not occur to you to ask? Do they publish frequently or infrequently? Is their style arch, down to earth, elitist, journalistic? Do they lay traps in their writing or are they straight-forward and earnest? Do they say "y'all" in order to lay such a trap? Do they get meta on everything or avoid doing that?
Do they espouse the current ideology, perfectly crystalizing the intellectual foundations for, and making the most elegant expression of, the opinions that 90% of New York intellectuals take on board more or less thoughtlessly? And if they do that, does everyone recognize in these essays their own thoughts, and say, "Yes, that's what I think but I didn't have the words?"
In other words, do they epitomize the current paradigm, whatever it is? Or do they, instead, challenge the current paradigm which 90% of New York intellectuals mindlessly mouth at apartment parties? And while challenging the current paradigm, do they still lay it out in a perfect crystallization while also showing how ridiculous, dangerous, thoughtless, hypocritical and self-serving it is? And while they are exposing the flaws of the current paradigm in this way, do they still find readers who say "That's what I think, I just didn't have the words?"
Nell Zink wrote a short essay for N+1 once that has since disappeared (or maybe it was the Millions... but at the time she was publishing a lot in N+1) Anyway, it was about how to become a novelist. Written in the form of a sharp (because Nell Zink always is) and heavily spiced (one point on the list was to the effect of: "hem and haw about your novel for a year, write two sentences, and then fuck off to Yaddo and finish it in two weeks. No one will tell you, but this is actually what everyone basically does." Which just sounds entirely too authentic to be left in the wild. If anyone else can attribute it for me, I lost the link years ago, but I know it still exists.) This was after the changeover, but it was immaculate. And I'm pretty sure the piece ruffled some feathers somewhere.
Oh, and plus one back around 2010 or 2012 was amazing. But the founding editors are no longer there. I think that’s partly the reason for the decline. If you Google their names, you’ll know that they’re doing bigger far bigger things right now. I’m still in touch with some of the old editors. It was the first magazine I was published in back in 2012.
Very much appreciated this introduction to both outlets. Quick correction: it’s Stephanie Burt now
Ahh yes, I knew that, can’t believe I let that slip
It's not what it used to be and it was never what people want to remember it as
Re "according to its 990 forms": You are officially 99.9% more diligent than other reviewers.
I wonder if The Drift's rejection of personal essays is because the personal has infected everything.
These lit journal reviews are really excellent.
Enjoyed this. Want to raise a flag on behalf of Nicholas Hamburger, a fascinating author whose first two (very long) works of fiction appeared in current iterations of N+1 , to their great credit. Hamburger's stories can be found here: https://www.nplusonemag.com/authors/hamburger-nicholas/