n+1 Issue 7: Correction by n+1

n+1 Issue 7: Correction Reviews

• 
  Paul

  I don't have much doubt that the editors and writers of n+1 have good intentions, but what they come off as is hyperacademic, cynical, sanctimonious, pretentious, and hypercritical of, like, everything. This issue by far the worst I've read so far. Film critic A.S. Hamrah spends 25 pages criticizing 36 war films that he/she watched one summer. And this is fine, I'm sure the films were all bad (most movies are), but do we need an entire article of pure opprobrium? What really upset me, though, is that Hamrah described watching these films, "with no disrespect to anyone who died on September 11 or anyone fighting in the Iraq war" (I'm paraphrasing here), as being (no longer paraphrasing) "like being buried under rubble while working in an office, like being stuck in the desert far from home, invaded by an occupying army, left tied in a stress position for days." I don't even know a single soldier, nor do I know anyone who died in the 9/11 attacks, and this statement is offensive to me. It also discloses, I think, n+1's general attitude: criticize with reckless abandon, and at all costs. If nothing else, it's a careless journalistic statement. In another article, Mark Grief uses the phrase "I could care less about . . . " which is an even carelesser journalistic statement; I'd even say it's unforgivable. There's a completely unoriginal and predictable short story (a huge letdown after Caleb Crain's stunning piece in issue six), a specious article about the international DJ scene, and the requisite far-eastern European article, a region with which n+1 seems completely obsessed, as if they're only living in America out of some obligation, but they really belong in Russia or somewhere, if only.
  
  Again, I don't really doubt that they mean well, and I'm not saying that a lot -- most, maybe -- of the writing isn't interesting. It's just that it's clouded in so much cynical negativity. I met Keith Gessen briefly at a reading he gave for All the Sad Young Literary Men, a book I really enjoyed, and excitedly told him I was interested in Creative Writing MFA programs. He kind of scoffed, looked down, and wrote in my copy of ASYLM something like, "Let this book serve as a warning to you." Thanks, ass. I'll be sure to go through life hating everything that doesn't live up to my impossibly elitist standards, i.e. America. Indeed, last I heard, Gessen had moved to Moscow. It's unfortunate because these people are really talented writers and thinkers, and I don't disagree that this country is pretty fucked up. Something about n+1 just strikes me as supremely misguided.
• 
  Josie

  Obsessed w/ Elif Batuman. Also plenty of other things. For example Hedge Fund Manager aka HFM is (shockingly) a whole new perspective on the recession. Best is in next issue when he starts to talk about how he wishes we could trade with the Martians as that would be the only entity wholly unconnected to the US Dollar.
  
  
• 
  Joseph

  Some of the editorializing in this issue is just crap but the interview with the Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager is awesome and worth reading even if the rest of the magazine was, literally, poop.