No Regrets: Three Discussions by Dayna Tortorici

No Regrets: Three Discussions Reviews

• 
  Kari

  I first read this book at 23 and it was really interesting to reread it now, my 23-year-old marginalia and all. In some ways I feel like I’m so much more ready to receive this information now, a decade past the age for which it was intended, but also it’s fascinating to see the ways in which books and writers I became obsessed with in the intervening years are laid out here — and I didn’t even get it from this! But it’s like, oh, a passing mention of William Finnegan, and then of course Elif Batuman’s participation. 23-year-old me LOVED what she had to say in this book — she got the most underlined — and then 27-year-old me (a lifetime later, having no memory of this book) LOVED The Idiot. So it’s just fun to revisit and see this evolution laid out in book form.
• 
  Margaret

  The companion and follow up to
  n+1; What We Should Have Known: Two Discussions, it features many of the same elements from the previous set of interviews but all the interviewees (intentionally) are women. Just as fascinating as the previous volume.
• 
  Lucas Gelfond

  corinne lent this to me + i’ve been reading the last few days on the subway (including right now!) because it is small and light. some interesting stuff but nothing revelatory; interesting meta-discussion about books / relationship to reading and growing up.
• 
  Lauren

  "it's not a recommendation, but there is something about this, the position of consuming vs. the position of figuring out how to fill the world around you with art and action, which you can only do with people." (P 36)
  
• 
  dead letter office

  Worth reading mainly for Elif Batuman's crazy, hilarious, insightful monologues in the last section. The premise is pretty narrow and self-indulgent: a bunch of people affiliated with the n+1 literary magazine have conversations and then share their lightly-edited hot-takes with the rest of us. More than anything it reminded me of a literary version of those sports shows I sometime flip by on ESPN, where a bunch of dudes are posturing and pontificating and trying to outdo each other with silly bits of sports arcana and blustery insight. Only in this case it's all about Foucault and feminist theory and Judith Butler and Shulamith Firestone, rather than whether Lamarcus Aldridge is a future Hall of Famer. Anyway, there are interesting bits interspersed throughout and Elif Batuman redeems the whole project by being brilliant and funny and generally less pretentious that the rest of the crew.
  
  As a side note, I feel a little less alone in the world after finding that I'm not the only one who hated Henry Miller, Bukowski, Updike, Kerouac, and the rest of the talentless, humorless, pompous 20th century male hacks that somehow convinced each other, themselves, and the world that they were artists.
• 
  Jordan

  A wonderful little pamphlet that grew my reading list and opened fifteen tabs in my browser. And I didn't even start digging into the lists in the back of the book. This is the kind of loose discussion-based material that could make a podcast that I'd shoot straight into my veins. I want to know so much more about what all of these women think.
• 
  sophie

  such a lovely read and simply so fascinating! i love how much disagreement there is but still my tbr just doubled in length (and got completely reordered!!)
  
  im gonna call it - best book of the year (so far but gonna be a hard one to beat..!)
• 
  Shlby

  Themes: wishing for people to guide them, conversely wishing that they read things they didn't have to
• 
  jadakinz

  needed to read this
• 
  rem

  i inhale everything that has elif batuman in it.
  she is sooo witty and full of life nuggets to give away. i always feel like coming out a better person after muddling with her writings^^
• 
  Sean Carman

  No Regrets: Three Discussions is the N + 1 follow-up to What We Should Have Known, a tiny book the New York publisher brought out in 2007. What We Should Have Known presented transcripts of two panel discussions of N + 1 writers and editors. The idea, according to Keith Gessen’s one-page introduction, was to answer the “canon-based” approach to college study by identifying contemporary classics and by, in Gessen’s words, “articulating a better reason to read the best books ever written than that they authorize and underwrite a system of brutal economic competition and inequality.
  
  But a funny thing happened on the way to compiling a contemporary, Marxist-friendly literary canon. Perhaps guided by the subtext of its title, What We Should Have Known turned into a roundtable discussion of reading regrets. Which made the book complicated and entertaining. If there is such a thing as “the reading life” (there isn’t, not really), it would have to be a life of regrets as much as one of enrichment and entertainment. There are too many books! There isn’t enough time! You can’t possibly read everything, much less read it in the proper chronology. Reading What We Should Have Known is like eavesdropping on a group of super-smart readers confessing to what they wish they had done differently. Actually, it isn’t like that, it is that. It’s a fun, easy-but-still-smart read.
  
  It’s seven years later (already!) and N + 1 is under the leadership of a new generation of editors. One of them, Dayna Totorici, has resurrected Gessen’s project but with a twist. No Regrets: Three Discussions presents three panels instead of two, the cast this time is all female, and the conversations driven by a feminist sensibility. Tortorici’s super-sharp introduction explains that, for women, the injunction “should” in the title of the first volume embodies the double-possibility of female subjection and emancipation. The book, she explains, presents conversations about women becoming themselves. They are, she suggests, the kinds of conversations women tend not to have when there are boys around.
  
  First and foremost, No Regrets offers the reader the experience of reading about reading. It’s a small-scale version of what I imagine reading Rebecca Mead’s book on Middlemarch would be like, but with less time spent on more literary subjects. Joan Didion comes and goes, as do Rebecca Solnit, Henry James, Judith Butler and Roland Barthes. What We Should Have Known was like this, too. Personally, I think it’s a good thing these books are small. The paradox (and the problem) in reading about reading is that while you are reading, you aren’t actually reading anything.
  
  The loose focus of these discussions — how did these women writers and readers become themselves? — is, as Tortorici says, not so much more or less interesting than the focus on the previous book — my misspent literary youth — as it is refreshingly different. Still, I missed the complexity and delightful irony of reading a discussion that at once celebrated and mourned the privilege of having the time to read practically everything. In the first book, the authors’ sense of entitlement (imagine being as well-read as these people, and at such a young age!) was nicely balanced by the remorse they shared in having not taken full advantage of (if not full-on wasting) their gifts of curiosity and ample leisure time. Here, the discussion orbits around calls to action (girls should stop texting and playing the tambourine at garage band hang-outs and pick up a guitar), refusals to admit regret (as suggested by the title), and tributes to influential feminists and critics (Didion, Butler, and Chris Krauss, author of I Love Dick, which sounds amazing).
  
  But I don’t mean to sound negative. If you enjoyed What We Should Have Known, or if it sounds like fun to briefly drop in on a well-edited conversation among super-smart book people, you should definitely read this book. My favorite panel is the last one, and my favorite critic is, as always, Elif Batuman, who offers a brilliant digression on the relationship between fashion advice and the danger of the writer’s instrumental manipulation of a subject’s conception of her own identity; a wonderful summary of why I Love Dick is a masterpiece; and the charming advice her small Turkish aunt always gave her on the phone (which I can’t repeat without spoiling the book’s hilarious and perfect ending).
  
  Dayna Totorici is right. You wouldn’t hear these conversations among a group of men, and you might not even hear them in a group that included just one man. No Regrets is a quick and fun read, an engaging public conversation, a pocket feminist anthem. You should throw a few bucks to the next generation of N + 1 and get yourself a copy. You’ll be glad you did.
• 
  Lukia

  I just wanted more
• 
  Sarah Sinclair

  It was enjoyable to relate to the thoughts flowing through these discussions. I am curious how I would read this and how I would answer the questions in 10 years.
  
  “I realized that whatever I wanted to do in the evening I should be doing during the day.” (84)- Astra Taylor
• 
  Sarah

  I really enjoyed reading this. I started to read "What We Should Have Known," and found it almost impossible to care about a roundtable of dudes gushing about Henry Miller. So I switched to this and was much relieved. Lots of helpful ways of thinking about reading and the purpose of reading in here, especially for me as a teacher. Dawn Lundy Martin, in the first discussion, talked about her memories of reading To Kill a Mockingbird and being the only black person in the classroom--but not having the necessary language or tools to analyze what exactly was making her uncomfortable and then voice that discomfort. And I thought, YES. That is a very important reason to read: to give yourself the tools to understand the world around you and put them to voice. Also helpful was the discussion of the "secret canon," and how every social circle (or presumably university) has its own subset of canonical texts that act as a shibboleth for entry.
  
  The last discussion was the least satisfying, given how the best advice they all got was to turn down jobs and not do things they didn't love. That advice--though it may have been good for the women discussing it--would be disastrous for most people. That advice clearly comes from a place of privilege: an Ivy League education, parents who have the means to be a backup support system, the sure knowledge that you DO have the human capital to be hirable because you are already white and middle or upper class.
  
  Also, how have I not read Judith Butler yet?
• 
  Nicole

  I don't think I would've read this if it wasn't for my Emily Books subscription, but I enjoyed it. It made me nostalgic for my early years of university, when Butler and Haraway and other feminist theorists were new and overwhelming for me, and I had all these ideas about what books I should read in order to be taken seriously. I think I was more willing to suffer through books that were dense or obtuse or not easily accessible back then, but I also wasted my time on some bullshit just because it was highly regarded by people I thought I should respect. I love the idea of a "Secret Canon," that definitely exists.
• 
  Emily Carlin

  - Read this laying on a towel on the lawn of the Cambridge Public Library while the sun set, mid-Juneish.
  - I love reading transcripts of conversations so this was pure pleasure in that sense.
  - Lots of people were changed by I Love Dick - I wonder if I will look back on reading it this summer as a game changer.
• 
  Kay

  I wish n+1 had included more activists and social scientists. I'd love to see a similar book that interviews those who strive for social change. Though generally engrossing, a lot of n+1's works come off as insular, industry publications for those in the visual and literary arts.
• 
  Juli Anna

  Women writers and intellectuals talking about the books they read in their youth that informed who they are. Great conversation, but it will make you feel like you wasted your twenties reading trash. Most of these women were reading Joyce and Judith Butler in high school.
• 
  Orgio Orgil

  Different people lead different lives. Less judgement, more understanding. We should all try to do better than we did yesterday. At the end of the day, we are all living for the first time on this earth. Memento Mori aka 'MM'.
• 
  Sydney

  v timely
• 
  Jackie

  Will definitely be dipping back into this one for book recommendations and general lady life advice.