Grads Reveal Secrets From Within the ‘n+1’ Offices

The Lower East Side headquarters of the not-yet-three-year-old journal n+1 is perhaps not very different from many other rented Manhattan offices. It’s small and slightly unkempt. Rows of books and past issues of the magazine line the walls ,along with other oddities like readers’ letters, notes and lists pinned to a dartboard. A letter of praise for the magazine by novelist Don DeLillo is proudly tacked on to the wall. If the messiness represents the stereotypical traits of a modern bohemian intellectual, then the DeLillo letter is undoubtedly symbolic of the meteoric success of the journal since its initial publication in 2004.

On April 12, the founders and current editors of n+1 will make stops in Cambridge and Boston to give readings of articles from their latest issue at The Crimson, Brookline Booksmith and The Harvard Advocate as part of a week-long tour of greater New England.

LETTING IT ALL OUT

“I think we want to actually meet our readers,” says Mark J. Greif ’97, one of the founders and current editors of the journal.

Greif, along with Keith A. Gessen ’97, Benjamin O. Kunkel ’96 and Marco Roth published the first issue of n+1 in the fall of 2004, (though an earlier Kinko’s-printed, hand-stapled prototype was technically the first manifestation of the journal) with the hope of addressing their collective concerns about the problems, happenings, and phenomena plaguing modern society.

“We have been talking about these things that bothered us, and then began writing short pieces, mostly for each other.” These individual essays eventually became one of the defining features of the journal and were grouped under the banner, “The Intellectual Situation.”

Despite having similar interests, the editors rarely agree completely with each other. In fact, argument and debate have proved to be the lifeblood of the journal.

“Things would get really ugly,” says Greif jokingly, describing the debates between the editors. “The key thing is we always stand behind the piece even when somebody else would write it differently. There usually are many attempts by someone else to write it... and you’ll come in and be like, What happened to my prose? What happened to my ideas? and you’ll have to undo what the previous person did up to a point. They would have been argued out enough that we would say, ‘I don’t always agree with it, but I stand by it.’”

INTELLECTUAL FISTICUFFS

Since the first issue, topics ranging from modern society’s addiction to email and internet porn to global warming to the decline in the number of people reading literature have all been covered. The intention behind these pieces is often one of provocation.

“People who read the magazine are out there and sometimes they write letters in which they disagree with the articles at length and then you’re like, ‘At last! We’ve done what we’ve wanted. We’ve made people angry because they’ve read the stuff and they’ve replied,” says Greif.

Among the most prominent responders is James Wood, senior editor of The New Republic and Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard. In the initial issue of n+1, the editors wrote, “Poor James Wood! Now here was a talent—but an odd one, with a narrow, aesthetician’s interests and idiosyncratic tastes.”

The essay further accused The New Republic of employing “wholly negative methods” in its book reviews. Wood responded with an 11-page letter (later published in the third issue), which included the retort, “[n+1] had serious and sensible things to say about a certain strain of negative reviewing...but it was itself a wholly negative attack on negativity.”

TAKING IT TO THE PEOPLE

Despite their spattering on the page, Greif says there is actually quite a bit of mutual admiration between the editors of n+1 and Wood. On the other hand, the journal has received some actually hostile responses from bloggers. The prominent Manhattan media blog Gawker.com mockingly refers to the journal as “the most important literary magazine of our time.” The upcoming n+1 tour is, in part, an attempt to counter these criticisms.

“There’s been a lot of noise on the web lately about n+1 as a phenomenon by writers for whom it’s never clear if they’ve ever read an issue cover-to-cover or even at all,” says Greif. “If you’re producing stuff it becomes very peculiar and ultimately kind of dangerous to listen to people who talk about you as some alienated presence. If you could go to your readers and they would stand up and denounce you, then you really have something.”

FUTURE IMPERFECT

Despite all the attention the journal has received, a future of longevity is certainly not written in the stars. Even legendary publications such as The Partisan Review have recently become defunct as a result of the death of founders and a lack of funds.

“The current print run of n+1 is around 7,000 copies per issue,” says Alexandra Heifetz, the business manager of the magazine. This number, though seemingly small, is in fact rather impressive. At its peak, the print run of The Partisan Review only reached around 15,000. Nonetheless, the editors recognize the need for reassessment.

“In the first of our issues, we sort of laid the groundwork,” adds Chad D. Harbach ’97, who recently became a full-time editor of the magazine.

“We did a lot of criticizing and, as magazines often do, when they start, looking around and observing the culture and leveling a critique and establishing the necessity of your own work,” he says. “We’ve called for a re-imagining of literary and political life and in a way now its time for us to deliver on this.”

—Staff writer Eric W. Lin can be reached at ericlin@fas.harvard.edu.