Keith Gessen’s novel, All the Sad Young Literary Men, was recently published. As a result, it stirred up scathing critiques as well as praiseworthy remarks. From the host of reviews I’ve found (both on the internet and elsewhere), no one has responded in a purely lukewarm manner. Nope. Mr. Gessen is either adored or reviled, and that’s where the critiques about his book stand too – all the contributing voices are absolutely opposed to one another.

So who is this Mr. Gessen anyway? Who cares? Mr. Gessen is a M.F.A. drop out from Syracuse University, and the editor for N + 1. As a literary magazine N + 1 exposes all the hackneyed writers of the world. Yippee. Gawker.com mockingly describes it as the “most important literary magazine of our time.” N + 1 sees itself as such, i.e. “mind blowingly intellectual,” and Gawker simply can’t help but invert such a problematic claim. Gessen’s personality, as well as this literary magazine, is throwing a wrench into my earlier comments that relate to Mr. Neyfakh’s article about Ms. Crosley’s supposedly fresh presence in the New York literary scene.

Suffice to say, Gawker’s staff writers are not particularly fond of Mr. Gessen. They have written a series of rancorous pieces (see here, as well as here, here, and finally here) that shred Mr. Gessen’s self-fashioned identity as a leading American intellectual and novelist. Since I am a fan of Gawker, and identify (for the most part) with their snarky tone and “showing things for what they really are” type of journalism, these pieces against Gessen are insightful as well as depressing.

[There’s a romantic back story to the first piece I referenced. If you’re interested in learning more about it, go scout out the countless pieces on Gawker about Emily Gould, an alumna of Gawker, and her previous relationship to Gessen. I won’t go into that stuff here]

So what how does Mr. Gessen relate to a piece about Ms. Crosley? The answer is simple: Based upon the evidence I’ve culled from Gawker, Crosley is obviously cooler than Gessen. What are the most telling pieces of evidence? EXHIBIT A, which came from Mr. Gessen’s own mouth; he confessed to checking his Amazon.com sales obsessively, and expressed frustration when he found that most of the visitors weren’t buying his book, but Crosley’s book instead. That raises another question: why is this guy so (publicly) insecure? I mean, really. It’s not like his book has been shredded by all worthy critics.

If a literary giant such as Joyce Carol Oates gives your novel an outstanding review, why would you think of admitting this secret to anyone as a writer? I don’t care if you’re confiding in your most best-est friend, your beloved wife/husband, your most trusted lover(s), a writer with any sense of dignity would never admit something like that. Hell, for that matter, any self-respecting author wouldn’t check their numbers on Amazon against another author just to determine the worthiness of their book – that’s pretty sad if you ask me.

Gawker isn’t the only place where you’ll find that Mr. Gessen is unpopular. As I mentioned, he’s drawing fire from a lot of different sources. As one critic wrote, “Mr. Gessen’s novel is an extended dark joke on his literary career.” EXHIBIT B: Mr. Gessen thinks he’s cooler and smarter than everybody else. It seems that Mr. Gessen is bent on making a name for himself by ridiculing other writers. (Ms. Crosley wouldn’t dare do such a thing, as she’s obviously too cute and funny to bother). In an effort to reclaim intellectualism and literature, Mr. Gessen and all his sad literary pals at N + 1 have checked humor, and all those delightful things related to levity, at the door. Put simply: Mr. Gessen takes himself too seriously.

In so doing, he’s a vulnerable target, and it’s no fault but his own. (If I were having a coffee with Mr. Gessen, I’d let him know that a mixture of heaviness and levity are a good thing, and that it sounds like he’s gone off the deep end, taken Nietzsche’s Z too seriously, and is stuck in a abyss at the moment. Valleys AND peaks are a good thing, Mr. Gessen). This is yet another piece of evidence for why I think it’s patently obvious that Ms. Crosley is a cooler cat than Mr. Gessen.

The way Mr. Gessen is described by his critics (and apparently even some of his fans) brings me back to the inspiration of this piece – NYC’s self-important, stuck-up, exclusive literary circles. He exudes that snobbish ennui that I find most despicable about literary circles. When I see them in that light, I start to think that Mr. Neyfakh has a point, and then I begin to feel grim. When I feel grim, I turn inward, and ponder the varying levels of Loserdom in our universe. Who likes doing that, Mr. Gessen? Why must you prove what I wish to be untrue about the publishing world of NYC? Before I delve into why I’m loser and how it relates to Ms. Crosley and Mr. Gessen, I need to take another break.

TO BE CONTINUED…