No Regrets: Three Discussions

n+1 Discussions

by Dayna Tortorici (Editor), Elif Batuman (Contributor), Namara Smith (Contributor)

No Regrets is a set of three transcribed roundtable discussions with 12 participants and moderator Dayna Tortorici about what the women recall from their lives and reading lists in their early twenties.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Essays

127 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2013

Reviews

[Kaleigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of the book is No Regrets, with the idea of interviewing the panelists about their college years and the formative books they read or wished they'd read and to give advice to people who are students now.

The first group of panelists is by far the most unwelcoming. They spend more time lamenting how cringe they were in college than offering actual recommendations or advice to readers. “This is embarrassing but Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg [and] Zami by Audre Lorde [once mattered to me]” (Martin); “This is really embarrassing [but I was inspired by Natural Born Killers while in college]” (Dombek); “This is embarrassing but I used to go to [raves]” (Resnick). None of this stuff is embarrassing??? It just feels so judgmental and snobbish—in so vehemently disavowing things they've grown away from it doesn't leave room for the reader to feel empowered to tread their own growth.

The second and third groups are more forgiving, more analytic about the things in their past that don’t hold up for them today. “I hope it still has that magic for someone encountering it for the first time… Maybe you have to be 20 and have never experienced anything like it before,” (Gould) has a lot more grace than the first group’s “It feels dumb now, but it changed my life” (Dombek). But they are still pretentious. For example, there is a panelist who speaks about a two-year speedrun at Brown to which her father responded, "I'm so happy you got the silly ivy league thing out of your system.” My god.

The third group contains Elif Batuman, whom other reviewers mention is the highlight of the book—the one panelist who makes the whole book worth it. They are right. She is the best part. She is verbose and you can kind of tell she's taking the piss, just loving the sound of her own voice. But she is funny and has whims and wiles and comes across as a welcome chaos to the other panelists’ stuffy and crafted personas.

The advice is thin, the recommendations are unsurprising and not revelatory. Every group mentions Judith Butler's Gender Troubles, Chris Kraus's I Love Dick, and Eileen Myles's Chelsea Girls. There's some Henry James, Joan Didion, and Foucault. It's not vital. But there are some validating stories like Blumenkranz's struggle trying to keep up with her Harvard peers' "secret canon," and Batuman's petty spite reading (or eschewing) authors because of men in her life. And I mean, I read the whole thing? So?

[dead letter office · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Kari · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kinda not what I expected. I wanted the writers to talk about life regrets and most of what they talked about was books they haven't read, academic laments. Everytime Elif comes on is really funny though. Her life just bursts onto the page like an alien's.

[Janina · Rating 2 out of 5]

The third discussion was the best, the first two seemed more surface-level.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like knowing what women writers read but I did feel like some were more evasive or not given enough time/space to discuss the works that animate their writing.

I’ve been thinking of my own list of college books: Plainwater, A History of Scientific Revolutions, Ariel, A Thousand Plateaus, The Waves, The Bluest Eye, Simulacra and Simulation, Notes from Underground…surprised that there aren’t more poetry books that come to mind…

[Lucas Gelfond · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[saum · Rating 3 out of 5]

i loove hearing people talk ab their relationship with reading & books & writing so i enjoyed this; tbh once u get to group 3 and get to witness elif batuman’s rants, u realise what a yawn the other 2 groups were- felt like they were all just name dropping at times :|

wld be a good gift to someone ab to enter college

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

"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)

[Andrew Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It feels wrong to be the first review on this, so let me simply say that I have this thing dog-eared within an inch of its life. "Secret Canon", "Wrong Science" and "Advice" especially.

oh, and:

DAYNA TORTORICI: What would Jack London do? Christ. You'd be dead.

[Jack Wolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Women writers talking about meaningful books. My only complaint is that it’s too short, I could read this sort of thing forever. As other reviewers have noted, it really picks up steam in the third discussion, i.e. the one with Elif Batuman (I still need to read “Either/Or”!). It’s a book written for a college-aged or twentysomething audience, ideally female or queer in some way, but straight white men will get something out of it, too. Like you still meet Gen X dudes who only read Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac and it’s like, why don’t you fucking truly open your mind Mr. Free Spirit and read something by somebody who can identify a social trend beyond “women are making my world less fun,” who can produce a female character beyond a woman trying to make the world less fun.

I wish there were more guides like this, sort of loose and informal and idiosyncratic, but still packed with wisdom and ideas. Today’s algorithms are only ever recommending the same five things, and we’re just constantly asked to re-affirm the greatness of extremely popular books, movies, TV shows, etc. Frickin refreshing to just, like, hear smart, real people talking, often about things you've never heard of + immediately get added to your queue.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Yousseif Abdellatif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick take: No Regrets: Three Discussions is a clever, crowd-pleasing page-turner that lives and dies by its hook. What worked: a killer premise and chapters short enough to read on a coffee break. What didn't: the characters are thin, and the dialogue sometimes sounds like a script. Recommend for readers who just want a fun ride, skip for anyone who wants to feel anything deep.

[sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

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..!)

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I acquired this as an Elif Batuman completist, but I really enjoyed the other contributors too. It's mostly a transcript of (for me) cool older sisters talking about their secret canons.

[Shlby · Rating 3 out of 5]

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

[Wendy Liu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Better than the first in the series, imo. Really delightful to read.

[jada alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

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^^

[Ally · Rating 5 out of 5]

I desperately want to edit something like this.

[Kelly]

Only read the third section with Elif Batuman because that's all I was interested in. Some good thoughts about self-perception. Otherwise just an enjoyable speedread.

[Anjali · Rating 5 out of 5]

honestly a quick read and just felt like i was listening into a conversation down a dark hallway back at brown

[Sasha Smithie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy and enriching one day read

[Elizabeth]

yayyy … i love n+1 … i love women … reading these conversations made me feel so nourished

[aims · Rating 3 out of 5]

yes to elif!

[Ava Pallotta · Rating 3 out of 5]

this whole “being employed again” thing is getting in the way of my reading

[Sean Carman · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just wanted more

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cool, cool. I’ve mostly been spending my 20s reading romance— I need fluffy escapism!