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n+1 Issue 31: Out There
Gun violence and the war on terror, x-philes and juveniles, climate crisis and housing crisis. Tech workers: organize! Nicholas Dames reads spy novels; Andrea Long Chu watches bad TV; Namara Smith reviews Zadie Smith.
196 pages, Unknown Binding
Published April 1, 2018
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n+1
64 books137 followersn+1 is a print journal of politics, literature, and culture, published originally twice a year and now three times a year.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 25, 2019
Not my favourite issue. Some great pieces but some were easy to skip. Alex Press’ article on tech worker organising is stellar, of course.
September 24, 2018
Highlights were definitely the two pieces on TV - Andrea Long Chu's Bad TV (on "woke" TV) and Natasha Stagg's Two Stops (on growing up with the X-Files), the two short stories from Helen DeWitt, and, as always, A. S. Hamrah's movie reviews. Not the strongest issue I've read but still worth going cover-to-cover.
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April 24, 2021Andrea Long Chu: "In truth, you can’t book a direct flight to the political. There are always layovers in aesthetic form: in tone, mood, shape, and everything else a work of art might employ to try to get you to feel part of something bigger than yourself."
Also really enjoyed Christina Nichol's "An Account of My Hut," an essay on grief over climate change.
Marissa Brostoff writes a personal essay of her relationship with the X-Files. A bit long, but funny.
Also really enjoyed Christina Nichol's "An Account of My Hut," an essay on grief over climate change.
Marissa Brostoff writes a personal essay of her relationship with the X-Files. A bit long, but funny.
May 22, 2018
Try this game out:
Select an article in a recent (post-2010) issue of n+1, or an independent section of one of its regular columns, and read until the first non-quoted first-person pronoun, singular or plural, is encountered.
The Intellectual Situation: Bringing The War Home: None! A strong start. Also (and highly correlated), a very good article.
Politics: Bad TV by Andrea Long Chu: BZZT. Eight words in. Go back and take a journalism class from somewhere reputable.
Politics: Code Red by Alex Press: 32 words in. Sigh.
Politics: Fire in Jakarta by Adam Bobbette: 3 1/2 pages in - almost made it. What caused Bobbette to ruin a good article by veering into personal essay territory?
Superking Scores Again (fiction) by Anthony Veasna So: 10 lines in. Fiction gets a pass, of course, but any collection of fiction should contain no more than 1/3 first-person narratives. Like rat feces, there's a maximum allowable PPV.
Two Stories: Improvisation is the Heart of Music(fiction) by Helen DeWitt: 5 paragraphs in, though it's clear from the outset that it won't be a long wait.
Two Stories: Lost in Intertextuality(fiction) by Helen DeWitt: First word. Remember the final episode of The Prisoner? "I! I! I! I!" Never lead with "I" if you can avoid it.
You Can't Readby Rose Réjouis: 12 words in. Odd, considering this is written almost entirely in second-person.
Letter to Freud by Rose Réjouis: First word: "I'm". Argh. See above.
An Account of My Hut by Christina Nichol: The title serves as a omen of the appearance of "me" in the sixth line.
Missing Time by Marissa Brostoff: 8 words in. Followed by "fanfic". There doesn't appear to be much reason to continue on past the ninth word, almost as if it were written to infuriate. Which seems the point of roughly 75% of the content produced daily by the human race in 2018, so eh, kudos for evolving.
Two Stops by Natasha Stagg: 16th word, "I". Skipping down a few paragraphs, every character is referred to by a single initial, like this is the nineteenth century or something. So maybe "I" is a character? Holy crap, this one is broken up into 17 date-stamped sections, and 9 of them begin with a giant bold-faced "I", with a particularly alarming run of 6 sections right in the middle.
Day of Memory by Bela Shayevich: 3rd word. "Nobody asked me what I was doing at the Memoral Society for the commemoration of Soviet political repressions". Yeah, ya know why? BECAUSE NOBODY CARES.
Reviews: Sanctuaries of Trust and Caring by A. S. Hamrah: First review, third paragraph. Like fiction, reviews get a bit of a pass, but the intrusion of a first person perspective should be kept to a minimum. Here, only three (the best 3?) of the eighteen reviews are without it. The food and drug administration would be horrified.
Reviews: Coming in From the Cold by Nicholas Dames: 11 lines in. "Collectively, we long for interrogation rather than debate." Oh, do we? Is the the royal We, or the inclusive?
Reviews: Both Sides Now Namara Smith: None. Good on ya! At least this issue is bookended by competent writers.
Here's a tip for young writers: nobody cares about you. Writing in first person is a signal to the reader that what you are saying is extremely personal, has no universal appeal, and is unlikely to be of interest to anyone but yourself and your immediate social circle. Every time you find yourself writing a sentence in first-person, imagine the reader asking "Who cares?", and repair the sentence accordingly.
Sure, this is par for the course in 201x writing. Journalism has been replaced by the personal essay. But n+1, considering itself an intellectual journal, should hold itself to a higher standard. Perhaps the standard that was enforced back when issues had single-digit numbers?
Select an article in a recent (post-2010) issue of n+1, or an independent section of one of its regular columns, and read until the first non-quoted first-person pronoun, singular or plural, is encountered.
The Intellectual Situation: Bringing The War Home: None! A strong start. Also (and highly correlated), a very good article.
Politics: Bad TV by Andrea Long Chu: BZZT. Eight words in. Go back and take a journalism class from somewhere reputable.
Politics: Code Red by Alex Press: 32 words in. Sigh.
Politics: Fire in Jakarta by Adam Bobbette: 3 1/2 pages in - almost made it. What caused Bobbette to ruin a good article by veering into personal essay territory?
Superking Scores Again (fiction) by Anthony Veasna So: 10 lines in. Fiction gets a pass, of course, but any collection of fiction should contain no more than 1/3 first-person narratives. Like rat feces, there's a maximum allowable PPV.
Two Stories: Improvisation is the Heart of Music(fiction) by Helen DeWitt: 5 paragraphs in, though it's clear from the outset that it won't be a long wait.
Two Stories: Lost in Intertextuality(fiction) by Helen DeWitt: First word. Remember the final episode of The Prisoner? "I! I! I! I!" Never lead with "I" if you can avoid it.
You Can't Readby Rose Réjouis: 12 words in. Odd, considering this is written almost entirely in second-person.
Letter to Freud by Rose Réjouis: First word: "I'm". Argh. See above.
An Account of My Hut by Christina Nichol: The title serves as a omen of the appearance of "me" in the sixth line.
Missing Time by Marissa Brostoff: 8 words in. Followed by "fanfic". There doesn't appear to be much reason to continue on past the ninth word, almost as if it were written to infuriate. Which seems the point of roughly 75% of the content produced daily by the human race in 2018, so eh, kudos for evolving.
Two Stops by Natasha Stagg: 16th word, "I". Skipping down a few paragraphs, every character is referred to by a single initial, like this is the nineteenth century or something. So maybe "I" is a character? Holy crap, this one is broken up into 17 date-stamped sections, and 9 of them begin with a giant bold-faced "I", with a particularly alarming run of 6 sections right in the middle.
Day of Memory by Bela Shayevich: 3rd word. "Nobody asked me what I was doing at the Memoral Society for the commemoration of Soviet political repressions". Yeah, ya know why? BECAUSE NOBODY CARES.
Reviews: Sanctuaries of Trust and Caring by A. S. Hamrah: First review, third paragraph. Like fiction, reviews get a bit of a pass, but the intrusion of a first person perspective should be kept to a minimum. Here, only three (the best 3?) of the eighteen reviews are without it. The food and drug administration would be horrified.
Reviews: Coming in From the Cold by Nicholas Dames: 11 lines in. "Collectively, we long for interrogation rather than debate." Oh, do we? Is the the royal We, or the inclusive?
Reviews: Both Sides Now Namara Smith: None. Good on ya! At least this issue is bookended by competent writers.
Here's a tip for young writers: nobody cares about you. Writing in first person is a signal to the reader that what you are saying is extremely personal, has no universal appeal, and is unlikely to be of interest to anyone but yourself and your immediate social circle. Every time you find yourself writing a sentence in first-person, imagine the reader asking "Who cares?", and repair the sentence accordingly.
Sure, this is par for the course in 201x writing. Journalism has been replaced by the personal essay. But n+1, considering itself an intellectual journal, should hold itself to a higher standard. Perhaps the standard that was enforced back when issues had single-digit numbers?
December 16, 2018
Essay on California wildfires of 2017 was harrowing.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews