All the Sad Young Literary Men by Keith Gessen

Producing fiction centered on the current generation of thirty-somethings is an inherently risky enterprise that can either be fraught with superficial insights dressed up as academically inclined rhetoric and self-serving posturing, or, as in the case of Gessen's debut novel, a thoughtful, insightful look at how lives, even those of privilege, can go astray from the once grand expectations of youth leaving those affected to question what went wrong and why. Gessen, the controversial founder of the literary journal n+1 who has incurred the rancor of many literary bloggers due to the strong opinions, which I feel are incredibly accurate, concerning the state of the blogosphere, has, in my opinion, lived up to his own critical sense and produced a novel that is truly memorable, well written, and deeply affecting.

Generally, I would be the first person to rail against a novel with characters who attended Harvard, live in New York City and Boston, and generally have, what I would term, a yuppie-fied lifestyle as being wholly unrealistic, and unrelatable to me. However, Gessen doesn't go for the easy way out and have these characters achieve instant success and turn them into off putting caricatures of the young and educated with their decadent lifestyles. Instead, these characters encounter failures, public and private, in their lives and aren't handed successes that they squander. Perhaps, it's just a reflection of my own standing in life that I can take solace in the portrayal of educated men forced to spend the night in their car, or relate to characters who are genuinely concerned about their aging parents. What I found to be most realistic was the portrayal of graduate students floundering in their studies, procrastinating in their arts, and having the moments of realization that their liberal beliefs are easy to uphold and vehemently defend due to their ability to distance themselves from the issues, in this case the Israelis and the Palestinians. All of this added up to portrayals of people I recognize and can see traits of in myself. Of course, it's also a sad testimony on the state of academia when dissertation students are portrayed as being knowledgeable only on a minute bit of their studies and little of anything else. Is that what we're dealing with when we have a t.a. as an instructor? Hopefully, as in any case, these are the exceptions to the rule.

Gessen, in this case, has produced a book that is the antithesis of all that I find wrong in literature today. He is the anti-Roth, who has floundered for years taking the bare bones of a story and using it as a prop to dress up his standard character, the young Jewish male with an insatiable sexual appetite. Gessen doesn't dwell on the sex. It's there, don't get me wrong, but it's not the focal point, and he seems to recognize how romance and love really works in the world today. Roth, created a simple rubric to work from, and hasn't altered it in nearly fifty years. The issue, though, isn't how offensive the writing is, it is and it isn't, but the fact that Roth is a tremendous talent who has seen his personal stock rise as he puts out increasingly flat books that aren't very good or original. His writing is masterful, but he squanders the opportunity to give us something different. Gessen, a very talented writer in his own right, is the exact opposite. He probes the inner workings of the characters and shows you that lost feeling we all have. In my estimation, this is a much more accurate portrayal of how humans interact than Roth has ever given. Gessen knows people and has been around them, whereas Roth seems like he's operating under the assumption of how he thinks humans act.

What I can't reconcile is the fact that this book has been greeted with an enormous amount of backlash, particularly from the lit-blogs that Gessen has targeted in his magazine writing. Sure, some of this is to be expected, but the particular amount of venom aimed at Gessen seems to do little to dispute his charges and does more to justify them. Lit-bloggers, for all of their high-mindedness and open professing of their love of literature, seem to be more than a tad biased against Gessen and have written his book off from the start. Have any of them actually read it? I'm betting few have. If these bloggers really wanted to refute Gessen's claims about the pack mentality many of these lit-blogs have, then they should read the book and give an honest review instead of posting some juvenile dig at the man. In my estimation, it appears that, like a lot of areas of the media, the blogosphere and the literary world at large have blurred the lines and where, traditionally, never the two shall meet, there is now little to separate the two, gossip and fact go hand in hand, and smear posts pass as inspired, informed critique. Gessen and his ilk have a very high minded opinion on many things, but I would think the wisest policy would not be to lash back with half formed thoughts and taunts, but with an honest assessment of the situation and a thorough refutation of the charges, and you can find those but those aren't the ones making the most noise and thus are drowned out in the lifeless ether.

Gessen is definitely outspoken, and his personal life has become the fodder of gossip blogs as well as lit-blogs, but he's a writer as well, and he's produced an astonishing debut. Will it hold the test of time, or will it be book that reflects a moment, our moment, that will languish, forgotten on the shelves of memory and in the lit world? Perhaps. For now, though, it's one of the better books I've read in long, long time.