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Keith
Gessen probably wouldn't like this website. As the founder
of the literary magazine n+1, Gessen is known for stirring
up some fairly contentious sentiments about the state of literature.
McSweeney's, for example, has been called "regressive avant-garde"
and Gessen recently accused the publishing house of treating
literature as "the whimsical plaything of the upper class."
Gessen instead seems interested in promoting thoughtful, intellectually
informed literature to a society that produces "Potter-Weasley
in '08" bumper stickers.
Interesting,
then, that Gessen's first foray into fiction would be a novel
such as All the Sad Young Literary Men. The semi-autobiographical
book recounts in three sections the lives of three highly
educated 20-somethings whose minds always seem to wander back
to the same few topics: literature, writing, Russia, and Israel.
Every subject seems to relate somehow to these obsessions,
and the men exhaust their obsessions to the point where other
people tell them, in essence, to shut up. Intelligent and
worldly as these men try to seem, every obsession seems to
work its way back to the same singular obsession: women and
the men's inadequacies with said women. In that sense, All
the Sad Young Literary Men may be the Ivy Leaguer's High
Fidelity, utilizing Kalashnikov rifles for Elvis Costello
and Bolsheviks for Blonde on Blonde.
If High
Fidelity's Rob Fleming is the earnest everyman, the three
men of Literary Men are the increasingly jaded upper
class idealists. Keith, a journalist and the story's first-person
narrator, tries a little too hard to find connections between
his personal life and the world around him, particularly the
flagging Democratic Party. After running into Al Gore and
one of his daughters after the 2000 Presidential election,
Keith reflects upon his undergraduate years at Harvard, where
the aforementioned daughter dated Keith's roommate and Keith
himself seems to venerate the Gores as American royalty or
at least intellectual celebrity. At one point, he even claims
that he won't call his estranged uncle in New York because
"he didn't vote in the last election. He abstained… He said
it made no difference who was President."
Meanwhile,
Sam attempts to write the first great Zionist epic, though
he doesn't speak Hebrew, has never been to Israel, and isn't
even a practicing Jew. What's more, his ideas on Israel are
formed not from his own research or experience but from the
opinions of others. He pounces upon every opportunity to display
his so-called knowledge—a shibboleth into the socio-political
intelligentsia—and backpedals hastily whenever someone
disagrees. After writing nothing and having to return his
publisher's advance, Sam takes a job creating spreadsheets
for a bank, mortified that he must take an anonymous desk
job amongst the plebeians and be scolded by his boss, a fellow
Harvard graduate.
Finally,
there is Mark, a divorceé and graduate student desperately
jumping from sad relationship to sad relationship, equating
the world around him to his field of study: the Russian Revolution.
His treatment of women is selfish and deplorable, and he is
characterized as rather pathetic. In one instance, he encourages
a woman to leave her boyfriend, and when he finally begins
a comfortable, mature relationship with her, he cheats on
her with a much younger woman.
For protagonists,
these men are embarrassingly callow and snobbish at times
(at one point, Mark says, "I learned today that Canadians
think John Irving is a great American novelist. Isn't that
funny?"), which makes caring for them difficult. They are,
after all, getting too old for their Holden Caulfield moments,
and they have been given far too many advantages for anyone
to sympathize with their self-sabotage or elitist incredulity.
That Gessen occasionally writes with a Dave Eggers-like fluidity
and includes a few gimmicky pictures and a chart early in
the novel only underscores the absurdity of their snobbish
standpoints.
Yet because
the men are essentially highbrow Rob Flemings, dismissing
them as upper class assholes may be too quick and simplistic.
Their interests may differ from High Fidelity's music
fanatics, but their ambitions and inadequacies are the same.
Rather than focusing on popular culture, these literary men
obsess over history and politics and seek out strong literary
women to share their beds and make philosophic pillow talk.
And youthful romanticism affects these men just as it does
anyone else, with each section of the book drawing them further
away from idealism. Mark's story, for example, prefaces the
novel with marital happiness and a blissful near-nonchalance
toward his and his wife's financial constraints. They are
young, they are in love, and they are happy.
However,
as the book progresses, reality sets in for all of the characters,
and their determination to make an impact on the world changes.
As Mark's thesis advisor tells him, "You have to save yourself,
man. Each of us does. Save yourself." What defines these three
men is not so much their attitudes or the privileges they
have been afforded, but what they do with the precious knowledge
they acquire about themselves. These sad young literary men
may come off a little full of themselves, but to see them
humbly discover the everyman inside themselves makes the frustrating
moments worth slugging through.
(May,
2008)
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