Chekhov's Mistress
They Must Be Doing Something Right: New Criterion Hates n+1
[Update: Suddenly since making this post, I’ve been banned from the New Criterion Web site. Sporting, eh? I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that it’s a coincidence!] [Update2: indeed it was. their entire site was down for a while and now it’s up, but for now only older archives]
If it weren’t for the fact that the New Criterion is a conservative journal and the piece so tendentious that it damns its own argument, Stefan Beck’s “The artificial gravity of n+1” would provoke an interesting discussion on the value of n+1‘s endeavor.
Beck’s opening paragraph ends with:
“Of the four young men who founded the magazine n+1, I have to ask: is your journal really necessary? It may be in the public interest to save ink for a worthier cause.”
I think it would have been a more interesting article had he saved his conclusion for the end and at least pretended for a while that he didn’t hate these guys probably before he ever picked up their journal.
Beck’s overarching conservative bias is clear when he describes n+1’s readers as
“the same demographic that regarded John Kerry’s tortuous illogic as ‘nuanced thinking’?”
That statement is quite an assumptive leap, that is, unless I missed the detailed survey of political beliefs n+1 sent out to its readership; or is it beyond Mr. Beck that not everyone sees everything in the black and white, us-versus-them monologue of his intellectual stripe. He is saying quite a bit about the presumed narrow-mindedness of his own readers.
Obviously, since Beck’s article is just more ideologically driven bias rather than thoughtful argument, it’s not worth commenting on further. I have to ask: can’t you do any better, Mr. Beck? It’s one thing for your beliefs to form a basis for your argument, but it’s tiresome when you let your ideology do your thinking for you.
comments
Question: Any commentary worth reading, aside from the NY Time Magazine article from a few months back, about n+1 and its goals?
– Chris (01/03 at 10:57 AM)
Chris,
I can only offer you what I’ve written.
http://www.chekhovsmistress.com/2005/09/in_praise_of_se.html
http://www.chekhovsmistress.com/2005/10/everybody_loves.html
http://www.chekhovsmistress.com/2004/10/in_praise_of_th.html
This doesn’t cover everything because I’ve also been critical of them, but those were not specific posts.
– Bud (01/03 at 11:39 AM)
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: January 03, 2006
- Filed Under:
Literary Journals
- Comments:2
- Links to this Post: Technorati
