All the Sad Young Literary Men
| Author | Keith Gessen |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Viking Press |
Publication date | April 10, 2008 |
| ISBN | 978-0-670-01855-0 |
All the Sad Young Literary Men is the debut novel of Keith Gessen, the founder of the journal n+1 . It was published by Viking in April 2008.[1] [2] [3]
Plot
[edit ]Gessen's novel centers around the stories of three literary-minded friends: Keith, a Harvard-educated writer living in New York City; Sam, living in Boston and writing the "great Zionist epic"; and Mark, who is trying to complete a history dissertation on the Mensheviks at Syracuse University.
Title
[edit ]The title is derived from F. Scott Fitzgerald's third collection of short stories, All the Sad Young Men . This collection includes two of Fitzgerald's most famous stories about privilege and romance surprised by the chillier realities outside a university's gates, "Winter Dreams" and "The Rich Boy."
Reception
[edit ]In The New York Review of Books , novelist and critic Joyce Carol Oates called the novel "mordantly funny, and frequently poignant," adding "in this debut novel there is much that is charming and beguiling, and much promise."[4] In The New York Times Book Review , Andrew O'Hagan wrote:
Gessen’s style is good-natured and ripe enough to allow a satisfying sweetness to exist in these characters as they journey around the carnival of their own selfishness. Mark and Sam and Keith may encapsulate a certain generational passion for careers over values, but their adventures here often serve laughingly to set them down among the aging troubles of the world. There must, after all, be a way of life in which literary young men are not enslaved to the sad business of always having to do better than 'the people they went to college with.'[5]
By contrast New York called the novel "self-satisfied" and "boringly solipsistic".[6]
References
[edit ]- ^ "All the Sad Young Literary Men by Keith Gessen". Publishers Weekly . December 3, 2007. Archived from the original on August 19, 2024. Retrieved August 19, 2024.
- ^ "All the Sad Young Literary Men" . Booklist . February 15, 2008. Archived from the original on August 19, 2024. Retrieved August 18, 2024.
- ^ "All the Sad Young Literary Men". Kirkus Reviews . February 15, 2008. Archived from the original on August 19, 2024. Retrieved August 18, 2024.
- ^ Joyce Carol Oates, "Youth!", The New York Review of Books, May 1, 2008.
- ^ O'Hagan, Andrew (April 13, 2008). "N + 2". The New York Times Book Review .
- ^ "Is This Book Worth Getting?". New York Magazine . April 17, 2008. Archived from the original on March 6, 2021. Retrieved November 16, 2017.
External links
[edit ]- Article about Keith Gessen and All the Sad Young Literary Men in The New York Times, April 27, 2008