n+1 Seven Years Later: A Narrative In Progress
Saval’s point about “a separate intellectual space” references the idea that many people have about n+1, that it is not so much of a “space” as it is a “scene.” While both Blumenkranz and Tortorici did touch upon the fact that much of their lives seem to revolve around n+1, whether because of actual work at the magazine or going to the book readings and parties of editors and contributors, the “scene” doesn’t seem to be contained in any way. It’s true that everyone I met who was involved with n+1 was incredibly supportive of each other—which was evident in the fact that Roth looked out at the crowded reading and commented on all the familiar faces he saw—but they were also uniformly welcoming and warm to everyone.
Saval had commented to me on the phone that working on the magazine still feels “great on a daily basis, though it’s hard to see from the inside.” And it is easy to understand the hesitance to construct a narrative without much of an external perspective. The intellectually belligerent Brit in Roth’s memoir would have scoffed at the very idea. But maybe that’s because drunk Brits are never comfortable about embracing anything, especially some neat storyline. It’s too sincere. Plot is too sincere. A narrative has to mean something. That is the whole point of constructing one. And we’re taught these days that constructing things is too hard. That what we build will probably get torn down anyway. So instead of constructing great things, instead of participating in great movements, we build slideshows that feature cute animals or dumb tweets by golden boy Olympic swimmers. [Ed. note: That is, literally, what we do.] Because the thing about constructing your own narrative is that it will take a lot of work, and it will still be imperfect. That’s no reason not to try though, especially when the alternative is to stand for nothing.
A.O. Scott finished his piece by noting that Kunkel felt that, despite all the political anguish following the 2004 election (at least for liberals and lovers of all good things) that at least “our lives remain their own great cause.” It is easy to forget that sometimes, easy to forget that our lives can be great. That the work we do can be great. That our voice can be great and powerful and that we don’t have to change the world in a day or in seven years, that we just need to keep our narratives going, broken or not, they are our stories to tell.