Customer Reviews
Decadent bourgeois intellectuals 
2008-05-11
Let me begin by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed this witty and insightful book, because the rest of this is going to be nasty and snarky.
The title is pretty accurate. It is about young literary men. (Characters write for the "Nation" and "New Republic" and aspire to the "New York Review of Books.") But it may be false advertising to call it a novel, rather than a collection of short stories. The stories are about three young men, Sam, Mark and Keith who are all Ivy League graduates with parents who are Jewish immigrants from Russia. There's a lot of interesting background about the Jewish experience in the Soviet Union. Some of it was more interesting than the love affairs that make up the main stories and end sadly or inconclusively.
Keith is a first person narrator who frames the stories, and finishes a political book about Bush. Mark fails to finish a dissertation about the Mensheviks. Sam fails to finish a novel about the Zionist movement. It has a realistic contemporary setting, in Syracuse, Boston, Baltimore and New York, with some scenes in the West Bank. The three protagonists are loosely linked, largely through their mistresses.
I was reminded of the marvelous episode in Aldous Huxley's "Chrome Yellow" written in the 1920's, where a clever and sensitive young man confides to an older critic that he is writing a novel. The older man tells him with "devastating accuracy" exactly what his novel will be about. It will be about a clever and sensitive young man who has a series of love affairs, writes a novel of surpassing brilliance, and "is last seen disappearing into a luminous future." Keith Gessen (the author)is evidently a clever and sensitive young man who is well aware of the clichés of the autobiographical coming-of-age novel and wants to put a new and original spin on them. It is fun watching him try.
Not a loser, but not exactly a winner. Gessen can do better. 
2008-04-27
Presented in alternating chapters, Keith Gessen's debut novel is actually three tangentially related novellas relating the stories of three sad, young, literary men.
A doctoral student in Russian history, the recently divorced Mark turns to online dating and Internet porn. He is distress over his Google rating: the number of hits on his blog are declining.
Sam's ambition is to write the Great Zionist Ep;ic, even though he isn't a practicing Jew, can't read Hebrew, and his project is conceived before he visits Israel and the occupied territories.
Keth, a Russian immigrant, is a liberal politico-cultural critic who apparently stands in as Gessen's alter ego. His comments on America's ill-advised military adventurism is cynical and acerbic.
Blundering their way through life, these three protagonists inflict insult and injury--psychic pain--on themselves and on the women with whom they have love-hate relationships.
Believing themselves to be responsible adults, the three anti-heroes behave as spoiled juveniles who need to grow up, slouching their way toward a lonely middle age.
Romantic and Literary Ambitions 2008-04-10
Gessen, Keith. "All the Sad Young Literary Men", Viking, 2008.
Literary and Romantic Ambitions
Amos Lassen
I came across Keith Gessen's "All the Sad Young Literary Men" quite by accident but what a wonderful accident that was for me as I discovered a jewel of a novel. It is even more of a prize because it is Gessen's first novel and it literally tears asunder the romantic and literary ambitions of three men who are well educated.
I hesitate to call the novel a comedy because it is not a book that makes you laugh consciously. Let me classify it as a black comedy in the form of stories that alternate between the three heroes of the book. First there is Mark who is a doctoral candidate in Russian history. He is disappointed that what he has learned about the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks do nothing for his sexual life.
When his marriage fails, he becomes distracted by on-line porn and Internet dating and his attempt to have a successful literary career, satisfying relationships and a PhD in history seems doomed. His activities also do not do much in helping him finish his dissertation. Then there is Sam who gets a contract (while he is still in his twenties) to write the great Zionist epic. When Sam visits Israel to research his book, he realizes that the trip was not so much for the quest for information but rather to get out of a one-sided romance back in Cambridge that he was involved in. As for the advance money that he received, he wastes it and the time on the contract expires and he is due to return the advance. He takes on temp jobs and as he balances spreadsheets, he has less time to spend on the Internet and his identity (i.e. his profile) begins to fade away. Keith, our third "musketeer", is a cultural critic and a Russian immigrant who seems to me to perhaps be Gessen himself. He is a liberal writer who has problems in separating the personal from the political.
The three men share ages and desires to arrive on the literary scene and as we watch these three go about reaching their goals we see both savageness and tenderness. I hesitate to call the book a novel because what it reads like is a series of vignettes that are connected by disconnection. Each of the characters is connected only by both literary and romantic failures and they, all three, have yet to develop to full manhood. The men have ambitions to change the world and even though the three never meet, their lives come together as each tries to find his way to manhood.
Gessen takes on serious political issues while having a good time poking fun at his characters. He looks at love and history as it applies to his three characters. The writing is subtle yet biting and the humor is caustic. The erudition of the characters is undermined with both affection and cruelty and the portrait of young adults is scathing. As Mark, Sam and Keith attempt to find maturity, responsibility and fame, they trip over themselves but each step that they take is filled with humor and a kind of honesty that bites.
I really wanted to like this book.... 
2008-07-03
I wanted to like this book. I really did. It sounded like just the kind of book I had been looking for. I awaited it's arrival in the mail with eager anticipation. But it's just not a good book. It's not good at all. It is really and truly one of the worst books I have ever read. And I've read some bad ones.
ALL THE SAD YOUNG LITERARY MEN is a novel about decadence that doesn't seem to know it is a novel about decadence. Ostensibly, it is about three different young Ivy League graduates livining in and around New York, but all three feature the same narrative voice, minimal character development, and barely differentiated story lines. The main literary conceit of the novel is a sort of historical name dropping, ala "But one thing he had learned from the Bolsheviks: history helps those who help themselves." These historical references seem to be thrown in at random; they are never explained, examined, or elaborated upon, and are essentially meaningless. It's sort of like reading movie reviews in The Village Voice, except with historical references pasted in mindlessly instead of pop and alt culture ones. Yeah, being in your 20s is like the Russian revolution, or like the Israelis and Palestinians... nevermind why, nevermind any kind of thought or rational examination of these complicated historical events, nevermind any explanation of the alluded to but never demonstrated "idea"... Mindless stuff.
How bad can it be? Try this sentence opening a paragraph about a main character's reaction to 9/11 [remember these characters live in and around New York City!]: "On the day the World Trade Center was destroyed, Sam watched a lot of television."
There is one good section of the book, pp. 62-75, about a character named Morris Binkel. Read that at the bookstore if you're curious, it's pretty good. The rest of the book is like pulling teeth.
Pseudo-intellectuals would like this book, though, because it is pseudo-intelligent, pseudo-well written, pseudo-deep, and pseudo-literary. It's crap. I've never been more disappointed with a book in my life.
With books like this getting published, we should well and truly pity the sad young literary men in our society, because the publishing industry has really gone to the dogs. Chinese Cresteds.
Oh, how I loved this book! 2008-06-16
Keith Gessen is a founding member of the literary journal N+1, a quarterly read I highly recommend!
He's in great company with Benjamin Kunkel, another Harvard grad who wrote the hilarious novel, Indecision
Indecision: A Novel.
Keith mixes up some meditations on marxism in russian history(he's from Russia, attending grad school
in Buffalo with side-trips to NYC in these semi-autobiographical stories), with meditations on ethics
and desire in his romantic relationships in NYC and Buffalo, which he recounts in beautiful english.
The funny story about this book is Gessen was disappointed that many people who viewed his book on Amazon,
ended up buying I Was Told There'd Be Cake, by Sloane Crosley(also a very good book, which consists
of auto-bio essays) instead! I bought and read both; I'm intensely grateful for both, and I'll review hers next.
Gessen's book is a bit more serious and sad, but I think both are excellent....
A novel? 2008-06-13
The reviews so far give fairly accurate descriptions of the book: it's basically a collection of short stories of the New Yorker Jewish intellectual slacker variety blah blah blah. And it is indeed a fairly entertaining read. But Gessen, it seems, is not quite novelist material. The stories, each of them built on some fairly clever conceit, the comparison of Israel-Palestine or the Russian Revolution to mid-20s relationships, for example, fail to lend depth to any of the characters. Gessen seems to be about what most inexperienced writers are about: themselves. We have a fairly quick-paced, cursory overview of a few forgettable characters, probably loosely based on the author's post-. The subject matter, the territory itself, is worthwhile, but Gessen never quite slows down to really write, to capture a moment. I was not surprised to learn the author mostly writes magazine articles and reviews for prominent magazines. There are few sublime moments, there is little in the way of vivid imagery, no signature voice. One is left with the feeling that pretty much anyone could have written this, given some time. And yet Mr. Gessen seems to know enough of the right people to get some preferential treatment for his debut novel, as it is prominently featured in all the right bookstores and heavily (and positively) reviewed. Not that it's a ghastly read. It certainly isn't. But its prominence is not quite commensurate with the actual content.
"Isaac Babel" or "Jenin"? 2008-05-22
Like the online pornography its characters are too cheap to pay for (they do presumably pay for the gas to fill up the tanks of their parents hand-me-down Japanese cars-- no, not mere stick-shift Tercels and Civics), a reader might be tempted to peak ahead to the chapters with promising titles-- I'd say, these chapters do not disappoint, and although yes, we are reading the neurotic, anxieties of the relatively affluent and suburban, the book is very engaging. It would be fun to read a review of this book from an unabashedly Zionist perspective. "Self loathing" does come to mind at times although with 3 main characters seemingly not unlike the author, "self liking" could be more accurate. If you need to put yourself in the perfect mood for receiving it, try teaching "Guy De Maupassant" 8 years in a row, then reading the relatively recent biography of Alfred Kazin. Then, skip to the Babel chapter; it's somewhat like TC Boyle's "The Overcoat II" but different. Guaranteed something will touch you with more than just light fingers. You'll throw the book across the lawn, envy and appreciate all at once. Maybe no one reads and reacts with strong emotion anymore? Anyway, I recommend. Funny, intellectual and easy to turn the pages.
enough rehashing of the plot line... 
2008-05-14
What you want to know is whether or not the book is good enough to spend your hard earned wages on. It is. I toyed with the idea of not buying it and just reading it at Border's, but once I got 75 pages into it, I decided it wouldn't be a waste of money. It is not overly high brow like I thought it might be (I harbor a little resentment toward Ivy Leaguers), and even the parts that are crying out for a back slap from Mr. Intellectual don't detract from the book's entertaining qualities. I laughed out loud about three times. And that rarely happens when I read. I enjoyed the interplay of nuances and gross oversimplifications as they related to the characters' personal relationships, but grew a little bored with the obscure historical Russian references that were thrown in here and there. Also, I agree with Gessen on his take of being single in New York and under thirty: it is all about getting drunk and having sex. Whether or not you choose to over intellectualize it.
