All the Sad Young Literary Men (Hardcover) by Keith Gessen - Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

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5		4%
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2		27%
1		10%

04/18/08

Yulia rated it:

bookshelves: writers-on-writing

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in January, 2008

I was actually very embarrassed asking where I could find this book in my local Borders, because I'd forgotten the name of the author (which sounds strangely like "keep guessing") and because I find the name of the book, despite its being a Fitzgerald allusion, rather regrettable. So when Frank started reading it to me, we were both surprised and confused to find we actually liked the writing and found Gessen much more talented than his n+1 co-editor Benjamin Kunkel, who'd previously ...more I was actually very embarrassed asking where I could find this book in my local Borders, because I'd forgotten the name of the author (which sounds strangely like "keep guessing") and because I find the name of the book, despite its being a Fitzgerald allusion, rather regrettable. So when Frank started reading it to me, we were both surprised and confused to find we actually liked the writing and found Gessen much more talented than his n+1 co-editor Benjamin Kunkel, who'd previously been over-hyped and proven a great disappointment (I foolishly had bought Kunkel's book, thinking it would be much discussed).

What's also unfortunate is that my brother, who attended a reading of this book, said that Gessen read aloud the passage about compulsively checking his Google ranking, which wasn't at all a representative or worthy passage to read. Why couldn't Gessen have begun at the beginning? Was he trying to appeal to a broader, more internet-oriented audience? Perhaps beginning on page 1 is too predictable?

Well, so far, I'm a third through an still very interested and not repelled by what reviewers in the press were put off by. I also found it strange one reviewer made a point of disliking how the characters in this book all attended "big name" colleges. Well, what are you supposed to do if you attended Harvard and are writing a fictionalized account of your college friends? Research SUNY-Binghamton or Queens College? Is it a crime to write about the privileged? Certainly, now I can see Gessen's affinity for Fitzgerald, if I don't in his voice.

As much as I hate Sam, the failed writer obsessed with his Google count, I love when he's on a date with Katie and it's taking forever to walk her home: "Now it was two, it was past two, and soon it would be dawn and his penis would turn into a pumpkin . . ." What an image!

But after 116 pages, it's starting to annoy me more. If these characters put more effort into their work and less into being sleazy guys, they'd get more more done and get more girls. And why must everyone in this book be an aspiring or successful writer? Is life broken down so easily for Gessen?

Some traces of Don DeLillo and Philip Roth peep in. Not necessarily a good thing. Why must everyone in the book be a firstgeneration Russian-Jew. Couldn't one be a Russian, one Jewish, and one just a random American? Two thirds of the way through, all the characters seem the same to me. Too many sweaty alcoholics in this. My guess is Gessen is a sweaty alcoholic.

Spoiler? Debatable)

Final analysis: Nothing happens in this book. People meet and break up, book deals are made and lost, lives occasionally cross, and some hair is lost, but no insight is gained, no probing questions considered. As Frank puts it, "When you lack psychological depth, you have to make mountains out of shit." Let's call this a hill of shit: a mountain is too great of an achievement. (less)

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01/23/09

Greg rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

Read in January, 2009

I wanted to like this book more. Based on the five star system, I have to give it a three. In reality it's a weak three and a half stars, maybe a three point four stars.

The book is about a three (I think, I was thinking of this book about an hour after finishing it, and I was trying to think how many different main characters are there, and I had a hard time thinking if there were three or four, I'm pretty sure it's three though) sad young men. I don't know if I'd call him liter...more I wanted to like this book more. Based on the five star system, I have to give it a three. In reality it's a weak three and a half stars, maybe a three point four stars.

The book is about a three (I think, I was thinking of this book about an hour after finishing it, and I was trying to think how many different main characters are there, and I had a hard time thinking if there were three or four, I'm pretty sure it's three though) sad young men. I don't know if I'd call him literary men, but as a title it sounds better than All the Sad Young Intellectual Men or something like that. The book follows the trajectories of three men in the college/early twenties/grad school days. They are all part of that subculture of people who believe that ideas and books matter, and who are wrapped up in the world and probably even believe that long discussions about the Russian Revolution or the social theories of Focault are important things and that they aren't living in some self-imposed ghetto that is quite out of touch with the real world (me being a former full-time resident of this ghetto and still living on the fringes of it don't mean this in a totally condescending way, but when I think of a lot of the talk that passed as conversation when I was in grad school 1.0 I have to wonder what kind of world we really thought we were living in). These bright young men are also emotional cripples who see their lives passing in front of them, and dread the idea of being alone, not living up to their potential, feeling that maybe their ideas are only idealistic baggage that won't be allowed on the next connecting flight, and for the life of them feel they are old and past their prime at the ripe old ages of say mid to late twenties.

All of this is familiar territory for me, fuck I could even easily put myself into any of these people's places, but with maybe a little less ambition and a healthy dose of melancholy or depression or whatever you'd call it (something strangely absent from any of the male main characters, but present in some of the females (strange that I thought of this, since sad is in the title, and they are kind of sad, but sad in a way that doesn't seem ingrained, more just sad at the state they are in, which is different I think from having a general melancholy view of the world, does this make sense?). Just shift away the focus from history and philosophy and add some extra self doubt and I think I could be a stand in for one of these guys.

Normally a book that I can in many ways relate to so heavily would garner at least four stars. The feeling that something is being written for you, and that you 'get it' where other's might just be tourists is usually a strong motivation to really like something. And I tried to really like this quick and pretty enjoyable book. The problem I had was that all the characters (the three main story lines, or was it four?) all sounded the same. I had a hard time sometimes remembering which story line was going on since they all kind of blended into one voice. Granted only one of the main stories was told in the first person, and there were more than enough differences in the characters to tell them apart in the details, but the entire feel of all three of them was too similar. Usually at the beginning of a chapter it would take me a few pages before I realized which hapless sad young man I was reading about.

Spoiler? - Maybe not much of one. Actually not really.

My other main problem with the book was that for almost 3/4's of the book the characters had almost nothing to do with one another, they seemed like three different stories that were similar and took place in the same era but didn't come together. Then the author decided to bring them all together with some very weak ties that felt sort of like a relationship deus ex machina. I guess the three story lines needed to be brought together, but the way that it happened was kind of contrived. I love books where disparate story lines are able to be brought together, and most of my favorite books use this technique, say something like Magnetic Field(s) or anything by Richard Powers, but in those cases it doesn't feel like the author had written a few different stories and now needs to put them together and call them a novel.

I guess in the end I enjoyed the book, but I think it needed to be developed more both in it's voice and in the overall structure. On the plus side it's use of the history of Communism as a device to show the failings in the characters' lives was a nice touch. Oh, and from the beginning of the review, my objection to the title. None of the characters seem especially literary as opposed to being very historical and political. But I'm just splitting hairs there. (less)

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06/18/08

Dan rated it:

This book violates pretty much every principle you learned in writing school; it's about hypereducated twentysomethings who don't seem to have jobs or fixed locations, and who primarily engage in speculation about what might have happened between them and their ex-girlfriends. That's not what fiction is about. As we all know, fiction is about characters with cleanly-defined wants pursuing unified actions, just like we all have/do in real life. Fiction is also never about the kind of people who w...more

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05/06/08

Casey rated it:

I saw Gessen give a reading here in Seattle, and something he said sort of provided the lens through which I interpreted this book. He basically said that our social class - white urban educated people - have decided that we are not worthy of documenting. That in academia, we study Africa or extreme poverty or reinterpretations of everything. And that in literature, we write about World War II or immigrants or foreign countries. And that this has also led us to stop identifying ourselves as a so...more I saw Gessen give a reading here in Seattle, and something he said sort of provided the lens through which I interpreted this book. He basically said that our social class - white urban educated people - have decided that we are not worthy of documenting. That in academia, we study Africa or extreme poverty or reinterpretations of everything. And that in literature, we write about World War II or immigrants or foreign countries. And that this has also led us to stop identifying ourselves as a social group - and not just a social group, but one of extreme importance, as it is the group making a large portion of decisions about how our country is run. Gessen punctuated this idea by saying that in modern-day Russia, this social group has already completely abandoned any idea of their collective identity, and this has led to what is essentially facism there now. Without a cohesive inteligensia, those most able to develop and distribute words of dissent and critique of the status quo aren't able to - they lack a network to exchange ideas, the strength in numbers necessary to produce dissent in the face of opposition, and the belief that their lifestyle is worth defending. They're too focused on studying/documenting/saving everyone else to save themselves.

Ok, he didn't say all of that, but he said much of that, and I extrapolated the rest. Either way, I read his book as a documentation of me and my friends and what our lives were like - something that, to back up his claim, I very rarely do. And it succeeded tremendously.

Some of the most increasingly significant aspects of our lives - e-mail, porn, graduate school, living in poverty in big cities, drinking copious amounts, dating and dating and dating - are all dealt with here, seriously but with humor, documenting the harm they all cause but with compassion.

Gessen also writes well, and in a way I'm not used to people of my generation writing. The Eggers/Safran-Foer's of the world like to show that they have such a command of language, they simply can't be constrained by convention, and strive to prove over and over how unqiue and special and comical and irreverent their spectacular intelligence allows them to be. Which often results in cutesy wankfests.

So thanks to Gessen for writing honestly and well, for writing about the people he's writing about, and for not being vaguely embarassed about being a well-educated white urbanite. (less)

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05/23/08

Rifftrafft rated it:

Read in May, 2008

as somebody who didn't get any work whatsoever until i changed my email address from post.harvard.edu to gmail.com, who can vouch for the knot of humility and vanity and realness and self-mythology and narrow-minded outsider resentment and self-loathing one can find himself in upon graduation--ultra records wouldn't even hire me, ultra fucking records!--i am riding hard for this book. one of the best articulations of this very real problem i know i went through at school, and which i know others...more

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06/10/08

Emily rated it:

Read in June, 2008

Ha ha ha ha ha. No.

Where to even begin? Sure, there were some funny lines, particularly in the "His Google" chapter, but for the most part this book is terribly flawed. Since Gessen isn't above using charts and bulleted lists in his book, I won't refrain from using them here.

This book:

1. has a complicated relationship with irony. Late in the book, the narrator describes one character's inability to understand what another character is saying....more Ha ha ha ha ha. No.

Where to even begin? Sure, there were some funny lines, particularly in the "His Google" chapter, but for the most part this book is terribly flawed. Since Gessen isn't above using charts and bulleted lists in his book, I won't refrain from using them here.

This book:

1. has a complicated relationship with irony. Late in the book, the narrator describes one character's inability to understand what another character is saying. "His English was good but it was not good enough to detect when Sam was kidding, or half kidding, or maybe a quarter kidding, if at all--in fact very few people's English was that good, which may have indicated a problem less with their English than with Sam." The same could be said of the author's writing. Are we supposed to have sympathy for his characters, these unhappy narcissists who trudge through their 20s fighting off Humility? We can't know, because Gessen doesn't make an effort to render these characters real. The three voices are indistinguishable. But oh! Is their similarity Gessen's attempt at illustrating something about our generation? You, the reader, must simply decide whether or not to give him the benefit of the doubt.

2. attempts to address the political in a gimmicky and unsatisfying way (not unlike another n+1 editor). On page 211, one character muses, "Ultimately these historical parallels were of limited use in figuring out your personal life." Indeed! And while surely it was entertaining enough for the writer to invent characters who compared their lives to historical events, the jokes got lost in the delivery.

3. serves up particularly flawed female characters. On page 40, in reference to a line of partially italicized dialogue from one female character, the narrator writes: "All the women in Sam's life italicized things." Yes, and they must, because without their italics, the female characters are so flat that their motivations and intonations are indiscernible. With a few exceptions (explained in exposition, natch), the lithe, gorgeous ladies who populate ASYLM exist either (a) to merely laugh at jokes and flatter, in which case they are quickly trampled because the men become bored, or (b) to shame the men into impotency by being too intelligent or too beautiful.

4. is just plain old poorly written, due to jarring shifts in POV, misplaced clauses, and transitions that are not at all supported by plot or character.

The book gets two stars because it does have one very redeeming quality: Gessen has created a very accurate portrait of an era. The Age of Hubris.
(less)

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05/30/08

Nathan rated it:

The biggest disappointment about this book is not the obvious fact that Gessen could just barely fictionalize three different aspects of himself (obsessive Jew, obsessive Russophile, obsessive politically minded do-gooder smart person) and pass them off as distinct characters, but rather that the novel--about extremely ambitious yet frustrated and self-defeating people--is itself so unambitious. At about 250 pages and with a weird skinny trim size, it's well written but not daring or adventurou...more

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02/01/09

Patrick rated it:

bookshelves: 20th-century-to-present-american

Read in January, 2009

There is a lot I can understand one complaining about in this book: the multiple narrators can at times make the book unnecessarily cluttered, the politics could be considered simplistic, etc. However, what makes this book most notable to me is that it is the first I have ever read that accurately portrays how ingrained the internet now is in society. As a result, it accurately portrays, to me, modern culture in a way that no other book I have read does. I would guess that this is a result large...more

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11/28/08

alli rated it:

recommends it for: no one, ever

Gessen clearly illustrates everything wrong with his generation of writers: an awkward desire to be vicious, but without the skill or introspection to do any real damage. It's like saying "You're an unmotivated loser for living in your parents basement. I'll be by Friday for dinner. Your mom knows I'm vegan, right?"

Also, all the lady characters are underdeveloped and horribly irritating.

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09/24/08

Abby rated it:

bookshelves: dorks

Read in August, 2008

recommended to Abby by: The Library Shelf.
recommends it for: Nerdz

When I went to the library to rent All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, it wasn't there, and I had to get on the wait list, so I picked All the Sad Young Literary Men up off the "new fiction" shelf because:
a) The title began with the same word.
b) Gawker hates Keith Gessen.
c) I knew some sad young literary men in my days as a sad young literary lady. I guess I still know some now, but they aren't so pathetic, these ones.
d) My brother went to Harvard and was mise...more

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09/15/08

Kris rated it:

bookshelves: bookblog

Another summer reading recommendation from my boss, he billed this one as "literary candy," a description that I whole-heartedly repeat to you all. The strangely-titled book (reference to Fitzgerald, yet again!) follows a group of Harvard students who are swiftly cast out into the real world full of ideas and passion and nonsensical senses of self worth. Gessen does a good job of making these guys lovable, even as you realize that you'd probably hate any one of them if you overheard th...more Another summer reading recommendation from my boss, he billed this one as "literary candy," a description that I whole-heartedly repeat to you all. The strangely-titled book (reference to Fitzgerald, yet again!) follows a group of Harvard students who are swiftly cast out into the real world full of ideas and passion and nonsensical senses of self worth. Gessen does a good job of making these guys lovable, even as you realize that you'd probably hate any one of them if you overheard them bloviating in a Williamsburg bar somewhere. Gessen, an editor of the literary magazine "n+1" knows the hipster culture and he knows that people love to hate them because they so intensely love themselves, but at the same time we're entranced the moment they offer to let us into their strange, solipsistic little worlds.
It helps that all of these guys seem to have good hearts, and they wear them on their sleeves. The book is ultimately more of a collection of love stories than anything else - each of the sad, young literary men are profoundly perplexed by the fairer sex - in a way that reminded me happily of the naive loves in Fitzgerald's best stories (Ice Palace, May Day, Babylon Revisited). He also manages to thematically tie these romances into the intellectual struggles of the men. One of my favorite characters is a Jewish academic who gained himself a reputation as the future author of a Great Modern Zionist Epic before he's even ever heard of Leon Uris or Exodus. His problem is that he does not really understand Israel or the Palestinians at all, so whenever he begins arguing for Israel, he swiftly winds up conceding Eastern Jerusalem. But the best part of this story is the way Gessen mirrors the intellectual issues with the romantic ones. The character is likewise torn between two women, whom he emails frequently, even as he goes to Israel at long last to decide once and for all how he feels about the conflict (and the women).
Gessen also seamlessly incorporates a very modern, tech-savvy world for these young intellectuals, who may simultaneously have their heads stuck in Marxist tracts. One character is worried about the shrinking "size of his Google" (how many hits come up when he searches for his own name). He also keeps us rooted firmly in the new century by referencing the world politics of the past decade. In one memorable scene a character proposes to his girlfriend as Al Gore is named President. She accepts, feeling hope for the future, but then calls off the engagement as the Recount begins and Bush steps into power. The book is incredibly clever in moments like these.
Unfortunately it isn't always so clever or lively. Some of the characters fall very flat in comparison to others - in particular the one who speaks in the first person and seems to be a stand-in for Gessen himself. The book is told in chapters that alternate between the characters, so when you're away from a good one and in a bad one, it can feel irrelevant and tedious. Though there are overlaps, the book also never allows these main characters to reunite, and I found myself wishing for some scene where all these sad, young, literary men would come together at some Fitzgerald convention in Park Slope, where they'd tell stories of their loves and their wars.(less)

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08/10/08

Stephen rated it:

bookshelves: contemporary-fiction

Read in August, 2008

This is not a bad book. I thought it offered a fairly convincing depiction of what I observe around me most days here in the subways, parks, and especially cafés of Brooklyn, USA. But that's the problem: I would never imagine writing a novel of potential mild interest to so few. The audience that might actually find this book a good, even compelling read, may perhaps only be found in a few forward-thinking but sleepy literary outposts like Trondheim or Aarhus (and I may well be doing these Nord...more

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07/24/08

margaret rated it:

Read in July, 2008

recommends it for: sad young literary men?

I just read Gessen's book and would like to review it with
reasons why my friend Kyle Beachy's debut fiction The Slide:A Novel about pre-9-11 confused college grads is better than Keith Gessen's

1. More colors in the cover.

Anyone can do black and white. Having recently ordered all my books in color order, I have to say there are way too many black and white books. Plus instead of a creepy literary Atlas, we have a flying van.

2. The Slide is a far s...more

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05/19/08

Sarah rated it:

Read in May, 2008

I just finished. And sure, I'm still crushing on Keith Gessen pretty hard (this review is for all of you who have suffered through my ecstatic fawning over him these last few days...), but I'm also feeling ambivalent about the book itself.

It seems like a prolonged attempt at reconciling citizenship with sexuality, as though the two things were distinct, and as though each one could justify the ugliness and infelicities of the other. Maybe this picture of that struggle is true (i.e...more I just finished. And sure, I'm still crushing on Keith Gessen pretty hard (this review is for all of you who have suffered through my ecstatic fawning over him these last few days...), but I'm also feeling ambivalent about the book itself.

It seems like a prolonged attempt at reconciling citizenship with sexuality, as though the two things were distinct, and as though each one could justify the ugliness and infelicities of the other. Maybe this picture of that struggle is true (i.e., to life). I don't know.
But, in the book, the phenomenon is a little whiplashing: turn to world politics, turn swiftly to romance, back to politics, back to romance. There are many, many analogies made between the two worlds, but they never really interpenetrate. And maybe this is just descriptive of the feeling of being a historical/political citizen at the same time as being a libidinous, sexualized dude, but (don't you agree?) it's gotta be edifying (not to say prescriptive), somehow, too. This book isn't really edifying. It says, finally: the world is wicked hard, but let's get pregnant anyway!...to fight the forces of evil. Or, hey, maybe it's a book that calls for gendered readings--instructive for the men, not so much for the women...? And that reminds me.

It also feels like Gessen trifurcated himself into 3 not-very-easy-to-distinguish men characters so that, in the course of one book, he could flirt with more women. Suspect. I will give him this much, however: the guy can write an engaging contemporary late-twenties romance. He uses dirty tricks, no mistake, but they work! (Hence my crush.) Example: the part about kissing women's throats is enough, almost, to justify the whole costly, cloth-bound project. Curiously, Gessen's women end up being more interesting than his men (by a long margin), but only as a result of being universally mystified. He plunks the women on pedestals of marbleized beauty, efficacy (sexual and professional), and morality. He reduces them--charmingly but also irritatingly--to objects of love. As if we needed any more of that nonsense. Oy.

In sum, should you read this book? Yeah, of course. It's fun. Besides, chums, I want someone to commiserate with me about the sad (familiar) plight of Celeste. So, get on it! (Call me. I'll lend it to you.)(less)

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05/05/08

Bill rated it:

Read in May, 2008

I really enjoyed this book, Gessen's first. It definitely wasn't perfect, despite my 5 star rating, but overall I thought that it was excellent. It is a great portrayal of your 20s as an upper middle class male intellectual (note that since I more or less belong to that class this book may have resounded with me more than others, fair warning.) The writing was mostly great, with some truly standout lines.

The story itself follows 3 main characters through college and post-college l...more

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02/05/09

Bookmarks Magazine added it

Critics generally reacted positively to Gessen's debut novel (really a set of linked short stories) and agreed that few writers have explored the hopes and fears of the young, urban intelligentsia with equal wit and precision. However, as the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram review claims, one's affection for the novel seems to depend on one's ability to stomach Gessen's narcissistic and self-absorbed protagonists��that is, if one can even tell them apart. While some critics found the men's endless, sel

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01/07/09

Stop added it

bookshelves: reviewed

Read in May, 2008

Read the STOP SMILING Two Takes reviews of All the Sad Young Literary Men:

Reviewer Genevieve Smith writes:

"Best known for skewering criticism, Gessen applies the same wit and precision to his book, but those talents might not convince the most sympathetic readers to spend 256 pages revisiting a fictional version of their younger selves behaving badly."

And John Davidson agrees, in part:

"There are first books from authors you never exp...more

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05/23/09

Rob rated it:

(review of isbn 0143114778)

Read in May, 2009

This entertaining trawl through the whys and wherefores of modern America explores a number of interesting themes. Above all, I was left with the feeling that the individual is everything – almost any situation is filtered through the personal feelings of the main character and relationships dominate all – overshadowing any number of possibly more important topics: the outrages of the Bush administration, intellectual study, even a visit to the Palestinian territories. Such self-centredness ...more

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07/02/09

Simone rated it:

Read in July, 2009

i only heard about this book / decided to read it because of the days i used to read gawker, and they used to mock the author and this book.

my thoughts on this book can be summed up as such: eh. of the stories being told, i disliked sam's the most, liked the first person narrative and i can't tease out how i felt about the mark narrative because he kept using the word syracuse. he referred to the city an in-ordinate amount, like the way people would refer to yale as "new ...more

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11/25/08

Margot rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

Read in December, 2008

Gessen reveals the inner turmoil and insecurities of three intertwining young men, too well-educated for their own good. Sam, the Israeli-obsessed secular Jew with an Israeli girlfriend: "A one-state solution, he sometimes thought, a Jewish-Arab democracy, was the only way. But owning an apartment would also be nice." (38)
"His Google was shrinking. It was part of a larger failing, maybe, certainly, but to see it quantified...to see it numerically confirmed...it was cruel."...more

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