All the Sad Young Literary Men [Hardcover]

Keith Gessen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 2008

A charming yet scathing portrait of young adulthood at the opening of the twenty-first century, All the Sad Young Literary Men charts the lives of Sam, Mark, and Keith as they overthink their college years, underthink their love lives, and struggle through the encouragement of the women who love and despise them to find a semblance of maturity, responsibility, and even literary fame.

Heartbroken in his university town, Mark tries to focus his attention on his graduate work on the Russian Revolution, only to be lured again and again to the free pornography on the library computers. Sam binds himself to the task of crafting "the first great Zionist epic" even though he speaks no Hebrew, has never visited Israel, and is not a practicing Jew. Keith, more earnest and easily upset than the other two, is haunted by catastrophes both public and private--and his inability to tell the difference.

At every turn, at each character's misstep, All the Sad Young Literary Men radiates with comedic warmth and biting honesty and signals the arrival of a brave and trenchant new writer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In n+1 founding editor Gessen's first novel, three college graduates grapple with 20th-century history at the dawn of the 21st century while trying—with little success—to forge literary careers and satisfying relationships. Mark is working on his doctoral dissertation on Roman Sidorovich, the funny Menshevik, but after the failure of his marriage, he's distracted by online dating and Internet porn. Sam tries to write the Great Zionist Novel, but his visits to Israel and the occupied territories are mostly to escape a one-sided romance back in Cambridge. And Keith is a liberal writer who has a difficult time separating the personal from the political. Less a novel than a series of loosely connected vignettes, the humor supposedly derives from the arch disconnect between the great historic events these three characters contemplate and the petty failures of their literary and romantic strivings. But it is difficult to differentiate—and thus to care about—the three developmentally arrested protagonists who, very late in the novel, take baby steps toward manhood. There's plenty of irony on tap and more than a few cutting lines, but the callow cast and listless narrative limit the book's potential. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

In his debut novel, Gessen, founding editor of the literary magazine n+1, follows the fortunes of three college graduates struggling to find their footing both in their relationships and in their professional lives. Sam is intent on writing the great Zionist novel, but his visits to the occupied territories only serve to convince him that he is deluded about his goals and his love life. After his marriage fails, Mark humiliates himself through Internet dating and compares his struggles to those of “Menshevik funny-man” and Russian revolutionary Roman Sidorovich, the subject of his doctoral dissertation. Keith takes the world’s problems so seriously that he spends his days worrying and thinking until his girlfriend’s unplanned pregnancy jolts him out of his self-absorption. The three men are only tangentially connected through mutual acquaintances, but their shallow complaints and ineffectual actions are remarkably similar. This failure to sufficiently individualize the characters has the makings of a fatal flaw but is somewhat offset by Gessen’s cutting humor. For more compelling male coming-of-age stories, steer readers to Nick Hornby or Tom Perrotta. --Joanne Wilkinson

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First Edition edition (April 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670018554
• ISBN-13: 978-0670018550
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,261,513 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I really wanted to like this book...., July 3, 2008

By 

Josef K (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: All the Sad Young Literary Men (Hardcover)

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.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars All the Sad, Young Literary Readers, August 21, 2008

By 

Margaret M. Gregerson "addicted to books" (Newport Beach, CA.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: All the Sad Young Literary Men (Hardcover)

I graded on a curve. Gesson is obviously a bright, adept writer. Nobody knows this better than he does. Or, should I say, his thinly disguised, POV-adled protagonists, who are so thinly disguised, they might as well be naked. I bought this book because of the favorable cover blurbs from two contemporary literary gods, Franzen and Karr, and I want to say to Franzen, you've got a correction coming, and to Karr, Gessen made a liar out of you, join the club. And to anyone, in the future do not invoke the sacred name of F.Scott Fitzgerald for a meandering, plotless, emotionally stakeless novel, no matter how much potential the novelist has.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A novel?, June 13, 2008

By 

Marc Shaw (Pasadena, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: All the Sad Young Literary Men (Hardcover)

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.