A selection from the first ten years of “the best goddamn literary magazine in America” (Mary Karr)


The first issue of n+1 appeared in the fall of 2004 as the brainchild of a group of writers working out of a Brooklyn apartment. Intended to revive the leftist social criticism that was the hallmark of Dissent and Partisan Review, n+1 was a fierce rejoinder to the consumerism and complacency of the Bush years. It hasn’t slowed down since. It has given us the first sociological survey of the Brooklyn hipster, the best criticism of the New York City literary scene, and the most clear-eyed, boots-on-the-ground reportage of the 2008 crash and the Occupy movement. No media, new or old, has escaped its ire, and n+1’s firebrand contributors have had the last word on reality TV, Twitter, diploma deflation, drone strikes, and Internet porn.
     Happiness, released on the occasion of n+1’s tenth anniversary, collects the best of the magazine as selected by its editors. These essays are fiercely contentious, disconcertingly astute, and screamingly funny, taking a searching moral inventory of the strange times we live in. Founding lights Chad Harbach, Keith Gessen, Benjamin Kunkel, Marco Roth, and Mark Greif are featured, as well as the essays that launched some of the most electric young writers working today, talents such as Elif Batuman, Emily Witt, and Kristen Dombek. This anthology is the definitive work of the definitive intellectual magazine of our time.