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n+1 is a twice-yearly print journal. n+1 posts new, web-only material once or twice a week.
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Number Five, Winter 2007
Annotated Table of Contents
THE INTELLECTUAL SITUATION
Email, which presents itself as a convenience, a breeze, is in fact a stern disciplinary phenomenon. It fits our phase of capitalism: the collective attitude is casual, natural-seeming, offhand; the discipline is constant and intense.
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From literature to advertising, we've developed a cultural style of ceaseless babbling. Never mind the endless self-interruptions and elaborations of footnoted fiction and talking copyright pages; we got used to that, and it was sort of in the spirit of a warning. But even Burger King has now stolen the text-happy style of McSweeney's, so you are fed grease by some whimsical garrulous spirit of the paper sack and the napkin.
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The Blog Reflex
Imagine a grandfather clock that strikes at random intervals. You can't tell time by it and yet you begin to live in constant anticipation of the next random chime.
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Office workers, no longer chained to their desks, become chained, as never before, to their computers. To the painful post-industrial syndromes of carpal tunnel, repetitive stress injury, and chronic eyestrain is added: Masturbator's Thumb.
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The Decivilizing Process
As the specific addressee of any set of remarks becomes less important, in the midst of more and more babble, it will become more and more difficult to remember the special status of listening human beings, in the confusion of shouted orders.
POLITICS
My Predicament: A Fable
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Benjamin Kunkel
When my consciousness revives, the old guilt returns-ancient guilt, in spite of my youth-and I know myself for the thing I am, and resolve to let myself starve.
Note from Cape Town
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Gemma Sieff
In the past, someone would take out a window to snatch the briefcase or handbag left on the front seat. But in the recent cases there was no theft: the shattered glass was the point. The police put up emergency phone booths along the N2 route, but it turned out the phones didn't work.
PROLIFERATION
Dr. Atomic
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Imraan Coovadia
Ultraviolet Cerenkov radiation passes untouched through steel and concrete, through endless lengths of water and space. If some being broods at the core of the galaxy, the doctor thinks, it's more likely to notice these flashes of radiation than anything the Egyptians, the Greeks, or the Jews have contributed to the species.
Papa-2
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Basharat Peer
One afternoon we were on the football field when a militant passed by. Even our snooty games teacher went up to him, smiled, and shook hands. The militant took off his loose pheran and showed us his gun. "We call it Kalashnikov and the Indians call it AK-47," the militant said. We clapped. From then on we all carried our cricket bats inside our pherans, in imitation and preparation.
Pornutopia
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Nancy Bauer
In the pornutopia, autonomy takes the form of exploring and acting on your sexual desires when and in whatever way you like. No one in the pornutopia has a reason to lose interest in or fear or get bored by sex; no one suffers in a way that can't be cured by it; no one is homeless or dispossessed or morally or spiritually abused or lost.
The Near-Son
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Rebecca Curtis
I had reasons. For one thing, I knew a son would cry all day. For another, I was low on cash. My lover was an out-of-work fiscal analyst, but what he wanted to analyze I wasn't sure, and neither was he.
IMMERSION
The Television Diaries
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Eli S. Evans
The car chase or, in any event, the chase part of the car chase, came to an end maybe fifteen or twenty miles east of downtown Los Angeles. I couldn't stop watching. I wanted to stop watching but every time I looked up, there it was. I increased the speed on my treadmill to 7.8 and less than a minute later the guy next to me did the same.
What was this?
I increased the speed on my treadmill to 8.0
Match that, fatty.
He did. He wasn't fat at all.
Anaesthetic Ideology
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Mark Greif
I see: Severed heads. The Extra Value Meal. Kohl-gray eyelids. A holiday sale at Kohl's. Red seeping between the fingers of the gloved hand that presses the wound. "Doctor, can you save him?" "We'll do our best." The dining room of the newly renovated house, done in red. Often a bold color is best. The kids are grateful for their playroom. The bad guy falls down, shot. The detectives get shot. The new Lexus is now available for lease.
Torture and the Known Unknowns
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Keith Gessen
KSM was interrogated by the CIA for three long years. Very few people knew where, exactly. It was speculated that KSM was in one of the secret CIA prisons in Jordan, or Romania, or Thailand. Others said he was on an American warship, far out at sea, a ship so secure that any vessel that got within five miles of it would be obliterated, no questions asked. Still others said he was simply in a holding cell on one of the enormous military bases our military constructs in sympathetic countries like Germany, Japan, and Afghanistan.
The Argonaut Folly
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Joshua Glenn
I myself fell prey to the Argonaut Folly in 1989, while taking time off from college. I was 21 and living in the still mostly ungentrified Boston neighborhood where I'd grown up, on the Roxbury border of Jamaica Plain. The elevated train along Washington Street had recently come down, revealing to my eyes, as though for the first time, the disused former Franklin Brewery. I dreamed of moving into the building along with the most visionary young men and women of my acquaintance.
REVIEWS
Woman, the New Social Problem
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Meghan Falvey
As long as a relationship conforms to the utilitarian ideal of mutual benefit, the relationship will continue. If not, nothing much prevents it from ending. "You'll find someone who will make better use of what you bring to the table," says your former lover, or the head of HR, as you pack your things.
Flying Cars
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Daniel Albert
It may be hard to imagine a world of flying cars, involving as it does a wholesale reworking of transportation and land-use patterns. But the automobile once reshaped the world in revolutionary ways, and nothing lasts forever.
Fiction Chronicle
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Carla Blumenkranz
This year's most notable girl protagonists don't grow up, they go crazy. They turn the resources of middle-class upbringings and native intelligence toward shaping themselves not into women but specimens, equipped only for examination.+
