So Much for the Granta
TEV is going to spend a week matching up n + 1 Issue 4 (the new issue, which is set to be released soon) versus whatever issue of The Believer is available.
It’s a laudable idea, as in many ways these two journals are competing for the same market and plot of the literary spectrum. Avid readers of n + 1 will remember that that journal’s first issue fired shots off at both McSweeney’s at large (in the form of a short editorial) and Dave Eggers (in the form of a 20-page essay, which I found to be quite even-handed and interesting).
It’s somewhat an apples/oranges comparison, though, since n + 1 runs fiction and The Believer doesn’t (McSweeney’s has a separate journal for that). Also, The Believer must triumph in in the amount of material it puts out, it coming out roughly twice as often as n + 1. Lastly, The Believer has been around for al ot longer than n + 1, so it has the benefits of time.
Still, even with those caveats this should be an interesting matchup. No word if Mark will penalize The Believer for running those reading columns by Nick Hornby.
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I have never found The Believer to be very interesting, and all the smug self-satisfied cuteness tedious, and the writing long and poorly edited, not saying much, and the interviews twee and tiresome, but, every now and then something by Stephen Burt (sic?) catches my eye. As for n+1, once I’m past the editorial musings up front I usually find a lot of stuff I’m not interested in. I’m not saying it’s bad, just that I prefered n.