Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica,

I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Keith Gessen, my guest, is the author

of All the Sad Young Literary Men.

It's published by Viking.

He is also one of the co-editors of a journal N Plus One,

and we'll be talking both about that novel and that journal today on Bookworm.

Now, Keith, I am interested.

Fitzgerald has a volume,

all the sad young man.

But did you start there in building this,

or did that title come later?

It came later, but I did have that, I did start with the idea of a group of guys sitting in a room who having just come to New York and wondering what they're going to do and how they're going to conquer New York.

And I feel like that is very much in the vein of Fitzgerald, you know, being young and being

in New York and just being amazed by New York.

But talk to me about the idea of conquest.

Well, it's more the idea of confusion.

...