I Want to Believe in the Young Literati

This week's New York Times Magazine section features a profile of the latest wave of literary journals written by A.O. Scott. The article, titled Among the Believers focuses primarily on The Believer and N + 1 both of which are based in Brooklyn. Reading about these publications filled me with both admiration and, I'll admit, envy. My admiration is based on my sense that the group of young editors and writers working on these publications are sincere about creating a space for eclectic and thoughtful literary writing (a term I won't try to define here) that doesn't slavishly follow publishing-industry trends. I say sense because I don't read these publications regularly, though I occasionally read articles from them, typically online. I remember being very impressed by Marco Roth's memorial essay on Derrida, Derrida: An Autothanatography, for example, which deftly blended personal ancedoctes with smart glosses on deconstructgion. It's heartening to find my generation of writers successfully integrating academic theory and philosophy, which is almost always denigrated when the mass media dains to refer to it, into non-academic publications. More importantly, it's fantastic that young writers are talking about the need to create an impersonal forum for debating ideas.

My envy comes from a sense that these young writers are engaging with many of the same ideas that I am in my PhD program. The difference is that they get to have a lot more fun doing so. But that's not the true source of my envy. To put it bluntly, my envy is class based. When I read this article, I first wondered how these young literati managed to support themselves and to pay for the magazine. Then I read about their backgrounds. Almost all of them attended the same prestigious East Coast Universities (Harvard, Columbia, etc.) and appear to come from rather privileged backgrounds. There's nothing wrong with that, but it did make the whole scene seem rather insular and somehow inaccessible. It's kinda like learning that the Beastie Boys and The Strokes were all rich kids. I don't hold that against them, and I respect the way that they seem not to take their class privileges for granted. Nonetheless, what they've achieved seems diminished somehow by the fact that they've had a huge safety net (financial and cultural capital) that has protected and enabled them to focus their energies on art, literature, philosophy and other things generally devalued in our profit-driven society. Is it possible for people from poor and middle-class backgrounds to devote lives to such pursuits?

Without launching into a lengthy litany about funding for the arts and humanities, let me conclude by stating a sincere concern of mine: I fear that due to market pressures, pursuing a career in the arts and the humanities is increasingly becoming an option available primarily for members from the wealthy classes. I hate to think of a world in which the study of history, philosophy, literature, etc. was regarded as a luxury and not a necessity. Unfortunately, I think America is moving ever closer to such a world. So, let's hope that the young generation of thinkers, wherever they may be, can start to reverse this trend. We don't want an intellectual oligarchy.