December 15, 2008

No — not The Treatment!

by

After more than a week of internet hubub over NextBook‘s withering and seemingly exhaustive response to some perceived criticism in the new issue of n+1 (see the previous MobyLives report), it’s finally possible to see what the fuss was about: n+1 has posted the essay (“The People of the Magazine”) that prompted the NextBook take-down. Plus, n+1 editor Keith Gessen responds to the attack in a new post on his personal blog (called, er, Keith Gessen Blog) … after some generous comments about MobyLives (ahem) Gessen says that, as to the essay attacked by NextBook: “As you’ll see, it’s by no means an attack on Nextbook, though Nextbook does take a lump or two; the magazines that really get the treatment are Heeb and Guilt and Pleasure.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.

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