n+1. Labyrinth Books. Bring your boxing gloves, New Criterion readers.

Last week, maybe Friday, I checked the mail here at the apartment. We have a nice mailbox, sturdy, metal, large enough to hold the bills, letters (yes, we still get letters), and magazines that the Most Ethical Man in the World and I subscribe to. I’m not trying to get arty on you, here; I’m just letting you know that checking the mail is something we actively enjoy around here.

That glorious spring day’s mail included, among other things, an issue of the New Criterion, a magazine that we’ve received here for not very long. Most of my life I’d not given it a moment’s thought. Edith is a book reader more than a journal or magazine reader; and what’s more, one really has to pick one’s battles; one cannot read everything. But now we receive it, and so I look at it and think about it every so often.

That day's email -- as opposed to regular mail – brought me an invitation to attend a reading, a literary event, featuring editors and writers from the journal n+1. Did I want to attend this? the person who emailed me asked. There would be free wine. Next Tuesday. I should go.

Well. I’ve looked at an issue of n+1. I thought it was basically silly. But I am not one to turn down an opportunity to drink wine in a bookstore (the n+1 thing is being hosted by Labyrinth Books) and, well, who knows, maybe it’d be fun.

I couldn’t help but find it amusing that the New Criterion and n+1 were crossing paths, so to speak, in my house. I thought idly, “well, maybe it’s fitting, in a way.” Ethical Man thought I was wasting time even thinking about this. But Googling ‘New Criterion + n+1’ gets some interesting results. Not many, but a few. What you basically get is writers from each periodical sniping at each other, and also being generally insulting toward McSweeney’s and The Believer, just to keep things even-handed.

So Edith’s thinking she might just put on her patent-leather heels and a little hat and head to Labyrinth tomorrow to hear those crazy kids from n+1. Maybe a fight will break out. Edith’s hoping she’s not involved; she’d hate to break a nail…