The “Intellectual Situation” is a section of n+1 that hosts essays criticising intellectuals. Christian Lorentzen picks apart a recent essay of theirs criticising the current book criticism scene, and dismisses it as “irrelevant, distracting, and ultimately anti-intellectual”. Why? Among other things, the writers created composite characters that didn’t correspond to how critics actually behaved. For example, they lamented that critics had broken away from their Marxist roots, only to criticise a fictional essay based on a real essay that evoked Marxist ideas. All very meta, right? Read full article here
