In /All The Sad Young Literary Men/ Gessen charts the lives of Mark, Keith, and Sam as they over-process their college days, under-process relationships past and present, and pathetically as well as triumphantly struggle their way through a web of women who love them and loathe them, in search for a sense of maturity, responsibility and literary (or other) fame.
Newly divorced and heartbroken in his university town of Syracuse, Mark attempts to center his life around his graduate work on the Russian Revolution and ends up being seduced by internet dating and online porn. Sam’s on a mission to write “the first great Zionist epic” even though he couldn’t say a Hebrew word if you paid him, hasn’t yet made it to Israel, and is not a practicing Jew. Obsessive self-Googler and avid dater after a string of failed relationships, Sam learns what it feels like to be just another name on a list of sexual encounters. And then there’s more serious and sensitive Keith who is thwarted by inherited notions of resilience and greatness, by memories of his broken family, and muddles his way into the arms of the selfless woman he meets in Brooklyn.
All the Sad Young Literary Men - Keith Gessen: an overview of the reviews and critical reactions
"Still, there is something weirdly fetching about /All the Sad Young Literary Men/ -- weird because the book describes such a tiny, occasionally infuriating world, one where progressive magazines and book reviews might save the world and crossing paths with the vice president’s daughter is just a part of a Harvard education. It is a world of less-than-practical professions. And yet there is something affecting about the impossibly great aspirations shared by Mr. Gessen’s trio, especially as it shields them from thinking too deeply about the cowardly deeds that pock their day-to-day lives." - Hua Hsu, The New York Sun
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