37 Greenpoint Avenue, n+1

Publishers Noted: in which our publisher reviews the building of another publisher

Mark Krotov, the publisher and coeditor of the literary magazine n+1, holds strong opinions about light bulbs. He claims the city’s conversion of more than 250,000 streetlights from sodium-vapor lamps to light-emitting diodes (LEDs) over the past decade, along with the recent federal ban on the sale of most incandescent bulbs, constitutes “the single greatest visual transition in New York history.” Such convictions have not yet won over his colleagues. “I wanted to write a whole piece about the LEDization of the world, and my comrades said, ‘Shut the fuck up.’”

I was talking with Krotov and his colleagues­—sorry, comrades—­about their office in the minutes before the launch party for their forty-seventh issue, “Passage.” Founded in 2004, n+1 lives in a loft on the third floor of an unassuming, five-story, red brick building from 1931. I entered through the loading dock into a narrow, gypsum-clad, double-loaded corridor that suggested a conversion from an earlier, more industrial life. Then, through a door with the slogan “Utopia in Our Time” on it, I walked into the office.

When, in 2005, New York Times critic A. O. Scott wrote a 6,000-word profile of n+1 and another magazine, the Believer, he noted how contrarian it was to publish in print: “If you are an overeducated (or at least a semi-overeducated) youngish person with a sleep disorder and a surfeit of opinions, the thing to do, after all, is to start a blog.” Indeed, that was the golden age for getting online. (Gawker started in 2002, Facebook in 2004, and Buzzfeed and Twitter in 2006.) Scott posited that this material decision—publishing in print—set n+1 apart against a “discourse based on speed, topicality, cleverness, and contention.”

Material decisions also have spatial consequences. At the time of the publication of Scott’s essay, cofounder Keith Gessen’s apartment near the Brooklyn Museum served as n+1’s office. After a few years in a space at 195 Christie Street described by Krotov as “the bottom of a dark shaft,” the magazine settled in 2008 in Dumbo at 68 Jay Street. But when in 2020 the pandemic drove everyone home, n+1 gave up having an office altogether.

The editorial work may have gone remote, but the magazine was still in print. The need for a space, said Nicole Lipman (who as operations manager has to get issues out the door), became quickly apparent as the staff tested different issue storage and distribution solutions, including a basement in Fort Greene and an industrial steel-brush factory off New York State Route 22. Therefore, in the fall of 2021—the golden age for going remote—n+1 signed a new lease. The office has other purposes. For instance, it serves as a gathering point for New York’s literary scene, hosting panels and even launches for other publications, like Bookforum. But it also undeniably reflects the printed word’s voracious appetite for space. Inside, back issues and books published by n+1 fill a 14-foot-wide bookcase spanning the full 13 feet from floor to ceiling. Another 18-foot-long industrial bookcase with more back issues runs most of the office’s length. There are windows (atop a set of shorter bookshelves). They even face Manhattan—the editors chafe that a new 36-story tower just blocked an oblique view of the Empire State Building. But the real view is of all the paper.

Back at the party, I had a conversation with one of the contributors to the latest issue, the author Siddhartha Deb, where he explained to me how nationalism underpins the post office’s flat rate. In the meantime, Krotov shared with me one more material decision with spatial consequences. His comrades allowed him to take local action on his light-bulb convictions: “I have a NYRA-exclusive to share. If you think it looks kind of nice in here … it’s the 60-watt Hungarian incandescents with ‘Not for sale for use in the United States’ printed on their box.” Once noted, the warm, comforting glow was unmistakable. Utopia in our time, indeed.