MOST OF THESE appeared in n + 1--"Against Exercise," Greif's best-known piece and I imagine the inspiration for the book's title, appeared in the every first issue--and Greif might be the inventor of the distinctive tone of n + 1: erudite but not formally academic, well-versed in popular culture while maintaining some skeptical distance, well to the left but noticeably less militant than (say) Jacobin.
Greif occasionally swings for the fences, as in "The Concept of Experience (The Meaning of Life, Part I)," a title that unwisely invites comparisons to Emerson that will not go in Greif's favor. For that matter, three of the four essays subtitled "The Meaning of Life" strike me as trying too hard. The fourth, though, "Thoreau Trailer Park," may be the book's best.
However, Greif does gadfly well; the essays twitting fitness aficionados ("Against Exercise") and foodies ("On Food") are smart and entertaining. The more ambitious pieces, e.g. those on "Octomom," YouTube, and the police, work well, too. He usually has an interesting new take on something we have already heard a lot about, like the figure of the hipster or the Kardashians; he knows his way around a sentence, and as a youth he was a fan of Minor Threat. All that makes you okay in my book.
Not sure he's an Emerson, though...not yet, anyway. But "Thoreau Trailer Park," a persuasive look at the Occupy Wall Street moment through the lens of Walden and "On Civil Disobedience," suggests he could get there.
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