EQUATION FOR HAPPINESS

“A history of happiness is a funny thing since, for a long time, happiness was viewed as merely the absence of history,” write the editors of n+1. “Then came modernity.” Staying true to this observation, which was made almost 10 years ago in their 2005 issue, the editors of n+1 stop by fellow Brooklyn literary institution BookCourt to launch their new anthology, Happiness: Ten Years of n+1. Editors Keith Gessen, Carla Blumenkranz, and Marco Roth, among others, read from the collection and talk about how the fledgling publication that used to pay its writers in beer became what Malcolm Gladwell praises as “the rightful heir to the Partisan Review and The New York Review of Books.” Since n+1 reintroduced us to the intellectually fired spirit of a Viennese coffee house, via thought-provoking articles with titles like “Bed-Stuy: Do or Die?” and “Against Exercise,” a happy celebration is only fair.

Mon., Sept. 15, 7 p.m., 2014