Exclusive Interview With Keith “Sweat” Fury

In New York’s feisty literary dens, there are plenty of people who will go one step further than you. This is because they are essentially talentless and, rather criminally, aren’t working at a gas station somewhere. Unable to understand their lack of talent, they have decided to get angry instead. One can look no further than Keith “Sweat” Fury, head of the new journal, n+2. Not only does Fury hate anyone and everyone who loves literature, but he even hates himself.

Putting out a one-page literary broadsheet once every ten years (the first issue of n+2 has yet to appear, but Fury said that it would come once he had “come back from San Francisco with Dave Eggers’ skull sucking my cock on the jet ride home”), n+2 has become one of the most talked about literary magazines in recent memory, assuming, of course, that your memory extends to how you got that girl home with you last night from the bar whose name you can now not remember. (Along with Fury, Benjamin Cuntless, author of the bestselling I’m More Manly Than You, is a founding editor.)

We caught up with Fury when he was busy berating a barista who had failed to recognize his literary genius but who was, nevertheless, working a twelve-hour shift.

Return of the Reluctant: Did you really have to do that?

Keith Fury: Absolutely. The hate is everywhere until the world recognizes that Benjamin and I are the sexiest, most literary motherfuckers on the planet. We will not stop until we are walking out of the King Cole Bar ready to talk Musil, inflate our hubris and, if we feel like it, snort a few lines of coke off of Marisha Pessl’s chest.

Return of the Reluctant: But how is this really literary? You sound more like Joe Eszterhas circa 1985.

Keith Fury: What we do, Reluctant Boy, is indisputably literary, because we declare it so. For we are, after all, n+2, which is one more than those other interlopers named Keith and Benjamin. In fact, I’ll bet those pussies wouldn’t even last thirty seconds in an arm wrestling match with us. Can those motherfuckers offer epigrams in Russian? No. In fact, I’m so certain they’re a bunch of poseurs that I’m willing to stake my penis on it. If Ben Kunkel and Keith Gessen can outdo us in Russian epigrams, then I will gladly castrate myself. You need to be angry, Reluctant Boy. You also need to boast and always have the sense that you are right.

Return of the Reluctant: But I’m…uh…not angry and don’t feel the need to boast.

Keith Fury: This is not a civics lesson, you spineless son of a bitch. You litblogger! I am angry. I am angry at you. I will have your left arm for breakfast and your scrotum for a midnight snack. Don’t diss the Sweat. Don’t diss n+2.

Return of the Reluctant: When can we expect the first issue of n+2?

Keith Fury: Whenever we damn well feel like it. It’s the most intellectual cohesive issue we’ve ever done. You’ll read it when we’re ready. We may have it out in January. Or February. Or maybe May 2010. See, that’s the way it works here at n+2. I unzip my pants, you suck me off.

Return of the Reluctant: You’re a preposterous man.

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