The young men of The New School’s maintenance staff—seeing that the Tishman Auditorium was only a third filled by 8:30 p.m., when the Granta reading by some of “The Best of Young American Novelists of 2007” was supposed to begin—tied off the last three rows of seats with Tyger Twine in order to push the audience forward and make it look more like, well, an audience. As it turned out, the concern was a little premature. By 8:45, when Granta editor Ian Jack walked up to the podium, so many people had suddenly arrived that the latecomers hopped over the Twine to fill the back rows. The audience seemed to be mostly men and women in their 20s and...