McSweeney's Issue 25 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern) [Hardcover]

Dave Eggers (Editor)

Book Description

Series: McSweeney's Quarterly Concern

If issues were anniversaries, this one would have to be printed on silver plates. You could melt it in some sort of forge and then pound it on an anvil until you had a set of earrings. Instead, it's a hardcover book with stories by a few of our old favorites—Steven Millhauser, Joyce Carol Oates, Padgett Powell—and more than half a dozen others, investigating everything from ape men to unlucky island-hoppers to what happens when Canadians go AWOL in Bosnia. Pound this one on an anvil and it'll pound you right back.

Featuring three different cover types, and illustrations of various horses by Amy Jean Porter

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: McSweeney's (November 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932416846
• ISBN-13: 978-1932416848
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,203,688 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Many Good'ns, September 26, 2009

By 

Matt M. Martin "No, One" (Fort Collins, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: McSweeney's Issue 25 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern) (Hardcover)

A small, tidy volume of mostly very good stories along with some "horses saying 'what'" art by Amy Jean Porter.

Best is Steven Millhauser's story of building a tower to heaven, and the details and reaction to its actual construction, a great idea executed flawlessly. Emily Anderson writes a very sharp story about going West in the modern day, Padgett Powell has a hilarious, acute story of a girl running away to Kansas for the good life, and David Hollander has an irresistibly imaginative story about a crew of ruined shipmen discovering strange and awful islands. There're also good ones by Connor Kilpatrick (about a warehouse worker phenom), Alexander MacBride (about Tarzan's lost brother), and Kenneth Bonert has a novella about a journalist in Serbia not finding a single answer. There's a so-so story by Joyce Carol, and duds by Terry Wright and Chloe Hooper, though Wright's dud is only about 100 words long. As usual, the good far outweighs and outshines the bad, and the stories are extremely creative while making good on their often outlandish premises. Because what's better than writing about something very interesting exceptionally well?

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I am not sure if I liked it or not, March 4, 2008

By 

D. R. Pitts "daverpitts" (Issaquah, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: McSweeney's Issue 25 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern) (Hardcover)

I am conflicted about this one, some stories were absolute junk, and others had tremendous promise of prose and story that they sucked you in only to fail to deliver (peacekeeper and naming of the island). None actually seemed to have a point. It s as if they were ideas for stories or screenplays that we couldn't figure out how to satisfactory bring to conclusion. That said however I read the whole dammed thing!, so something was working right !. Production values on the book are extremely high, but again I couldn't figure out the connection between the artwork theme and the stories! Am I thinking too hard? Probably.