Customer Reviews

McSweeney's, Issue 36

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Where to begin? I've never received a more surprising object in the mail. McSweeney's #36 is a robust hinged box that looks like a middle-aged white guy's nervous (but friendly) head. I flipped open the forehead and got sucked right in. Rather than dwelling too long on how Amazon can afford to sell this "book" for $14.86 postpaid, I've ordered a copy for my grandfather to make him laugh the way I did when I got mine. (If he gets past the exterior, it'll be gravy.) But McSweeney's #36 is no joke! The box contains twelve distinct objects -- booklets of different shapes and sizes, for the most part. I've enjoyed reading or looking at almost every single component on its own, and there's a weird kind of sense to how it all hangs together. Here's what you get; I'll try to keep it concise:

1. "MENU" CARD
An L-shaped card comes wrapped around the left and back sides of the "head." Side one, visible through the shrinkwrap, is an illustrated table of contents. Side two is a brief introduction to the issue. Once removed, this card tucks neatly into the box. And it serves the admirable function of keeping words off the box itself. (The box is wall-to-wall art; not a line of text anywhere.)

2. FOUNTAIN CITY, A NOVEL WRECKED BY MICHARL CHABON
Four chapters of Chabon's abandoned-in-1992 second novel, published here for the first time. Half of this 112-page mini-book consists of the novel excerpt, and it's good fun to read. The other half -- the truly inspired half -- consists of Chabon's blow-by-blow notes on the excruciating six-year process of writing the book before giving it up to write "Wonder Boys" in a matter of months. Reading this, I felt like I was taking a tour through the author's mind. I couldn't have enjoyed it more. As a bonus, the booklet is wrapped in a handsome jacket that folds out into a mini-poster of the drawing that inspired Chabon to try writing the book in the first place.

3. A FOUR-POSTCARD PAINTING OF A CATFISH-SHAPED SUBMARINE
A sweet little painting by Ian Huebert, broken into four postcards. It's nice to see some straight-up art in McSweeney's from time to time. I was a big fan of McSweeney's recent box of 100 art postcards, and I like these four cards a lot, too. I wish they'd included two sets: one to mail and one to keep.

4. A BOOK OF LETTERS AND STORIES
Because this booklet is contained within a human head, I found myself noticing head- and mind-related themes in many of the pieces. For example: Jesse Eisenberg, star of the recent Facebook movie, has a funny letter in this Facebox about psychotropic drugs. I hope it's fiction. Ismet Prcic's disorienting story about a play was disorienting and open-ended. Is it a hallucination? Ricardo Nuila's story features a character who insists that "the brain is a box." Colm Toibin's story is sexually, sensually head-involved. Davy Rothbart's letter is a kind of mental sketch for a last will and testament. I really liked the selection here and read it all in one sitting with the exception of the Toibin, which took me a couple of tries to get through.

5. EARLY MORNING AT THE STATION, BY ANDREW KENNEDY HUTCHISON BOYD
"A nineteenth-century Scot's meditation on irreality," according to the table of contents. In other words: a neat six-page essay about how it's sometimes hard to believe in the things that are right in front of our faces. At one point, the author expresses frustration with "blockheads," and I took a fresh look at the sweaty block-headed box in my lap.

6. DON'T GET DISTRACTED, BY SOPHIA CARA FRYDMAN
This mysterious illustrated story booklet feels, in the hand, like a religious tract. A young female artist meets a probably-crazy guy on the street. He claims to be a retired cop and offers unsolicited tips on sidewalk-walking etiquette. It takes about a minute to read, but the artwork (drawn by the author) is painstakingly detailed, and I keep coming back to it.

7. THE DOMESTIC CRUSADERS, BY WAJAHAT ALI
A stage play about a day in the life of a Muslim-American family, written by a young Muslim-American writer, that feels like an episode of the Cosby Show, but with the kind of more-serious twists you might expect to find in a play (and not, say, in an '80s sitcom). I enjoyed this booklet in itself, but it feels especially good in context, as one of many objects floating around inside a head, behind a balding white guy's stressed-out facial expression.

8. A FORTY-INCH SCROLL OF FORTUNE-COOKIE FORTUNES
A bunch of very, very funny fake fortune-cookie fortunes "to clip and use." As with the postcards, I wish they'd have included two: one to keep and one to use. Extra points for the paper and printing style. The scroll, if you were to cut it up, would look exactly like a bunch of little fortunes.

9. THE INSTRUCTIONS, BY ADAM LEVIN
The first chapter from Levin's new 1,000-page novel of the same name. I've been calling my loogies "gooze" all week thanks to this text. Haven't picked up the actual whole book yet.

10. JUNGLE GERONIMO IN GAY PAREE, BY JACK "L. P. EAVES" PENDARVIS
A ridiculous Tarzan-esque tale, written by the hilarious Jack Pendarvis (of "The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure" and "Awesome" fame) as though it is a 1960s abridgment of a book written in the 1910s. This is a headache-inducing conceit in the best possible way, with illustrations by frequent McSweeney's collaborator Michael Kupperman. This booklet was unabashedly Jack Pendarvisy for nearly 100 pages, and I laughed out loud and loved it.

11. MA SU MON
A brief first-person narrative from Ma Su Mon, a student protester in Burma who was detained and physically abused by the government because she supports democracy. This is an excerpt from a longer narrative in a forthcoming book on Burmese human-rights crises from McSweeney's "Voice of Witness" series of oral history books.

12. BICYCLE BUILT FOR TWO, BY TIM HEIDECKER AND GREGG TURKINGTON
This is a fake screenplay (full-length!), "written for Dana Carvey and Mike Myers" (not really -- it's soooo corny) by Tim from "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!" and Gregg Turkington, a.k.a. Neil Hamburger. If you are, like me, a sincere fan of (1) Neil Hamburger's signature flat-tire humor, and (2) the movies "Wayne's World" and "Major League," then I bet you'll like this booklet, too.

In summary: This is a McSweeney's issue to order for $14.86 and explore for yourself. Too-long Amazon reviews like this one just aren't going to give an accurate sense of the project. The parts are good or great, and the whole is greater still.

How does he/they do it? Another marvelous Quarterly... though the name is misleading. I call it the McSweeny's Quarterly Experience. And that's why they make great gifts for my talented friends and family. David Eggers is so blessed.

il prodotto è arrivato in tempo. il prodotto era nuovo in condizioni perfette. massima serietà nella descrizione del prodotto e nella spedizione e consegna.

This is, by far, one of my favorites from McSweeney's. I felt like a kid on Christmas picking though this head for the bits and pieces of short stories, essays, plays, and novels. My only complaint would be that I wanted more!

Purchased this on a recommendation of friend and then came across it in an article I was reading. I had it shipped to work, opened the box and could not wait to investigate what was in the 'head'. Because I left it sitting on my desk at work apparantly my co-workers could not wait to exam the contents as well. Caused quite a stir. Without giving too much away, little bits of random things are in this box, books are interesting and fast reading. In short a fun idea/concept to give to someone who loves books and likes a new format in reading a book. Plan on putting it on my bookshelf for a great conversation piece.

I was waffling on whether or not to order this head-box, based on some mixed reviews of the content. I'm glad I did, because apparantly I am not nearly as critical as some other reviewers. The presentation and thought put into this collection are worth Amazon's low price if you are into McSweeney's at all.

McSweeneys is always worth a look. Though the contents are wildly erratic, there is always one piece of writing worth reading, and one design element worth showing around to your friends. This issue, a box painted with a face and containing booklets and pamphlets, is no exception. The writing runs from (best) a portion of an abandoned Michael Chabon novel, with his notes on sources and why the novel failed, to a screenplay for a proposed Mike Myers/Dana Carvey picture, which is just awful. You never know quite what to expect from McSweeneys, which is part of the fun.

First off, let me say that the presentation of this issue is fantastic. That head looks much better in reality and is much larger than you might imagine. It's a great big block of an issue, a real, honest-to-goodness piece of art. If more people followed McSweeney's example, perhaps the publishing industry wouldn't be in its slow decline: Presentation matters, damn it, and they've nailed this one.

To the content. Issue 36 follows the philosophy of some earlier issues (8, 17, 19, 33) in that it throws in the whole kit and kaboodle, more concerned with quantity than quality. Unfortunately, much of the quantity is just quantity. 36 features nine separate booklets, six of which are--to be kind--inessential.

You get two plays, one by Wajahat Ali and the other by Tim and Eric's Tim Heidecker, along with Gregg Turkington. The former is rotten to the core, an ultra-topical monstrosity that reads like an endless Full House episode (sample dialogue: "Ugh, I hear OLD people music. Ami, puhlease, please--ANYTHING but Tom Jones." The Heidecker play is a let-down too, unfortunately, possessing none of the absurdist charm of his show but being a straightforward, hokey washed-up ballplayer yarn.

The other booklets fare little better: There's a novel excerpt from Adam Levin's forthcoming The Instructions, one of these middle-school-politics-as-told-by-middle-schoolers stories. Personally, I've had enough of these. Then there's a book from the McSweeney's-affiliated Voice of Witness series, about resistance in Burma that would be better if it gave any more into the story than that. A heavily abridged 1961 novel, "Jungle Geronimo in Gay Paree" by L.P. Eaves, exists only to show how "wrong" people thought in 1961, and is miles from readable. And then there's Sophia Cara Frydman's sub-zine booklet "Don't Get Distracted," which is the worst thing McSweeney's has ever published.

But hope does surface, finally! (Just as in sex, experience, and all things, the way to achieve quality is through quantity.) In addition to a roll of fortune cookie slogans that's a great little touch and a charming, teensy metaphysical meditation by Andrew Kennedy Hutchinson Boyd, there's a "wrecked" novel fragment by Michael Chabon, which is worth the purchase price by itself. This novel contains more footnotes than novel, which is just about a perfect forum for Chabon and his love of "variorum." The constancy of digression is the point here--"nothing succeeds like failure," he reminds us, and then rambles endlessly about off-topic curiosities. Chabon is a writer who does best not to get to the point, and stays far from the point here; just as in Maps and Legends and Manhood for Amateurs, the strategy works wonderfully, letting Chabon be his most Chabon-like. The wrecked novel itself? Not bad. It resembles more his stories than his novels, but the real novel here is in the footnotes.

And then there are the stories, thank heavens. There are three stories and one novella and they're all good (a few spoilers ahead). Ismet Prcic starts with a bizarre piece about a Bosnian theatre adoring a tribute to American garbage. When the disgusted narrator disrupts this "play," he's revealed to be in the play, maybe. McSweeney's favorite and always solid John Brandon writes an "our town" story about a small town in Arkansas where people simply disappear. The narrator, speaking for his town, describes his town and various outsiders' reactions to it.

Ricardo Nuila's story is the best, about a boy with an unusual, almost savant father and his strange education, the kind of barely-believable personal history that can only be nonfiction dressed up as fiction. It's delightful all the same. The stories end with Colm Toíbín's novella "The Street," about two Pakistani barbers in Barcelona and their clandestine rendezvous. It's a perfect exploration of the ways people in quiet exile have to live their lives in communal privacy, where the real betrayal is any outburst of sincerity.

So, overall, you get plenty of quality in 36, and if my review ran way too long, remember that that's because there's so much stuff here to cover. Way too much? Probably. But better that than not enough.