McSweeney's Issue 27 (Mcsweeney's Quarterly Concern) (No. 27) (Paperback)

~ Dave Eggers (Editor)
Key Phrases: very tight place, toilet hole, The Motherfucker, General Major, Grandma Martin (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Plunging straight into the grayish, faintly understood area of the art world that involves oddly drawn objects coupled with uncertainly spelled text, McSweeney's Issue 27 brings together a previously uncategorized cadre of pithy draftsmen, genius doodlers, and fine-artistic cartoonists, and buffets them with articles examining just what it is that these people are doing and why the world should know about it. Featuring work from David Shrigley, Tucker Nichols, and many others — including an unreleased Art Spiegelman sketchbook — the latest quarterly from McSweeney's presents a new kind of contemporary art.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: McSweeney's (May 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932416919
• ISBN-13: 978-1932416916
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #452,912 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Stories, Great Graphic Design, October 31, 2008

By	I. Gazarek (Gainesville, FL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

My first foray into the world of McSweeney's has me totally sold. This issue comes with three parts.

1.) Art Spiegelman's notebook of sketches he used to keep himself drawing with no intent of publishing. It's a fun, quick read and a charming look at something private from someone I love.

2.) A small booklet of "funny" art that includes art with text in it. The intro is really full of itself, since it's written by Dave Eggers. C'est la Eggers.

3.) Short stories, which are mostly mind-blowing; I've used several of them teaching college literature already. Stephen King's story isn't exactly new territory for him, but reading him is always a pleasure. My personal favorite was Jim Shepard's "Classical Scenes of Farewell," which was outrageously dark but just straight up amazing. Also of note is "The Crack", the story of a group of terminal patients who form a friendship and venture into a fissure in a busy street and find a huge cave. If this sounds like the Goonies, the fact that none of them will live more than five years makes the whole story horrifyingly tender.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Rarity of a McSweeney's Dud, June 2, 2009

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

This is one of the weakest issues of McSweeney's, possibly the weakest, though it's still slightly redeemed.

First of all, here's what you get:

1. A small bound collection of sketches and doodles with "funny" captions. This is art at its laziest and least enjoyable, using old funny goofy art (Duchamp, Magritte) to justify newer versions of the same, minus the effort of imagination. Not worth the two minutes it takes to read.

2. A new Art Spiegelman sketchbook. This is a larky enough lark, but teeming with inessentiality. There are some decent licks 'n' gags in it, but overall, it's someone else's sketchbook, or, a self-admittedly manque artist doodling some aphorisms he recalls.

3. And then there's the issue itself, which is shortened to six stories by the content mentioned above. The stories have a lot of making up to do for items 1 and 2, and do little of that making up. The fiction collection does feature an excellent work of art by Scott Teplin, an architectural reappropriation of the word "McSweeney's Twenty-Seven," which is worth mention, but the stories...

The stories are quite tepid. In one, a girl cares for her grandmother and young son in a story completely competent, sterile and dull. Liz Mandrell does a back-and-forth excerpt story that's an argument against excerpt stories, where the audience is deliberately uninformed the whole way through. Mikel Jollett's story may be most offensive of all. It's about a group of L.A. kids who are clearly the author's own group of L.A. friends, and it's a painfully misguided listing of all the wacky, "random," "hilarious" activities they get up to. "Oh my gosh, I can't believe they dressed up like astronauts' wives and harassed Scientologists! Incredible!" The dialogue is as straight-up dumb as dialogue comes, and there is heaps of failed comedy.

There are a couple of winners, namely Stephen King's novella about a man trapped in a Port-O-San, and Jim Shepard's very difficult if exceptionally well-written, unique, and beautiful story of a religious child murderer set in the early 1400s. There's also a story about a '20s/'30s-era gangster falling in love, which is decent.

Overall, though, this may be the weakest McSweeney's. Proceed with, you know, caution.