Customer Reviews

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

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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.

McSweeney's 27 is three paperbacks enclosed within a hardback case. The first book is a sketchbook of Art Spiegelman's who drew it during March - May 2007. It has some funny doodles in it and shows a talented artist even in these brief drawings. It's a very enjoyable, well produced book.

There's also another illustration themed book focused around drawings/paintings with some text accompanying them. Everyone from Goya to Shel Silverstein is represented here and has some great pics throughout that are very entertaining.

The third book is of course the stories. My favourites of these were two novella-length stories: Stephen King's "A Very Tight Place" is about two bad neighbours fighting over a nearby property. One of them goes too far and locks the other inside a port-a-loo and then tips it over. Will he escape the ghastly plastic coffin or will it be his end? Dark but funny moments in this book. If you've read King's 2008 book "Just After Sunset" then you'll know this story is included in that collection also.

The other was Jim Shepard's "Classical Scenes of Farewell" about the bloodthirsty 15th century child serial killer Gilles de Rais told from the perspective of one of de Rais' henchmen who brought the children to him to be molested/murdered. Shepard does a fantastic job bringing the setting of 15th century France to life and the increasingly unbalanced Christian knight gone terribly mad figure of de Rais. Very dark, very disturbing story. I'd never been a fan of Jim Shepard before but this story really showed his talent as a writer and was a definite highlight of this presentation heavy issue.

And as for the presentation? Superb, high quality production as always from the geniuses at McSweeney's. The wrap-around drawing of rooms within the words "McSweeney's Issue 27" are so awesome you could (and I did) stare at them for ages, imaging the lives of little people in these fantastic little rooms. Bedrooms, restaurants, living rooms, showers, basements, a whole little world can be found just on the cover.

A very enjoyable issue from the folks at McSweeney's who throw in a heck of a lot into each one. This had some great stories alongside great design and illustration work from some top professionals. Great fun, great read, and looks great on the shelf. Try replicating that on the Kindle!

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.