McSweeney's Issue 31 (Mcsweeney's Quarterly Concern) (Hardcover)

~ Dave Eggers (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

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Barthelme said that "The Novel of the Soil is dead, as are Expressionism, Impressionism, Futurism, Imagism, Vorticism, Regionalism, Realism, the Kitchen Sink School of Drama, the Theatre of the Absurd, the Theatre of Cruelty, Black Humor, and Gongorism." But he left out, pointedly, the Biji, the Nivola, the Graustarkian Romance, the Consuetudinary, the Whore's Dialogue, the Fornaldarsaga, and the eighties, which are not dead; they are all in McSweeney's 31, as rendered by Douglas Coupland, Joy Williams, John Brandon, Shelley Jackson, Mary Miller, and Will Sheff, along with other fugitive genres recaptured by our finest writers, as part of a project to bring them back alive (except for the eighties, there is actually nothing about the eighties). In an oversized format, with annotations, illustrations, and pantoums, Issue 31 aims to introduce you to all the genres you never knew you loved.

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Product Details Hardcover: 300 pages Publisher: McSweeney's (June 1, 2009) Language: English ISBN-10: 1934781347 ISBN-13: 978-1934781340 Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 7.9 x 0.9 inches Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies) Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews) Amazon.com Sales Rank: #340,881 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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	61% buy the item featured on this page: McSweeney's Issue 31 (Mcsweeney's Quarterly Concern) 4.5 out of 5 stars (2) $16.32
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2 Reviews 5 star:  (1) 4 star:  (1) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews 4.0 out of 5 stars A great idea, with some good pieces, September 19, 2009 By  C. Federico Escobar - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    Amazon Verified Purchase McSweeney's 31 started off with a great idea: reviving feeble or deceased literary forms. The forms chosen are quite different, from poetry (pantoums) to prose (nivolas, Icelandic sagas). I thought the revivals worked best when they were set in contemporary settings, exploiting the form in light of present concerns. Some forms proved tough to revive. Some were funny and clever. My favorites: Mary Miller's whore dialogue, Douglas Coupland's biji, and John Brandon's Graustarkian romance. 2 of 4 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars "A Paean to the Weird, Beautiful, Missing Links of Literature", June 8, 2009 By  Matt M. Martin "No, One" (Fort Collins, CO) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    Issue 31 is devoted to lost forms of literature, those forms and genres that have been almost or totally forgotten. The issue was conceived over a year's time; McSweeney's interns solicited authors with lost genre forms, which the authors made new instances of. Almost all of the new pieces are very strong. For example, many authors try their hands at the poetic forms of the pantoum and senryu, with terrific results. Mary Miller writes a whore dialogue, which was a 17th-century French form wherein a whore and a virgin discussed sex to the erudition of the latter. John Brandon does an intriguing take on the Graustarkian romance, or an adventure tale to a mystical, made-up land. David Thomson writes a Socratic dialogue featuring Woolf, Kafka, Hemingway, and Chaplin discussing whether Citizen Kane is really the best film of all time. It's better than that sounds and better than the tendency towards referenciality its plot may imply, and gets points for being as viably highfalutin as a Socratic philosophy session. Okkervil River lead singer and lyricist Will Sheff writes a legendary saga, popular in premedieval Scandinavia, about generations of warring black metal bands. Best of all is Douglas Coupland's biji, which is a genre manifested today in Lonely Planets, sort of--a personal travelogue with many lessons and fragments of information. The genre seems ideal to his fragmentary, hodgepodge, multimedia style, and he writes with clear delight about a petulant British cameraman filming the TV show Survivor on the Pacific Ocean nation of Kiribati. And while it's nice to see authors having fun, Shelley Jackson's consuetudinary (or the pedantic minutes of a monastery--not really a genre worth exhuming) is almost too loyal to its form. Which is to say that while it's very impressive as a creative work, it's also almost unreadable. The dud here is Joy Williams' nivola (plotless, aimless, "existential" story), which exists mostly to reference the source material, every bit of content winking at its footnotes. But for the most part this is a great and exciting project done very well, and one of the strongest issues yet. McSweeney's is as usual doing something no one else is doing, and they're doing it extremely well. Always exciting to get a new issue.		Ad feedback   Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: McSweeney's (June 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1934781347
• ISBN-13: 978-1934781340
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 7.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #340,881 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars A great idea, with some good pieces, September 19, 2009

By	C. Federico Escobar - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

McSweeney's 31 started off with a great idea: reviving feeble or deceased literary forms. The forms chosen are quite different, from poetry (pantoums) to prose (nivolas, Icelandic sagas). I thought the revivals worked best when they were set in contemporary settings, exploiting the form in light of present concerns. Some forms proved tough to revive. Some were funny and clever. My favorites: Mary Miller's whore dialogue, Douglas Coupland's biji, and John Brandon's Graustarkian romance.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "A Paean to the Weird, Beautiful, Missing Links of Literature", June 8, 2009

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

Issue 31 is devoted to lost forms of literature, those forms and genres that have been almost or totally forgotten. The issue was conceived over a year's time; McSweeney's interns solicited authors with lost genre forms, which the authors made new instances of. Almost all of the new pieces are very strong.

For example, many authors try their hands at the poetic forms of the pantoum and senryu, with terrific results. Mary Miller writes a whore dialogue, which was a 17th-century French form wherein a whore and a virgin discussed sex to the erudition of the latter. John Brandon does an intriguing take on the Graustarkian romance, or an adventure tale to a mystical, made-up land. David Thomson writes a Socratic dialogue featuring Woolf, Kafka, Hemingway, and Chaplin discussing whether Citizen Kane is really the best film of all time. It's better than that sounds and better than the tendency towards referenciality its plot may imply, and gets points for being as viably highfalutin as a Socratic philosophy session.

Okkervil River lead singer and lyricist Will Sheff writes a legendary saga, popular in premedieval Scandinavia, about generations of warring black metal bands. Best of all is Douglas Coupland's biji, which is a genre manifested today in Lonely Planets, sort of--a personal travelogue with many lessons and fragments of information. The genre seems ideal to his fragmentary, hodgepodge, multimedia style, and he writes with clear delight about a petulant British cameraman filming the TV show Survivor on the Pacific Ocean nation of Kiribati.

And while it's nice to see authors having fun, Shelley Jackson's consuetudinary (or the pedantic minutes of a monastery--not really a genre worth exhuming) is almost too loyal to its form. Which is to say that while it's very impressive as a creative work, it's also almost unreadable. The dud here is Joy Williams' nivola (plotless, aimless, "existential" story), which exists mostly to reference the source material, every bit of content winking at its footnotes.

But for the most part this is a great and exciting project done very well, and one of the strongest issues yet. McSweeney's is as usual doing something no one else is doing, and they're doing it extremely well. Always exciting to get a new issue.