McSweeney's Issue 40 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern) Paperback – May 15, 2012

this is my first McSweeney, so i can't compare it to the other issues. that said, i love this magazine! it's more of a compilation of great literary / fiction works than a magazine. i specifically bought this for Neil Gaiman's contribution. it's excellent, as Mr. Gaiman always is. i've flipped through and read some of the other pieces and they're all equally intriguing. Issue 40 also comes with a full length book about Rwanda. i haven't read it yet, but it starts off well and is very engaging.if you like short stories, this is a great magazine. i will definitely be buying more McSweeneys!

Approaching my first read of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, I had certain assumptions, namely these: that McSweeney's incorporated into a single magazine a number of humorous and whimsical narratives depicting a predominantly West Coast U.S. lifestyle and epitomized the acme of contemporary writing. All except the last of these assumptions I have seriously revised after my encounter.It isn't so much a magazine. They should warn you of that. It's way more like a Matryoshka doll--the Russian nesting doll--that keeps opening up and you find books, full propositions. It moves you. It challenges your perspective of the human condition. It moves you across the U.S. and overseas to "Third World" countries. The writing excels but in a way that's much more than just the "Wow! That's such a creative and amusing story that titillated me senseless" way that you shrug off and move on throughout your life. It nags at you even afterward when you lay it down and think of moving on.Hmm, maybe that's why they don't warn you and, instead, pass it out under the auspices of a harmless smattering of whimsical narrative.

Firstly, Issue #40 is wonderfully produced. The Quarterly is a nice paperback somewhere between mass-market and trade, in size, bundled with a hardback of Rick Bass's "In My Home There Is No More Sorrow: Ten Days in Rwanda" by means of a paper strip. Both books are elegantly crafted, the quarterly including a comic insert (lackluster).As for the red meat, recent issues have been a mixed bag of somewhat-interesting nonfiction and the occasional fiction piece that actually stimulates the nerve endings. This issue straddles the wide seam separating excellent non-fiction from derivative fiction (the letters section has become an exercise of cranking out variations on a once-interesting theme). Aside from the witty Neil Gaiman piece "Adventure Story," the fiction can be bypassed without any lingering guilt, if the first couple pages of each story doesn't warrant further attention. The non-fiction--"Notes From a Bystander," by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, and the collected selections for "I Am Going Down on January 25: Writing from the Egyptian Revolution"--saves this issue from a negative rating. Each of the three anchoring pieces (now including Bass's long essay) provides a wildly divergent perspective of its respective major political incident that forces readers to reexamine the variant shades of well-publicized events: Occupy Wall Street, Uprising in Egypt, Genocide in Rwanda.Sayrafiezadeh filters his experience with the Occupy movement through his relationship with his politically-active parents. The selections on the Egyptian Revolution provide a nuanced view of the evolving zeitgeist that spanned from the early `90s to 2011, including reproductions of how-to-dress for revolution flyers, an excerpt from Mubarak's speech to the Egyptian people, op-eds, and first-hand accounts of the incident.Bass really saves the issue, providing a wonderful account of his trip to Rwanda to participate in a writing workshop for students at the National University of Rwanda. The descriptions of Bass's response to the memorials littered throughout the recovering nation subvert the countryside's natural beauty, the immense potential trapped in untapped resources and stifled entrepreneurship. He struggles to manage his own guilt as a bystander during the 1994 genocide (the U.S. could've intervened, but disastrous intervention in Somalia dissuaded the Clinton Administration) in the face of people who are living happily, not fulfilling his expectation of a hoard of moping survivors still lost in the wake of near-annihilation. This dynamic sustains the narrative, despite Bass's penchant for purple-y prose and quasi-romantic flourishes. The blemishes are easily glossed over, however, and the beautifully tragic cadences make up for repetitive elements.Overall, the issue is worth reading. Adam Levin and Kevin Moffett flopped; the rest of the fiction left no impression. I didn't get the point. Maybe I'm not cool enough to appreciate this issue's fiction. Maybe the fiction was simply dull.

McSweeney's 40 includes two books, one a paperback collection of stories and essays featuring artwork by Jason Jägel, the second a memoir by Rick Bass about his time in Rwanda teaching a writing workshop.First of all, let me say how good it is to see Rick Bass featured so prominently. He gets more page space than all the other authors combined, and he deserves it: Bass is a perennially overlooked author who writes terrific fiction and nonfiction. And he is a verbose writer, so it's nice to see him get the space he needs to write without barriers. Through his time in Rwanda, he finds the normalcy--and the desire for normalcy--in the country, not showing Rwanda as a sensationalist fable but as a real place. Refreshing and informative.The nonfiction included in the quarterly itself varies. Things start out well with a piece by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, who writes an honest, introspective, even-handed account of the Occupy protests in New York City, which he then links to his family history of protesting. Framed around a fear of encountering his father, a stalwart protester, Sayrafiezadeh feels both embarrassment (for his father) and shame (for himself) for not being able to be so idealistic. It's good he's learned to temper that idealism, though: Sayrafiezadeh shows the Occupy protests, amazingly, without bias, merely observing, interviewing, and presenting facts without editorials. It's the most eye-opening and cogent treatment of the movement I've yet read.The other nonfiction in the main volume is focused on the Egyptian Revolution, featuring 13 writers and their experiences. Whereas Sayrafiezadeh sought to understand the world without preconception--and whereas Bass experiences for himself Rwanda as it truly is--the Egyptian-based essays are just bland, tired, predictable, and redundant to one another. McSweeney's prides itself on its Voice of Witness series, and there is certainly authenticity in first-hand accounts, but my heavens are these first-hand accounts boring! Not to mention unilluminative. In these essays, all writing quality is sacrificed for mere topicality--topicality for topicality's sake. Sure, there's value in giving voice to the underdog, but there's also value in making sure that underdog has something to say.After all that is the fiction, which is extremely polarized this issue. Kevin Moffett has the strongest piece, about two sisters trapped in a fairy tale of their own lives, where they edit wedding videos and discourage bizarre suitors. It's riotous, wonderfully original, exciting, interesting, etc., a great example of a classic McSweeney's story: slightly skewed, with exceptionally strong writing.Adam Levin writes a long short story about a man's obsession with an oozing crack in his wall, a maximalist piece that focuses on the guilt inherent to the pursuit of perfection. The story builds strongly but falters in the end, where you can almost see Levin throwing up his hands and just ending it anywhere.Etgar Keret has a short, funny piece about a board-game creator who gets harassed on his way to a business meeting. It's a story where everything goes wrong then wronger, and that formula always works.Three other fiction pieces remain, all of them short, all of them stinky. David Vann writes an obnoxious non-narrative about a family sitting around sassing one another that's apparently from his upcoming novel Dirt. It reads like an outtake of that book, and should have been left out of this book as well. Nathan C. Martin and Neil Gaiman have two suspiciously similar short shorts to round things out. Both of them feature men trying to reason with mentally unstable women--Gaiman's nonstory is "about" a guy who talks to his mother who has Alzheimer's; Martin's piece focuses on a man who loves an outright psychotic woman and wants a child with her. The problem with both of these pieces, in addition to the main fact that neither are actually stories, is that they come off crass: Gaiman seems like a clueless kid making fun of his grandparent's dementia; Martin makes the woman's psychosis sound like whimsy. There's nothing to recommend with these two.Jason Jägel also has a comic zine smashed in the middle. While his cover artwork is strong, this little nothing couldn't be more ignorable.Length is probably the giveaway here: the four writers who have the longest pieces (Bass, Sayrafiezadeh, Moffett, and Levin) have the strongest pieces. The shorter the rest get, the worse they get.

This edition was purchased as a gift for my son who tells me he enjoyed this issue very much. J. Fallon

Das Buch war ein Geschenk und als Geschenk ist es sehr gut angekommen. Wie es innhaltlich war kann ich nicht beurteilen.agen.Ich habe keine Vergleichsmöglichkeiten.