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The Best of McSweeneys
To commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of the journal called “a key barometer of the literary climate” by The New York Times and twice honored with a National Magazine Award for fiction, here is The Best of McSweeney’s—a comprehensive collection of the most remarkable work from a remarkable magazine. Drawing on the full range of the journal thus far—from the very earliest volumes to our groundbreaking, Chris Ware–edited graphic novel issue to our most popular project yet, the full-on Sunday-newspaper issue known as San Francisco Panorama, The Best of McSweeney’s is an essential retrospective of recent literary history. With full-color contributions from some of the pioneering artists and illustrators featured in our pages over the years (Marcel Dzama, Art Spiegelman, and many more) and a breathtaking array of first-rate fiction (and some incredible nonfiction, too), this is a book to be pored over, and lasting proof that the contemporary short story is as vital as ever.
624 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
30 people are currently reading
1027 people want to read
About the author
Dave Eggers
348 books9,413 followersDave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is best known for his 2000 memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which became a bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Eggers is also the founder of several notable literary and philanthropic ventures, including the literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the literacy project 826 Valencia, and the human rights nonprofit Voice of Witness. Additionally, he founded ScholarMatch, a program that connects donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in numerous prestigious publications, including The New Yorker, Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
January 29, 2018
Woohoo!
You're wondering how I read so much. Like most of you, I reckon, I'm about halfway through maybe 20 books. This was one of them. I've essentially been reading it off and on since this time last year, even. It's a bit like how George Saunders writes his short stories: sure, they may take 6-8 years each, but if you start 100 stories 6-8 years ago, then every year after, in 6-8 years you'll seem incredibly prolific. It's like a locomotive train. Just fill the engine with coal and keep on filling... this is starting to sound like some folksy-ass Stephen King analogy but I think you get my point. I didn't just finish this book today; I finally finished it after like a year. And a lot of big anthologies that I read fall into that category. I'm looking at two others, over 1000 pages each, on my kitchen table, for which the same applies.
Requiring little human company and disliking most of the company I receive helps... to read a lot. As you can imagine there are numerous other disadvantages! I admit this because it's helpful always to reflect upon the hidden struggles of the lives of people who are doing well in certain regards. Is anyone jealous of Russian gymnasts? I think we all look at them like, "Wow, that's impressive. You go do that, though. I'm not prepared to make the sacrifices required to flip about like that." And that's fine! Same goes for all other achievements, I reckon. Don't be jealous of my boogie.
So anyways: I 5* this because I enjoyed the majority of pieces and discovered many new authors that I wanted to investigate.
The best piece for me was George Saunders' 4 Institutional Monologues. I'd read "An Exhortation" before, since it appeared in Tenth of December (I think.) I didn't realise it was part of a 4-piece thingy. Each describes a different section of what is clearly some sort of contemporary concentration camp, shrouded by business language and acronyms, populated by real people just trying to earn a living where... no spoilers. It's both realistic and absurd—but which is which? What's not absurd about the notion of concentration camps? And yet they existed. Do exist. It's a work of genius. My God.
That makes me think:
1. Some writers are better than others.
2. That didn't stop anyone else in this book from writing. Didn't stop them for the many years they wrote before they'd even developed the quality to get into this book. (This book being the best of one of the most exclusive litmags. Probably, legitimately, 0.001% of contemporary authors who sent something to the mag for potential publication. Maybe less.)
3. Many more writers than are in this book, or could ever hope to be published by McSweeney's, still earn a living from their writing.
4. We're lucky to have the writing of the best writers, and also in one lifetime I think the output of any one individual is scarily small. When you discover a new author you like, it often doesn't take more than a few weeks to binge on their life's work. The best writers can't write everything.
5. It's sort of simultaneously true that some writers are better than others and also that writers who have developed their individual voices are so different as to be essentially incomparable.
6. How to develop skills as a writer is a very confusing task—but reading and writing more can't hurt.
And yet, I didn't find this book pretentious at all. What surprised me, and what I enjoyed the most, was its honesty about reading and writing. The authors, in their introductions, forewords and notes try hard to remember the nebulous origin of their stories, and wonder if their stories hold up or not. They're not sure. An example: Jonathan Ames' story, "Bored to Death", was commissioned by Esquire, then rejected. McSweeney's asked him for something, so he sent BtD to them. They accepted (but he otherwise would have deleted it.) Later he ended up in some TV producer meeting and suddenly remembered that he'd written the story and pitched it to the producers as a TV show. "Bored to Death" was an awesome TV show! Similarly, Jonathan Lethem's story was a cool mind-bending Kafka-esque thing that made me want to seek out his novels. (He was high on my list anyway, given that he's an overeducated white American male, my FAVOURITE. The only thing that could make him more "my type of author" is if he died.) But he says, "Is this a good story? I don't know!" Wells Tower provides a short story written twice, from the perspectives of two different characters, says he agonised over it for months and still isn't sure which is best. Many people requested to provide McSweeney's material are initially enthusiastic and then pained to admit that they can't meet the required deadlines. It's just cool to see that even people this acclaimed are confused about good writing and how to produce it. Really it's a topic too big for one human to take on. Even the most complex of novels simply chip off a chunk of the confusing void that is literature. A refreshing reminder.
McSweeney's is a magazine for a primarily American audience, clearly. And so there's a lot of ragging on American positive thinking. I must say that now that I have a podcast and occasionally interview American authors, I've developed an affection for the American positive attitude. There's a dearth of it elsewhere. And I think I prefer to live in the dearth of positivity rather than the excess. It means that to rebel against it you just need to be optimistic, which is a much nicer task than that of the American: to supply the negativity missing from the prevailing culture. (To be fair, I once stayed with an American, and there was such a love of/indulgence in the superhero, "if you do the right thing everything works out for the best" attitude that I felt something like a spiritual sickness. When it was my turn to rent a DVD [yeah it was back then] I went for "Dead Man's Shoes", a British film about [spoiler] a guy who takes bloody vengeance on a gang who tortured and murdered his mentally ill brother. Which was a real breath of fresh air...) Anyways, as an outsider I really appreciate the American "go for it!" attitude, even though I can see how it would be stifling to those in the country itself.
So, yeah! Give this a go. While like me you'll surely skim a few authors, you'll also leave with a whole new bunch to investigate :)
You're wondering how I read so much. Like most of you, I reckon, I'm about halfway through maybe 20 books. This was one of them. I've essentially been reading it off and on since this time last year, even. It's a bit like how George Saunders writes his short stories: sure, they may take 6-8 years each, but if you start 100 stories 6-8 years ago, then every year after, in 6-8 years you'll seem incredibly prolific. It's like a locomotive train. Just fill the engine with coal and keep on filling... this is starting to sound like some folksy-ass Stephen King analogy but I think you get my point. I didn't just finish this book today; I finally finished it after like a year. And a lot of big anthologies that I read fall into that category. I'm looking at two others, over 1000 pages each, on my kitchen table, for which the same applies.
Requiring little human company and disliking most of the company I receive helps... to read a lot. As you can imagine there are numerous other disadvantages! I admit this because it's helpful always to reflect upon the hidden struggles of the lives of people who are doing well in certain regards. Is anyone jealous of Russian gymnasts? I think we all look at them like, "Wow, that's impressive. You go do that, though. I'm not prepared to make the sacrifices required to flip about like that." And that's fine! Same goes for all other achievements, I reckon. Don't be jealous of my boogie.
So anyways: I 5* this because I enjoyed the majority of pieces and discovered many new authors that I wanted to investigate.
The best piece for me was George Saunders' 4 Institutional Monologues. I'd read "An Exhortation" before, since it appeared in Tenth of December (I think.) I didn't realise it was part of a 4-piece thingy. Each describes a different section of what is clearly some sort of contemporary concentration camp, shrouded by business language and acronyms, populated by real people just trying to earn a living where... no spoilers. It's both realistic and absurd—but which is which? What's not absurd about the notion of concentration camps? And yet they existed. Do exist. It's a work of genius. My God.
That makes me think:
1. Some writers are better than others.
2. That didn't stop anyone else in this book from writing. Didn't stop them for the many years they wrote before they'd even developed the quality to get into this book. (This book being the best of one of the most exclusive litmags. Probably, legitimately, 0.001% of contemporary authors who sent something to the mag for potential publication. Maybe less.)
3. Many more writers than are in this book, or could ever hope to be published by McSweeney's, still earn a living from their writing.
4. We're lucky to have the writing of the best writers, and also in one lifetime I think the output of any one individual is scarily small. When you discover a new author you like, it often doesn't take more than a few weeks to binge on their life's work. The best writers can't write everything.
5. It's sort of simultaneously true that some writers are better than others and also that writers who have developed their individual voices are so different as to be essentially incomparable.
6. How to develop skills as a writer is a very confusing task—but reading and writing more can't hurt.
And yet, I didn't find this book pretentious at all. What surprised me, and what I enjoyed the most, was its honesty about reading and writing. The authors, in their introductions, forewords and notes try hard to remember the nebulous origin of their stories, and wonder if their stories hold up or not. They're not sure. An example: Jonathan Ames' story, "Bored to Death", was commissioned by Esquire, then rejected. McSweeney's asked him for something, so he sent BtD to them. They accepted (but he otherwise would have deleted it.) Later he ended up in some TV producer meeting and suddenly remembered that he'd written the story and pitched it to the producers as a TV show. "Bored to Death" was an awesome TV show! Similarly, Jonathan Lethem's story was a cool mind-bending Kafka-esque thing that made me want to seek out his novels. (He was high on my list anyway, given that he's an overeducated white American male, my FAVOURITE. The only thing that could make him more "my type of author" is if he died.) But he says, "Is this a good story? I don't know!" Wells Tower provides a short story written twice, from the perspectives of two different characters, says he agonised over it for months and still isn't sure which is best. Many people requested to provide McSweeney's material are initially enthusiastic and then pained to admit that they can't meet the required deadlines. It's just cool to see that even people this acclaimed are confused about good writing and how to produce it. Really it's a topic too big for one human to take on. Even the most complex of novels simply chip off a chunk of the confusing void that is literature. A refreshing reminder.
McSweeney's is a magazine for a primarily American audience, clearly. And so there's a lot of ragging on American positive thinking. I must say that now that I have a podcast and occasionally interview American authors, I've developed an affection for the American positive attitude. There's a dearth of it elsewhere. And I think I prefer to live in the dearth of positivity rather than the excess. It means that to rebel against it you just need to be optimistic, which is a much nicer task than that of the American: to supply the negativity missing from the prevailing culture. (To be fair, I once stayed with an American, and there was such a love of/indulgence in the superhero, "if you do the right thing everything works out for the best" attitude that I felt something like a spiritual sickness. When it was my turn to rent a DVD [yeah it was back then] I went for "Dead Man's Shoes", a British film about [spoiler] a guy who takes bloody vengeance on a gang who tortured and murdered his mentally ill brother. Which was a real breath of fresh air...) Anyways, as an outsider I really appreciate the American "go for it!" attitude, even though I can see how it would be stifling to those in the country itself.
So, yeah! Give this a go. While like me you'll surely skim a few authors, you'll also leave with a whole new bunch to investigate :)
June 12, 2014
Half of wanting to read this collection is either that you're already a fan of what McSweeney's does, or you're curious because you've never read it before and you always thought it must be an awesome literary experience (I mean, these guys are probably as close to a modern family of writers as we've got).
You may not have a real answer, those coming in from the second group of readers, after actually reading the collection. Part of this has to do with the compilation (though this is not really what I'm talking about, it should be noted that the table of contents has the sequence of comic book material out of order). This is a pretty long book. If you start wondering what the heck you've gotten yourself into, some of the later material is going to stretch your patience past its breaking point. I know that's what happened to me. The last straw for me was Jennie Erin Smith's "Benjamin Bucks," which is one of the nonfiction selections. I'd actually enjoyed the collection to that point, for the most part.
The problem with "Bucks," and the collection as a whole, is the same thing that to this point now defines my perspective on McSweeney's. I now think it's the place talented writers go to die. This is the cool writers club, and I can't imagine a worse predicament for them. Writers do not need each other to tell them how cool they are. They need to be challenged. That's how writers are formed to begin with. They don't need someone telling them they can do no wrong. They need someone telling them that their writing was challenging. Provocative.
McSweeney's gets the idea that writing should be provocative. But I think my idea of provocative and McSweeney's('s?) idea of provocative is different. There's the good kind of provocative (Andrew Sean Greer's "Gentlemen, Start Your Engines," which is about a gay couple's experiences at a NASCAR event), and then the bad kind ("Bucks," which kind of sort of tries to explain how a few lives went off in questionable directions).
After "Bucks" I couldn't reconnect with the material. Maybe the rest of the collection is good, like Roddy Doyle's "New Boy," or even enlightening, like Nicholson Baker's "Can a Paper Mill Save a Forest?," and then maybe the rest of the collection really isn't.
I personally would have arranged the collection differently. I wouldn't have relegated the international material to the literary ghetto of the back of the book. By that point, when you have Breyten Breytenbach in "(Notes from the Middle World)," trying to espouse a philosophy that doesn't really fit in with the rest of what the collection has thus far accomplished, it just feels like the cool kids patting themselves on the back for being inclusive when to that point they've proven fairly insular.
And that's it, really, a vibe of the cool kids running the asylum. Indulgent writers, who have been told all their lives that they're great writers, but are still wildly insecure about themselves (Kevin Moffett's "Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events," or say, David Foster Wallace, the patron saint of this generation who incidentally, and I say this implicitly meaning "unfortunately," ended up killing himself), but still believe they're more clever than anyone else (the letters section that begins the collection reeks of this) and are basically writing for each other.
It's like if The Savage Detectives were written about Jay and Silent Bob instead of a couple of mavericks.
You may not have a real answer, those coming in from the second group of readers, after actually reading the collection. Part of this has to do with the compilation (though this is not really what I'm talking about, it should be noted that the table of contents has the sequence of comic book material out of order). This is a pretty long book. If you start wondering what the heck you've gotten yourself into, some of the later material is going to stretch your patience past its breaking point. I know that's what happened to me. The last straw for me was Jennie Erin Smith's "Benjamin Bucks," which is one of the nonfiction selections. I'd actually enjoyed the collection to that point, for the most part.
The problem with "Bucks," and the collection as a whole, is the same thing that to this point now defines my perspective on McSweeney's. I now think it's the place talented writers go to die. This is the cool writers club, and I can't imagine a worse predicament for them. Writers do not need each other to tell them how cool they are. They need to be challenged. That's how writers are formed to begin with. They don't need someone telling them they can do no wrong. They need someone telling them that their writing was challenging. Provocative.
McSweeney's gets the idea that writing should be provocative. But I think my idea of provocative and McSweeney's('s?) idea of provocative is different. There's the good kind of provocative (Andrew Sean Greer's "Gentlemen, Start Your Engines," which is about a gay couple's experiences at a NASCAR event), and then the bad kind ("Bucks," which kind of sort of tries to explain how a few lives went off in questionable directions).
After "Bucks" I couldn't reconnect with the material. Maybe the rest of the collection is good, like Roddy Doyle's "New Boy," or even enlightening, like Nicholson Baker's "Can a Paper Mill Save a Forest?," and then maybe the rest of the collection really isn't.
I personally would have arranged the collection differently. I wouldn't have relegated the international material to the literary ghetto of the back of the book. By that point, when you have Breyten Breytenbach in "(Notes from the Middle World)," trying to espouse a philosophy that doesn't really fit in with the rest of what the collection has thus far accomplished, it just feels like the cool kids patting themselves on the back for being inclusive when to that point they've proven fairly insular.
And that's it, really, a vibe of the cool kids running the asylum. Indulgent writers, who have been told all their lives that they're great writers, but are still wildly insecure about themselves (Kevin Moffett's "Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events," or say, David Foster Wallace, the patron saint of this generation who incidentally, and I say this implicitly meaning "unfortunately," ended up killing himself), but still believe they're more clever than anyone else (the letters section that begins the collection reeks of this) and are basically writing for each other.
It's like if The Savage Detectives were written about Jay and Silent Bob instead of a couple of mavericks.
December 17, 2015
I read these stories (comics / essays / poems / lists) sporadically between novels over the past year until I finally made it through the massive book last night. Reading it became like homework. Now I can return the book to Bob so he can lug it back to his place. McSweeny’s sure is a cool looking publication. Some of them come in wooden boxes and some come with toys. The dustjacket on this volume is very impressive too. Most of the writers inside were pretty hip and had a New York vibe. Conclusions: some font is too small for a 54-year-old guy to read and more than a few fairly big-time contemporary authors suck.
March 10, 2018
It took me years to get through this mammoth collection. I'd occasionally commit to trying to plow through it but give up when I kept falling asleep and incurring mild concussions from dropping the book on my head. Then I'd forget about it for several months, letting it gather dust without its dustjacket (!) on my nightstand. Eventually, I started reading a story or two between novels, and that was the strategy that finally allowed me to make it to the end.
There were some incredible stories worthy of a five-star rating. Much of the work gave me the impression that this anthology was more for the McSweeney's staff and contributors than for a broader audience, however. I am a reader who prefers novels but is always trying to give short stories more of a chance. I bought this collection hoping it would convert me, but I experienced the opposite effect. Reading this anthology only validated why I prefer more sustained works.
Ultimately, the collection didn't get enough editing. Despite weighing it at over 600 pages, the book still utilizes ten-point (and in the case of certain shorter selections, eight-point) font to cram in as much material as possible. I do like anthologies, but I think it helps a lot when they have an organizing principle, whether its a single-author collection, a collection focused on a specific theme, or even the very best of a particular genre taken from multiple publications (i.e., the Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction or the Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction).
Since I read this over such a long time span, I may have lost track of some gems, but some of my favorite stories were "The Ceiling" by Kevin Brockmeier, "Statistical Abstract for My Hometown, Spokane, Washington" by Jess Walter, "Phantoms" by Steven Millhauser, "Gentlemen, Start Your Engines" by Andrew Sean Greer (maybe the best piece in the whole collection), "Can a Paper Mill Save a Forest" by Nicholson Baker, and "Bored to Death" by Jonathan Ames. (All of these authors happen to be white dudes. The anthology does feature some diverse contributors, but their work just isn't as memorable. It seems McSweeney's hasn't put enough effort toward working with women and people of color to have contributions from them on the same caliber as that of the white men.)
There were some incredible stories worthy of a five-star rating. Much of the work gave me the impression that this anthology was more for the McSweeney's staff and contributors than for a broader audience, however. I am a reader who prefers novels but is always trying to give short stories more of a chance. I bought this collection hoping it would convert me, but I experienced the opposite effect. Reading this anthology only validated why I prefer more sustained works.
Ultimately, the collection didn't get enough editing. Despite weighing it at over 600 pages, the book still utilizes ten-point (and in the case of certain shorter selections, eight-point) font to cram in as much material as possible. I do like anthologies, but I think it helps a lot when they have an organizing principle, whether its a single-author collection, a collection focused on a specific theme, or even the very best of a particular genre taken from multiple publications (i.e., the Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction or the Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction).
Since I read this over such a long time span, I may have lost track of some gems, but some of my favorite stories were "The Ceiling" by Kevin Brockmeier, "Statistical Abstract for My Hometown, Spokane, Washington" by Jess Walter, "Phantoms" by Steven Millhauser, "Gentlemen, Start Your Engines" by Andrew Sean Greer (maybe the best piece in the whole collection), "Can a Paper Mill Save a Forest" by Nicholson Baker, and "Bored to Death" by Jonathan Ames. (All of these authors happen to be white dudes. The anthology does feature some diverse contributors, but their work just isn't as memorable. It seems McSweeney's hasn't put enough effort toward working with women and people of color to have contributions from them on the same caliber as that of the white men.)
January 26, 2014
No matter how hard I try, I don't really like short stories, I hate the inconsistencies . I thought that with this McSweeney's anthology I would warm up to the medium.
As alwaysthe same problem started to occur. For every one I like, I'd dislike and skim through another three. Granted there are quite a few gems here but not everything will be to everyone's taste.
As alwaysthe same problem started to occur. For every one I like, I'd dislike and skim through another three. Granted there are quite a few gems here but not everything will be to everyone's taste.
September 21, 2017
Excellent anthology ... The letters at the start get things off to a great start and there are many great finds throughout. Of course I'm partial to my favorite authors and Mr. Squishy by David Foster Wallace is here along with Four Institutional Monologues by George Saunders ... I've read these previously and they still do it for me. But I also found a lot of new authors with great stories. Kevin Brockmeier's The Ceiling has a great metaphorical message and Stephen Millhauser's Phantoms discusses a small town that residence sees phantoms ... may sound corny but it works well. I think my favorite story here was Sheila Heti's There is No Time in Waterloo, which seemed completely appropriate for the time we are living in ... it has a kind of Shirley Jackson feel with a modern twist. Very well done. And this was my first experience reading Deb Olin Unferth ... her Stay Where You Are draws three characters to perfection with minimal words and tells a compelling story with economy. Jennifer Egan's 20-minute story To Do was excellent at well. Unique but very well done. Anthologies for me are always a bit of a hit or miss from story to story ... this one is one of the best I've read in recent memory. Highly recommended.
April 21, 2023
Perfect for a long trip, though hefty, physically!
One tough story of a fighting couple by A.M. Holmes: it's always interesting to read a woman author writing about a marriage writing from the husband's point of view. One story about shooting a moose really stuck with me too.
There's a bit of iron chef and interplay, e.g. "let's ask Zadie Smith to pick a They Might Be Giants song and turn the lyrics into a short story".
There are comics by the Eightball/ghostworld Daniel Clowes. Also great letters to the editor, including a running joke that adulates/satirizes Walt Whitman, similar to Sherman Alexie's poem about what Whitman would think of a basketball game on the reservation.
One tough story of a fighting couple by A.M. Holmes: it's always interesting to read a woman author writing about a marriage writing from the husband's point of view. One story about shooting a moose really stuck with me too.
There's a bit of iron chef and interplay, e.g. "let's ask Zadie Smith to pick a They Might Be Giants song and turn the lyrics into a short story".
There are comics by the Eightball/ghostworld Daniel Clowes. Also great letters to the editor, including a running joke that adulates/satirizes Walt Whitman, similar to Sherman Alexie's poem about what Whitman would think of a basketball game on the reservation.
June 14, 2023
A huge collection that also comes with a box of literary... amusements: shuffle your own story cards, flyer ads for three legged clothing, etc. That was all fun. The big tome is full of some great stories, many tedious and charmless ones, and a few whose appeals are baffling. All of it is soaked in the good and bad of McSweeneys - the trying too hard, the clever for literary navel-gazing's sake, unfortunately threatening to block out those shockingly playful gems of genius.
February 28, 2017
Like much of McSweeney's, this collection was hit-or-miss, but bound in an astonishing physical publication. I question the editing, as I know I've read better stories/essays/poems in individual issues, but it may have just been an opportunity to showcase big names, e.g. George Saunders, whose work shows up in this but is so very far from his best.
February 16, 2023
What an enormous, diverse collection. A few of them did not hold up over time, but the majority of these are excellent -- even on second and third readings, as is apt to happen with best-of collections.
August 30, 2018
Great collection of short stories! Recommended.
June 25, 2020
There were a few interesting stories, but otherwise the collection felt passable.
February 21, 2023
Such high-quality writing. This is a great collection of stories
July 2, 2024
Collection of short stories, essays, poems and lists.
June 24, 2025
Mixed bag, but mostly pretty decent. High enough in the 3s to round up.
November 17, 2014
Wow I finally finished it. Well, a couple of stories I had to skim through because I couldn't deal, but other than that I actually read the whole thing (took me almost the whole year!) Read partly because Powell's Books sent it to me, partly because it was simply a beautifully made book, and partly because I was curious about McSweeney's.
I'm not a huge fan of short stories, and this compilation did nothing to change that. Often times it felt self-indulgent, in a Look How Clever We Are sort of way. There were a couple of remarkable segments, but most everything left me rather ambivalent.
I'm not a huge fan of short stories, and this compilation did nothing to change that. Often times it felt self-indulgent, in a Look How Clever We Are sort of way. There were a couple of remarkable segments, but most everything left me rather ambivalent.
April 18, 2014
I loved Stephen Millhauser's short story Phantoms.
David Foster Wallace's Mr. Squishy shows off his genius... I really must read the rest of his work.
As a writer, I really enjoyed seeing Wells Tower's process as he wrote The Retreat and then rewrote it from another POV.
I'm biased about Zadie Smith's short story (which inspired the song Bangs by They Might Be Giants) because by now everything I read of Smith's seems brilliant, poetic, droll, and moving.
As a fan of Bored to Death, it was interesting reading the backstory and original story that was the inception of the HBO show by Jonathan Ames.
David Foster Wallace's Mr. Squishy shows off his genius... I really must read the rest of his work.
As a writer, I really enjoyed seeing Wells Tower's process as he wrote The Retreat and then rewrote it from another POV.
I'm biased about Zadie Smith's short story (which inspired the song Bangs by They Might Be Giants) because by now everything I read of Smith's seems brilliant, poetic, droll, and moving.
As a fan of Bored to Death, it was interesting reading the backstory and original story that was the inception of the HBO show by Jonathan Ames.
November 16, 2015
It's really saying something that I like a bigger proportion of the stories in this collection than I do for most collections. Standouts for me included New Boy, A Child's Book of Sickness and Death, Mr. Squishy, Can a Paper Mill Save a Forest? (more for bringing the issue to my attention at all rather than the actual piece itself - it could have gone a lot deeper), Girl with Bangs, Bored to Death, and Bastard. I didn't like The Retreat, but appreciated getting to see two versions of a story. Altogether a pretty solid portrait of the quarterly for someone who doesn't subscribe to it but likes thoughtful and sometimes experimental short writing.
January 15, 2015
I love McSweeney's and have every issue they've ever put out and every book of poetry they've ever published. McSweeney's does awesome things. A "best of" McSweeney's was bound to be a mixed bag, especially since what I love about McSweeney's is their attention to the book as a physical object. The Best of McSweeney's is a 600+page, non-descript brick of a book. There's some good stuff in here and then there's some stuff that's just okay. I think this book is a good overview of the kinds of things that McSweeney's publishes, but not necessarily the best of what they've published.
April 20, 2015
There was a diverse range of stories, fiction and nonfiction, domestic and international, brief shorts and long-form shorts. Plethora of genres as well. There were several stories that were of 'five-star' quality (The Ceiling, The Bees, The Girl with Bangs, We'll Sleep in My Old Room, K if for Fake, There is No Time in Waterloo), and several that I did not enjoy at all (S&J, Benjamin Bucks, Four Institutional Monologues, How to Sell, Can A Paper Mill Save A Forest?). For a 'Best Of', I was expecting a bit more. There are some very great stories buried in here though.
Want to read
June 15, 2016Satisfying Quick Reads for Short Attention Spans
This one's pretty straightforward: a book containing the best of Dave Eggers' off-beat humor site. In their own words, since the site doesn't run on ad revenue, they "collect some of the site’s better material and attempt to trick readers into paying for a curated, glued-together version of what is available online for free." At most, buy it to support McSweeney's. At least, buy it because there's no wifi on the subway.
This one's pretty straightforward: a book containing the best of Dave Eggers' off-beat humor site. In their own words, since the site doesn't run on ad revenue, they "collect some of the site’s better material and attempt to trick readers into paying for a curated, glued-together version of what is available online for free." At most, buy it to support McSweeney's. At least, buy it because there's no wifi on the subway.
January 10, 2017
I lied. I never finished this book. But then again, this isn't a book to finish. It's not meant to read from cover to cover. It's a book to explore and discover stories in. It's also an event book: different fonts, comics, illustrations, photography, etc. make for a visceral experience. I used to look forward to new McSweeney's. I thought I was so cool back then--reading a counter-culture lit journal. Anyway, I don't want to keep a library of McSweeney's, so a collection it is!
December 18, 2013
Reading through this collection, I can really see why people freak out so much over McSweeny's. I didn't absolutely adore every single story, but I certainly dug each and there were some absolutely sparkling ones in here. There were some I already knew, and some I was happy to get to know for the first time. McSweeny's is a cool mag and this is a great collection.
February 5, 2014
This was so up my alley. A diverse set of engaging stories, comics and (one or two) nonfiction pieces. There are a few genre tales and nothing so horrifyingly pomo or lit-precious as to drive one crazy. This book has been my fave for the past month. Sad to put it down, really.
March 26, 2014
Genius condensed into one massive tome (and a box of extras). If only it had been 600 pages longer.
The perfect jumping-on point if you are not yet on board the McSweeney's train (outside the website, which does not count you guys).
The perfect jumping-on point if you are not yet on board the McSweeney's train (outside the website, which does not count you guys).
February 23, 2014
I didn't read the whole thing, but I did love a couple of the bits I read--letters to the editor, and also the two variants of Wells Tower's short story, and his intro note, which really helped me see the writerly process in a new way.
July 21, 2014
Perhaps "The VERY best of McSweeney's" would make a better collection. This one has some outstanding short fiction works and a lot of strange fiction, non-fiction, and hard-to-characterize prose. I found finishing the book tedious: there's just too much here.
August 31, 2014
I have never been able to get into short stories- not sure why I thought it would be different this time.
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March 9, 2014Phantoms and pantoums. Snacky cakes. Not even the briefest glimpse of a puma.
January 16, 2014
An excellent collection from an excellent publication. Plus, it is a beautifully designed book, worth the space on your physical bookshelf.
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