Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Issue 48, Spring 2015: Sixteen New Stories and A Full-Length Screenplay

by Dave Eggers (Editor), Kelly Link (Contributor), Boots Riley (Contributor)

Each issue of the quarterly is completely redesigned. There have been hardcovers and paperbacks, an issue with two spines, an issue with a magnetic binding, an issue that looked like a bundle of junk mail, and an issue that looked like a sweaty human head. McSweeney’s has won multiple literary awards, including two National Magazine Awards for fiction, and has had numerous stories appear in The Best American Magazine Writing, the O. Henry Awards anthologies, and The Best American Short Stories. Design awards given to the quarterly include the AIGA 50 Books Award, the AIGA 365 Illustration Award, and the Print Design Regional Award.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies

466 pages, Paperback

First published December 23, 2014

About the author

Dave 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.

Reviews

[Lauren]

Didn't read the entire volume, but focused on the Croatian literature section that included six translated short stories, the last 1/3 of the volume.

[Sammy Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great set of short stories, including six incredible entires from Croatian writers.

[Davis]

DNF. Look, it’s been 4 years since I started it. It’s not gonna happen

[D'Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I could I would give this 2.5 stars. It was okay. Some of the stories from Croatia were quite excellent. The screenplay by Boots Riley was interesting, but really heavy-handed. Also, this issue didn't smell very good. I know that sounds crazy, but I love the smell of new books and usually really enjoy the way McSweeney's issues smell. Not this time. I'm not sure why. Other issues that have been printed at the same place in Michigan don't smell like this.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories can be tricky. I thought most were either good or very good. None were life-changing. This was a very strong issue. I only started at 44, and for me, this was the best one yet. Just when I was thinking that I wasn't sure this was worth the money...

[Ostap Bender · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find it a little hard to rate a collection of short stories from different authors. Go with the mathematical approach, giving a rating to each story and then averaging? Close the eyes and divine a rating based on overall feeling? And how to account for the ‘cool’ factor for McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern; maybe round up or add half a point? Through a combination of each of those I arrive at four stars for this latest installment of theirs, which features 19 stories, the last six of which are from Croatian authors. There is a pretty solid consistency throughout, with the standout for me being “Nimrods” by Ismet Prcic, and “The Dentist on the Ridge” by Dave Eggers.

Quotes:
On parents, from “Because Night has Fallen and the Barbarians Have Not Come”, by Valeria Luiselli:
“We never forgive our parents anything, though they almost always forgive us everything. But at the same time we admire them much more than they ever manage to admire us. Perhaps admiration is just and acknowledgment we offer to those people we find unfathomable. And for all that time passes, as we become adults and raise walls and families and acquire careers, we’re never unfathomable to them.”

On passion, from “Nimrods”, by Ismet Prcic:
“I kept my eyes closed as if love, passion, and performance depended on it. I felt stupid, and outside of myself. It was obvious that I was faking the passion, that I had no idea what it was or how to use it. I had created an aura of vehement urgency, hoping to lose myself in it, hoping that something inside me would tell me what to do next.
Halida figured out pretty quickly where I was at. She led, and I followed until we were both sodden and grimy and bushed, until my arms were not my arms and my breath was the cool of the night and my heart was dancing a tarantella.”

On trust, and the goodness in mankind, from “The Dentist on the Ridge”, by Dave Eggers:
“The whole process seemed ill-advised, even insane: such a thing should not, in theory, work. Come across the sea, internet stranger, and into my home. You will sleep here, and over here is a tree that celebrates the life of a child who died in infancy. Oh, and here is the path down to the bay where you can swim. That this worked, and we are here in Croatia, with a home and new friends cooking us a lamb, proves that for every boundary, physical or cultural, between people, for every instance of misunderstanding or suspicion, there are a thousand instances of senseless trust.”

Lastly this joke from “I Can See Right Through You”, by Kelly Link:
“So there are these four guys. A kleptomaniac, a pyromaniac, um, a zoophile, and a masochist. This cat walks by and the klepto says he’d like to steal it. The pyro says he wants to set it on fire. The zoophile wants to fuck it. So the masochist, he looks at everybody, and he says, ‘Meow?’”

[Timons Esaias · Rating 5 out of 5]

This McSweeney's is two trade paperback volumes. One is Boots Riley's screenplay for Sorry to Bother You, and the other is letters and short fiction, including a set of six short stories from Croatia. The letters are a stitch, as usual. Kelly Link's "I Can See Right Through You" ended up in Best of the Year anthologies, and I can see why. The other story that got an exclamation mark was Valeria Luiselli's well-titled "Because Night Has Fallen and the Barbarians Have Not Come".

I gave a "Ha!" to Ismet Prcic's "Nimrods", an exercise in a problematic POV story. I have a writer's admiration for "Gaustine's Projects" by Georgi Gospodinov. My take is that he found a way to use a batch of stray notes and story ideas in one short piece.

I was going to give this four stars only, because it's probably a half step off a Best American Short Stories collection, but, you know, that's not quite fair or accurate. I have always liked McSweeney's for reaching out to other countries to showcase their fiction and their writers; and the Letters section is its own Art Form. And there's the screenplay and some very good stories.

Yeah, so, read it. And subscribe.

[Christopher Willard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm ticked anyhow having sent in stuff for a number of years, until I quit sending. They have their little clique and so be it. And having not looked at their stuff for a few years now, I saw this at the library. Let's see: some of the letters are fun. The stories in the first part are the usual meh that we read everywhere. The section on Croatian authors has an interesting intro but the stories are generally somewhat meh too. By "meh" I mean predictable, one themed, linear, with imaginations that are about 50 on a scale of 100. It's the sort of thing, book, quarterly, whatever, that you read, skim a bit, and soon let drift into the past. What was one of the funny moments? That a couple bios ended with things like they published, here there "and elsewhere" or "as well in many other venues." Well, good for them: another little folly, as in the British follies they would build on their property, gone to print for their friends to fawn over. What was the brilliant quote by Thomas Mann, oh yes, from The Magic Mountain: "There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst."
🌐

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

took me three years to get to and 4 months to finish

[Foxglow · Rating 4 out of 5]

A taste of every genre, and a trip to Croatia.

[Daisy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read:
One, Maybe Two Minutes from Fire by Téa Obreht;
Hair by Tea Tulić;
Pretty Hunger by Olga Savičević;
Saliva by Zoran Ferić

[A-ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of the stronger recent issues of McSweeney's. I read so many short stories, that I use post-it notes to mark stand-outs. This issue is filled with post-its. I was very excited for the sampling of Croatian literature, but most of the selections were merely ok. In general though, there was nothing here that I hated, which is a common risk when reading McSweeney's. Highlights include:

Only Good for a Day by Julia Slavin about our obsession with negative media.

I Can See Right Through you by Kelli Link about being haunted by the past.

One, Maybe Two Minutes from Fire by Tea Obreht about the kindness of strangers.

Pretty Hunger by Olja Savicivic which does a great job at humanizing mental illness.

Saliva by Zoran Feric: a better than average coming-of-age story.

As an immigrant in Norway, I enjoyed "A Happier Ending" because Bekim Sejranovic did a great job at capturing some of the emptiness of life in a "better society" than home.

[Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

i liked racher glaser's story about the aquarium, i'm not sure why but it was just surprisingly interesting for a story about fish in a tank, well written and with a nice narrative arc

i also liked "i can see right through you", "gainliness" (i think i portrays a psychotic protagonist in a way that's understandable and almost sympathetic, which is really hard/rare i think) and "gaustine's projects" (a fun story that reminded me of some dumb projects my friends and i don't finish)

i liked eggers' short nonfic "the dentist on the ridge", it has a nice sentence, "but peace is made possible by the forgetters" (which sounds less hippie in the actual context in the story). also zoran feric's story "saliva"

[Brandon Forsyth · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best issues of the quarterly yet! It took me a while to finish Boots Riley's "Sorry To Bother You", but I'm glad I came back to this twisted, perverse thing - and the free album download was great, too! The excerpt from "All My Puny Sorrows" made me want to run out and read everything Miriam Toews has ever written, and there were several other standout pieces as well - Kelly Link's "I Can See Right Through You" is a brilliant, way-better-than-it-should-be reimagining of the life of Robert Pattinson, and Ismet Prcic's "Nimrods" is a wonderful look at the shenanigans happening right now at your local movie theatre. If you like short fiction and have never checked out McSweeney's, this would be a great place to start!

[Eddie Zelenak · Rating 5 out of 5]

First McSweeney's Quarterly I read, and I'm hooked! The letters are genuine, funny, and well-written. The short stories in this collection are even better--I think I skipped the second or third one, but the other's surely made up for it. I haven't read much nonfiction recently, but often found myself marveling at the wide array of topics and strong prose.

As if my backlog of books isn't long enough, this one just added 47 more.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall not bad, but not a lot of the stories in this collection were standouts for me. The couple that were (Kelly Link's piece and the one entitled "It's Me" by one of the Croatian authors) I enjoyed a great deal, and while the rest were usually entertaining to greater or lesser degrees, I didn't find them very memorable.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

screenplay is pretty shrug, but i quite liked some of the stories. hard to put a finger on which ones since i'm not writing this until a couple weeks later, but 'nimrods!' was a great balance of humor, sadness, and sweet.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a few gems in McSweeneys 48, but overall I can't say this was one of my favorites. Perhaps it was the stories from Croatian authors. Some were good, but most were just okay. Bad translations? Who knows. Maybe it just wasn't the right time for me to read this issue.

[Jason Linden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been hard on some of the recent McSweeney's Issues, but this is one of the strongest I've read. Not a weak spot on it.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good stories by Ismet Prcic and Miriam Toews.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

A weak volume. A few standouts, but mostly bleak and uninteresting.

[Mills College Library]

Coll.

[Duncan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Korea