McSweeney's 23
I pulled McSweeney's 23 off the shelf, randomly, after reading McSweeney's 15 a few months ago. They're fun, but I haven't been reading them cover-to-cover. They deserve the attention, though.
If you don't know the publication, it's a quarterly, more or less, and you never know what it'll look like when it comes. Some are trade paperbacks, some are hardbacks, some are boxes of pamphlets, there was a newspaper. This one is a hardback with 10 short stories. But glued inside the back cover is a booklet entitled "Comedy by the Numbers." Oh, yeah, and there is a dust jacket that unfolds into a colorful poster, with a mandala of flash fictions by editor Dave Eggers. Neither the jacket stories nor the pamphlet are listed on the table of contents.
The front cover is subtitled Still Going Strong and then Like Castro. The spine has a different subtitle: We Meant Ramón
The stories are all solid, with "The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller" having the most amusing premise.
I didn't much care for "Comedy by the Numbers" but my favorite bit in this issue was one of the micro-stories on the dust jacket, entitled "We Can Work It Out" and beginning:
I'm not the one to ask about this. Lately everyone's been saying Hey, man, what's the deal? Why do all the bears of North America dislike E.M. Forster?...
CBsIP: student manuscripts
Far and Near, John Burroughs
Kraken, China Miéville
Krakatoa, Simon Winchester