McSweeney's No. 40

I love McSweeney's and I've been really excited for the 40th issue to come out assuming some amount of fanfare. Oddly enough no fanfare but a solid issue. This issue includes 2 books, the primary book seen in the picture about and another hardcover called In My Home There Is No More Sorrow, Ten Days In Rwanda by Rick Bass. The primary book has a bunch of awesome pieces by some of my favorite authors and a collection of writing about the Egyptian Revolution from last year. The issue started off with a great letter section and included the following;

Notes From A Bystander by Said Syrafiezadeh
This is a bit of non fiction about a son of a protester and his experiences at Occupy Wall Street. Cool little piece.

All Together Here by David Vann
Cool little story about a dysfunctional family. The family includes a grandmother, her two loser daughters and their 2 teenagers. The story is told from the point of view of the teenage boy who has a crush on his female cousin. A great little story that got a lot accomplished in a short number of pages.

The Sisters by Kevin Moffett
Moffett is consistently one of the top McSweeney's contributors. This story is about two lonely sisters who have lived their whole lives living alone with only single transient man coming in and out of their lives at a time. Creepy at times, touching at others, extremely well written and another winner.

A Good One by Etgar Keret
Keret is a master at his craft. This one was included in his recent book and is typical magic from the first word. I can't say enough good things about him.

Topsy Turvy by Jason Jagel
This was a comic insert that bothered me because it made the book a little awkward to hold and it made me feel like an idiot as I don't get it.

Adventure Story by Neil Gaiman
I think this is non fiction, either way it's great. It's a short little accounting of a story between Neil and his mother about an interesting stone figure he found that belonged to his dad.

Big Windows by Nathan C. Martin
Only 3 pages and one of the saddest stories I've read. Just crushingly sad but also filled with it's own hope.

Scientific American by Adam Levin
I liked this story. It's about a couple who moves into a new home that has a wall that has a nocturnally reoccurring crack in a wall that fills with gel. That's just the starting point, kind of philosophical and fantastic.

Egyptian Revolution section
This section was a nice collection of writing. My favorites were translated copies of handouts that were given to the demonstrators about things like how to dress & use a trash can as a shield.


In My Home There Is No More Sorrow by Rick Bass

I'm torn about this one. Ok I lied I'm not torn at all I just don't want to sound like an asshole especially because of the cool stuff I learned about the genocide & the silver back gorillas. I just don't like the author, he was insufferable. The book is chocked full of white, not poor guilt (the author goes to great length to explain he is both white and not rich). I would have liked the book if he wasn't such an insufferable idiot. At one point he meets a local professor at a writers workshop he and his wife are putting on. After meeting the profession for literally 5 minutes this is what he writes;

"He seems to me like a man who is aware of two seemingly paradoxical facts, that we are all extraordinarily tiny in the world, specks or motes so insignificant as to essentially be as invisible we are momentary - and second, that despite this insignificance, this diminution, we are, and he is, nonetheless immersed squarely in the matrix of history and keenly aware of its movements."

Holy shit, that's a god damn ridiculous thing to say and a perfect illustration why I hate him as a person. For Christ sake it's OK to love Berkenstocks and thinking that you're saving the planet by recycling more than your beer bottles without all that preposterous crap! I still won't like you but I'll respect you for being true to who you are.

Ultimately it's a shame because I love the content of the book just not the writer and his self serving bs ramblings. The true joy to the book was in the last 30 pages that are writings from the workshop the author put on in Rwanda. The poems included are absolutely amazing and individually out shines almost everything in the entire issue.