McSweeney's 31

Another mind blowing issue of McSweeney's. This issue is all about dead forms of stories that aren't used anymore. The issue was inspired by two interns who came up with the idea. Each section included a description of the style, an example and then new stories using that style done by current authors. The new stories have notes in the large margins expanding on themes in the types of stories or giving examples from the original works.

1- Pantoum

My absolute favorites were pantoums, which are poems where lines from each paragraph are repeated in the next paragraph. According to the book it used to be a game about who could most skillfully manipulate these lines in their poems. The more I read the more I liked them. I'm guessing Eggers did too as he both starts and ends the issue with pantoums while every other style only has 1 section.

Jack Davis by Tony Trigilio was an amazing pantoum about the Kennedy assassination. Joel Brouwer's Direct was also stood out among the strong group.

2- Whore Dialog

This was erotic writing in the 16th through 18th centuries that was instructional based graphic dialog between an innocent woman and a more experienced married woman. It was supposed to be instructional as well as pornographic. Mary Miller writes a funny story called A Dialogue Between Two Maids In The Twenty-First Century, One Of Whom Is Skeezer. I think you have to love a story that talks about skeezy as an unwritten rule of nature.

3- Legendary Saga

These stories were from Iceland in the 13th through 15th centuries that were basically tales of war & conquest. While good they kept making me think of world of warcraft for some reason.

4- Biji

I'm a little fuzzy on how Biji truly differentiates itself from other more general storytelling but was written from 220-1912 AD, which is a really long time to just die out. It's characterized in the book as musings, anecdotes, quotations, "believe-it-or-not" fiction, social anthropology. What I do know is that, Survivor by Douglas Coupland is fantastic. It's about a camera man working on a season of Survivor when World War III breaks out. The story was one of the funnier tales I've read in a while.

5- Nivola

These were a series of books written by Miguel de Unamuno between 1914-1930 AD that according to McSweeney's were meandering, plotless & playful. I'm not sure I buy this being a genre. Seems silly to me to call one authors style a complete genre. Wouldn't other authors have to adopt similar styles in order for there to be a larger collective? Dumb. Anyays, Joy Williams wrote a story about a woman named Snow that was certainly plotless and rambling. The best part was a note in the margins from a book of Unamunos called Abel Sanchez where a doctor is jealous of his artist friend. The doctor laments that all he can do is delay death where the painter can capture the person on canvas and make them immortal. Pretty zen and shit.

6- Senryu

These are Japanese poems that are 3 lines long, not rhymed & deal with human nature. I've never read a lot of haiku and there have been so many jokes about them that I wasn't expecting much but these were great.

7- Socratic Dialogue

These are from ancient Greece and Rome and are conversational in tone revolving around philosophical issues. After Citizen Kane by David Thomson was about a conversation in present time between Susan Sontag, Franz Kafka, Charlie Chaplin, Earnest Hemmingway & Viginia Wolf. They are all drinking at a cafe but they make reference to having died. It's an interesting story.

8- Graustarkian Romance

These romantic stories are from the late 19th and early 20th centuries & are set in an imaginary old fashioned country in Europe. They are described as have this characteristics of Victorian utopianism, swashbuckling & courtly intrigue. Fun, light read but not my favorite.

9- Consuetudinary

These were essentially lists of basic tasks and rituals performed in monasteries between 970-1700 AD. The sample story bored me terribly but Shelly Jackson's story was pure genius and ended up being one of my favorite stories in the issue.

On another note, while the book was a little awkward to read sometime due to its size I loved the cover art with the gold waves on white leather.