McSweeney's 36

Edited by Dave Eggers

You have to hand it to McSweeney's and their amazing ability to design unique objects that both titillate and perhaps repulse people.  McSweeney's 36 came in the form of a box, decorated to look like a man's head, and full of small books, pamphlets, postcards, and a long roll of uncut fortune cookie fortunes.

As with any good issue of McSweeneys', there is a lot of to love in this box.  Michael Chabon's Fountain City and Wajahat Ali's marvelous play The Domestic Crusaders have already been discussed on this blog, but there's plenty more to talk about in this box.

The pamphlets, postcards, and fortunes are pleasing filler, but the core of the box lies in the different books, some of which I found more enjoyable than others.

The 'Bicycle Built For Two' screenplay by Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington was pretty nonsensical, which would have been fine had I found it funnier than it was (it's supposed to be a film for Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey about baseball players who ride a tandem bicycle).  Likewise, I found Jack Pendarvis's 'Jungle Geronimo in Gay Paree', a parody of condensed novels which takes on the jungle pulp genre to be kind of silly and unnecessary. 

Where this issue really started to work for me was in the short story book, which included pieces that were quite good.  Ismet Prcic's 'At The National Theatre' was a little obscure, but I loved John Brandon's story 'The Occurrences', which is told by a young boy who lives in a Florida town that appears to be plagued by alien abductions (they often take the whole roof of the house as they suck people up).  It was funny and bizarre, and definitely makes me interested in his novels.  In the same book are the stories 'Dog Bites' by Ricardo Nulla, an interesting look at a boy who has a 'syndrome', and Colm Toibin's 'The Street', a tale of love between illegal Pakistani migrant workers in Barcelona.  Increasingly, one of my favourite things to read in an issue of McSweeney's is the letters section, and this one did not disappoint.

Included in the box is a preview of the recently released newest volume in the Voice of Witness series, which deals with people who have acted in resistance to the Burmese junta.  The story here, told by Ma Su Mon is powerful and frank.

The last item that really caught my attention was the first chapter in Adam Levine's massive novel 'The Instructions'.  It's told by a disturbed boy in a special education program helpfully called 'The Cage', and it is quite funny and perceptive.

In all, another excellent McSweeney's.