McSweeney's 22: Three Books Held Within by Magnets
by Dave Eggers (Editor)
McSweeney's Quarterly Concern (22)
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McSweeney's Issue 22 is a three-part exercise in inspired restriction -- of author, of content, and of form. In section one, poets (yes -- poets!) including Mary Karr, Denis Johnson, C. D. Wright, and D. C. Berman initiate poet-chains, picking a poem of their own and one by another poet. The next poet will then do the same, and then again, and again, and so on. In section two, Fitzgerald (yes -- F. Scott Fitzgerald!) provides a list of unused story premises first cataloged in The Crack-Up; show more his mission is completed by writers like Diane Williams and Nick Flynn. In section three, finally, the president of France's (yes -- France!) legendary Oulipians offers a rare glimpse into his group's current experiments with linguistic constraint. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. show lessTags
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One of my least favorite McSweeney's, this one is physically pretty cool: a mock-leather hardcover contains three separate paperbooks, each magically held in place by magnets in the bindings.
The first volume is "From the Notebook: The Unwritten Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald." It contains modern writers impersonating Fitzgerald to create short stories based on a list of Fitzgerald's own story ideas. In general, I'm not a fan of this "in the style of..." type of writing but I can see why authors dig it.
The second volume is "The State of Constraint: New Work by Oulipo." It contains work by members of the Oulipo, a group dedicated to develop new literary structures based on principles of science and mathematics. The group self-imposes show more constraints on their writing, such as using only words found in Tom Waits songs, and sees what happens. Enough said about that.
It's all rounded out by "The Poetry Chains of Dominic Luxford," a collection of 100 poems. McSweeney summer intern Dominic Luxford chose a poem from ten working poets, then asked that poet to choose one of their own poems to include and then choose a poem from another working poet who then provided another of their own poems and chose another poet. Each chain is five poets long. So, ten chains of five poets each contributing two poems. That's a lot of poetry! Nothing against any of the poets and I actually enjoyed some of the poems. I'm just not the biggest poetry fan. show less
The first volume is "From the Notebook: The Unwritten Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald." It contains modern writers impersonating Fitzgerald to create short stories based on a list of Fitzgerald's own story ideas. In general, I'm not a fan of this "in the style of..." type of writing but I can see why authors dig it.
The second volume is "The State of Constraint: New Work by Oulipo." It contains work by members of the Oulipo, a group dedicated to develop new literary structures based on principles of science and mathematics. The group self-imposes show more constraints on their writing, such as using only words found in Tom Waits songs, and sees what happens. Enough said about that.
It's all rounded out by "The Poetry Chains of Dominic Luxford," a collection of 100 poems. McSweeney summer intern Dominic Luxford chose a poem from ten working poets, then asked that poet to choose one of their own poems to include and then choose a poem from another working poet who then provided another of their own poems and chose another poet. Each chain is five poets long. So, ten chains of five poets each contributing two poems. That's a lot of poetry! Nothing against any of the poets and I actually enjoyed some of the poems. I'm just not the biggest poetry fan. show less
A decent compendium of work from present-day OuLiPo-ians, but nothing phenomenal. Some works I'd swear I'd seen before, and some were just 'nothing much' in terms of the constraint (such as the 'choose your own adventure' story). Perhaps because the entire works weren't always present? I'm not sure. I'd recommend the OuLiPo Compendium or OuLiPo Primer over this.
Short stories prompted by F. Scott Fitzgerald ideas, a volume of recent Oulipo work, and a third volume of poetry chains. A few interesting bits here and there, but nothing that managed to hold my attention all that well.
haven't read
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Dave Eggers was born on March 12th, 1970, in Boston, Massachusetts. His family moved to Lake Forest, Illinois when he was a child. Eggers attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, until his parents' deaths in 1991 and 1992. The loss left him responsible for his eight-year-old brother and later became the inspiration for his highly show more acclaimed memoir "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius". Published in 2000, the memoir was nominated for a nonfiction Pulitzer the following year. Eggers edits the popular "The Best American Nonrequired Reading" published annually. In 1998, he founded the independent publishing house, McSweeney's which publishes a variety of magazines and literary journals. Eggers has also opened several nonprofit writing centers for high school students across the United States. Eggers has written several novels and his title, A Hologram for the King, was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award. His most recent work of fiction, entitled The Circle, was published in 2013. His recent nonfiction books are The Monk of Mokha (January 2018) and What Can a Citizen Do? (Illustrated by Shawn Harris)(September 2018). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Canonical title
- McSweeney's 22: Three Books Held Within by Magnets
- Original publication date
- 2007-01-24
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- Members
- 350
- Popularity
- 90,439
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (3.90)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 2
- ASINs
- 3
