McSweeney's 17: Made to Look Like It Came in Your Mailbox

McSweeney's once again pushes the boundary of what a literary magazine is supposed to be with issue 17, a bundle of mail from the mailbox of Sgt. Maria Vasquez of Arlington, VA. This edition is just really fun to delve into and was a total delight when it arrived.

Included is
A bizarre grocery-store type flyer for Pantalaine, a seller of joined clothing worn by two people and more at the same time.
Two standard business envelopes, one containing a release request for the rights to many photographs of red cars and fish, the other with a scam letter and a long typewritten story.
A whimsical gift basket catalog in which all the baskets contain exactly the same contents but with different arrangements and descriptions.
A scientific journal show more called Yeti Researcher, which plays Bigfoot investigations fairly straight.
A literary magazine called Unfamiliar, containing most of this issue's fiction and patterned to look like "normal" literary magazines.
A sample of a periodical called Envelope, a 9x12 manila envelope filled with full-color reproductions of artwork by contemporary artists. show less

While a lot of the inserts were fun to read, this issue is a really mixed bag. A good amount of the fiction fell flat for me, but a few good stories stood out, most notably "The Sno-Cone Cart" by Rebecca Crane, and "The Accident" by Peter Ferry. A few were completely baffling, especially the Yeti Researcher magazine, which was exactly what it sounds like - several scholarly articles about primate research. Ultimately the concept was fun and I love seeing things like this done, but for the content it's not one that's likely to stick with me.

McSweeney's 17 is a bundle of mail. That's right, a bundle of mail (addressed to Maria Vasquez of Arlington, VA), rubber-banded together. A full color advertisement flyer for Pantalaine ("Provisioners of America's Finest Plural Clothing") surrounds the rest of the pile, which includes a brochure for Tyrolian Harvest gift baskets, some "snail mail spam" from a Bangladeshi widow, a very odd legal document containing many pictures of red cars and dead fish, a prospective periodical of "very new artwork" (Envelope), and two journals: Yeti Researcher ("The magazine of the Society for Cryptic Hominid Investigation") and Unfamiliar ("a twice monthly magazine of different fiction").

Very imaginative, and quite entertaining. It must be so fun to show more sit around and come up with ideas for things like this! While some of the short stories in Unfamiliar were a little bizarre, the rest of the packet was fascinating to read through. Kudos, McSweeney's folks.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2009/11/book-review-mcsweeneys-vol-17.html show less

I'm a huge McSweeney's fan, and one of the things I love most about it is that every issue is different and a design marvel. This one, I fear, was not a success. The concept is great, but the offerings were a bit slim. There may be some novelty in a fake Yetti Researcher magazine, but it's not something I really want to read.

The main magazine portion is good. there are a few really good stories, but the whole thing felt a little heavy on the concept and light on the content.

Numerous issues. Bad binding.