McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales | review by Rafe McGregor

McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales by Michael Chabon (editor)

McSweeney’s #10, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, paperback, £4.10 (used), 1 March 2003, ISBN 9781400033393

 

Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern is an award-winning American literary journal that was founded by award-winning and bestselling author Dave Eggers in San Francisco in 1998. Eggers has a long and varied bibliography, but is probably best known for A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a memoir published in 2000. More important than any of this is the fact that McSweeney’s was Stephen Theaker’s inspiration for TQF, which he launched with John Greenwood in Birmingham in 2004. As regular readers of TQF (but probably not McSweeney’s) will know, Stephen’s secondary goal (after keep it going) was to catch McSweeney’s up, which he achieved in 2011. At the moment, TQF is in the lead – but only just – with seven-seven issues to McSweeney’s seventy-six. The next issue of McSweeney’s, which is due in February, will see a new editor, novelist and academic Rita Bullwinkel, take the helm. One of the features that distinguishes McSweeney’s from other literary journals is Eggers’ novel approach to editing and production:

McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern continues to publish on a roughly quarterly schedule, and each issue is markedly different from its predecessors in terms of design and editorial focus. Some are in boxes, others come with a CD, still others are bound with a giant rubber band, and perhaps someday an issue will be made of glass.

Why the hell not!

The inspiration for TQF is not just any old McSweeney’s, but issue ten, McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, which was guest edited by champion of genre fiction Michael Chabon and published in February 2003 (a little over a year before the launch of TQF). It is easy to see why…from a garish cover borrowed from the October 1940 issue of Red Star Mystery Magazine to Chabon himself as editor to four hundred and eighty pages’ worth of twenty stories, some great illustrations, and contributors that include: Michael Crichton, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman, Nick Hornby, Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, and Michael Moorcock. I’ve no idea how deep McSweeney’s pockets are, but one would be hard-pressed to compile this kind of lineup with literally unlimited resources. Most of the tales don’t disappoint regardless of the stature of their authors and I agree with Stephen that this is one of – if not the – best collections of short fiction ever published for pulp fiction fans.

My favourite tale is the first, Jim Shephard’s ‘Tedford and the Megalodon’. As a shark story enthusiast, I wondered how much of the visual horror and signature suspense would be retained in the short story format (on which note the illustration, by Howard Chaykin, is a perfect accompaniment, breathtaking without being a spoiler). Simply stated, neither the horror nor the suspense are lost and the last sentence is one of the most chilling conclusions to a narrative I’ve ever read, all the more remarkable because it is not unexpected. Honourable mentions above and beyond Shephard’s illustrious peers go to Hornby, for ‘Otherwise Pandemonium’; Kelly Link, one of the pioneers of the New Weird, for ‘Catskin’; and Moorcock, for ‘The Case of the Nazi Canary’. Moorcock’s contribution is an outing for his occult detective, Sir Seaton Begg, AKA the other Baker Street detective, Sexton Blake. King’s contribution, ‘The Tale of Gray Dick’ features Roland Deschain, protagonist of The Dark Tower series, although as I’ve only read the first two books, I’m not sure where it fits chronologically (he is already missing some fingers, if that helps anyone work it out). I was only disappointed twice: Eggers’ contribution is, to my mind, out of sync with the rest, too slow and too long, and I found Ellison’s contribution insubstantial and just not very funny (assuming the aim was comedy). McSweeney’s #10 is now out of print (along with the rest of the first thirteen issues), but used copies remain available from the usual vendors and are, at the time of writing, still relatively cheap (the upper end of the range I saw was £20, postage excluded).

Having set such an incredibly high bar, has TQF ever come close? No doubt I’m biased because it featured one of my Roderick Langham stories, but I don’t think TQF#50, which was published in January 2015, was too far off. Aside from the eleven stories in three hundred and twenty-four pages, which include a few of my personal favourites, I very much enjoyed its showcasing of so many of the magazine’s regular contributors, including several whose collaboration with Stephen and John predates my own (which began with a single and somewhat scant review in TQF#23 in 2008). That said, I have particularly high hopes for TQF#80, which is due shortly. The last page of McSweeney’s #10, the source of my quote above, states that (only) fifty-six issues were planned. When McSweeney’s #56 was published in 2019, the (true) goal was revealed as one hundred and fifty-six. Perhaps when that issue is published, it will be two hundred and fifty-six. Let’s hope that day comes and that, as Stephen puts it, both McSweeney’s and TQF keep going.

I pretend to (or might give the impression I) have read it: McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #bookaday

Today's #bookaday challenge is to name a book I pretend to have read. I can't think of a proper example of that. Obviously, at university there would be the occasional tutorial about a book or play I was supposed to have read, but I would usually be able to read ahead fast enough in class that I never needed to actually fib.

But here's my confession: much as I adore it, I haven't finished reading very many issues of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. I've finished #22 (with the magnets), #26 (new stories from home and overseas) and #28 (the little hardbacks), but that's about it. The rest are doomed to eternal dipping.

In fact, I finish very few anthologies at all, and the same goes for fiction magazines. It's not that I don't enjoy them, it's just that after a couple of stories a novel nuzzles its way in and I never get around to reading the rest. That's why you don't see many reviews of magazines or anthologies on here.

It's especially odd when you consider that McSweeney's #10 (the Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales) inspired me to start this zine in the first place. Forty-seven issues of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction later, I still haven't finished the book that inspired it. Shame on me!

The long chase is over – mission accomplished!

People who have been reading our magazine since the early days (I like to pretend there are one or two of you – allow a fool his vanity!) will surely know that our goal for much of that period has been to catch up with McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, issue 10 of which was the direct inspiration for Theaker's Quarterly Fiction.

Despite their head start, we were bi-monthly for a few years, and it looked like we would make it! But then I got tangled in the many tentacles of the British Fantasy Society, and we were forced to go quarterly again, ending up an issue short of our goal.

Catching up with McSweeney's was a silly, arbitrary goal, but sometimes silly goals can be just as helpful as sensible ones.

Checking my bookcase, and checking their website, it looks like both magazines are now on issue 37.

I really am very happy about this. Stupidly so. Wow.

Thanks to McSweeney's for inspiring our efforts at the beginning, and continuing to provide an inspiration ever since – but where the heck is issue 38? Pull your fingers out!

The Art of McSweeney's — reviewed

An absolutely splendid book chronicling the lives and loves of my favourite periodical and the books and other magazines that have sprung from its fruity loins. Comments from production and editorial staff, writers, artists and even the printers accompany sumptuous and detailed artwork, design sketches, unused ideas, alternative covers and anything else they were able to squeeze in, including a price guide to show that even the fanciest book is not beyond the means of ordinary publishers: it's just a matter of finding the right printers and working carefully with them.

Shakespeare Wrote for Money, by Nick Hornby – reviewed

This came from the McSweeney’s Book Club at a good time for me. I’ve been writing a lot of reviews lately, both here and elsewhere, and I’ve started to get a bit self-conscious about them. I got it into my head that it was best to be totally objective, to aim for apparent omniscience, to try to ignore my own reading experience in order to provide a more balanced view. Clearly I’ve never gone very far in that direction, but the thought that I should had been nagging at me a bit.

So it was great to read this book of columns, and find a very respectable literary figure talking about books in just the way I like to, writing about them in context; in the context of his life, of other books he’s reading, and of books he’s not reading. Obviously talent-wise I’m a million miles away from Nick Hornby, but that shouldn’t stop me from trying to learn from his example.

I remember reading Fever Pitch in a single night (in a bedsit in Lille while on a year as a teaching assistant) and this book was just as more-ish. It arrived in the morning and I finished it before bedtime. Hornby’s observations on books are highly entertaining, and at times even quietly inspiring. It made a good companion piece to Daniel Pennac’s The Rights of the Reader, a book I read a couple of weeks before this one, and one which Hornby coincidentally has some kind words for in here.

This book has certainly made me want to read more of the magazine the columns come from. In my heart I know the Believer is pretty much a Sunday supplement on fancy paper, but fancy paper counts for a lot with me. I hate having inky fingers.

Shakespeare Wrote for Money, by Nick Hornby. McSweeney’s, pb, 132pp.

McSweeney’s 22, ed. Dave Eggers

This issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern contains three entirely separate books, bound into one magnetic cover by the metal strips in their spines. Police officers may take a dim view of literary types who go out into the night looking for trouble with one of these books concealed in their sleeves; prison librarians should ensure that this McSweeney’s is absent from their collections.

The idea behind From the Notebook: the Unwritten Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald is a brilliant one: to complete the stories suggested by that author’s notes. (I have a similar notebook of unused ideas, if the same writers fancy helping me out!) Not having read any Fitzgerald, apart from The Great Gatsby a long, long time ago, it’s hard for me to know how far the writers have tried to emulate his style, but I know that they haven’t necessarily tried to recreate the exact stories FSF would have written, since some are set in the present day. It was a very stimulating read, and many of the stories were very good indeed.

The State of Constraint: New Work from Oulipo was my favourite of these three books. Playful, silly and intellectual in a way that typifies some of my favourite French writers, the Oulipo group labour to create works of literature under self-imposed restrictions. Some of it is daft, some of it is serious, but all of it is thought-provoking. Most enjoyable is the binary story by Paul Fournel (who also provides the introduction), if only because of the pleasure of finding a choose-your-own-adventure story in the pages of McSweeney’s.

The Poetry Chains of Dominic Luxford was an eye-opener for me. I hadn’t been aware previously of the wide range of modern poetry. I’ve said before (in a sort-of-review of GUD #0) that I don’t really get poetry, and I won’t pretend that I’ve quite got it yet, but this book helped me make a little bit of progress. Much of this poetry resembles a short story that’s been auto-summarised in Word – everything inessential boiled away, to leave a kernel of… well, on the whole, a kernel of pain. It’s a pretty depressing volume, so don’t read it if you’re having a bad day. Of the poets here, I’m most likely to look for more work by Patrick Lawler and Sarah Lindsay, mainly because the subject matter of their poems interested me more than the relationship stuff of the rest. But there were another ten or twenty poets whose poems interested me enough to make me look them up in the contributors section. I read most of the volume while waiting to collect my daughter from school, which must have made me look terribly intellectual (or exceptionally pretentious).

Reading McSweeney’s is always good for my vanity: it makes me feel that I’m much cleverer and more literary than I really am. Like buying books from the Folio Society (but at a much more reasonable price) it makes me feel to some extent that I’m becoming the person I wanted to be. This was one of their most educational and improving issues to date. And did I mention it’s magnetic?

McSweeney’s 22, Dave Eggers (ed.), McSweeney’s, hb/3xpb, 480pp.

Vacation, Deb Olin Unferth

This book is typeset, designed and manufactured with wonderful skill and attention to detail. The paper's so soft you could use it to upgrade your baby's bottom. Holding the book in your hands feels luxurious; reading from it is a privilege.

In comparison, the novel itself was just okay. It's nicely written, if a bit bland. The narration is arch and distanced, which suits the subject matter but becomes a bit dull after a while. It jumps around in time quite a bit, often from one paragraph to the next - as a result it gives away the ending long before you get there, making the rest of the book a bit of a chore. Maybe that's too strong a word, because the rest is still fairly enjoyable to read, but from about halfway in you stop learning anything new about anything that's going on, other than the minor details; you're just watching things play out in more or less the way you expected, and my enthusiasm for the book waned the longer it took to get there.

The other main problem is that the plot relies upon the characters being stupid, and not just normal everyday people stupid, but Neighbours stupid. By that I mean the type of plot where a character is angry or suspicious about something their partner is up to, but they don't just try to clear things up - purely because that would short-circuit the plot. Instead, they decide their partner would have told them already if they really loved them, and stew about it until their partner leaves them for being such a grump. The entire plot of this novel derives from such dopiness. Maybe it makes sense for these characters to not talk to each other - the author gives them reasons for not doing so - but over the course of years it's hard to believe no one ever got drunk and said something like, "So, you've been following this guy around?" or "Tell me about the time you jumped out of a window."

The story makes a bit more sense to me when considered as a metaphor, or a fable, and the characters as symbols, of what we do in life, for questions of leaving and staying, and so on. There's something being said about relationships, and following each other, and routes not taken, and that kind of thing. But I'm not sure I agree with what is being said. The worst that can happen to a married couple in this book is to sit and watch television together, and then talk about it. That really didn't seem so bad to me: in fact, the characters could really have done with watching a few daft sitcoms to remind themselves what laughter felt like. Almost every character in the book was utterly humourless; to the point of inhumanity, even.

If Vacation had been a film by Wes Anderson, perhaps I would have loved it; if it had an appropriate soundtrack to put me in the right frame of mind; if the characters had been played by actors I like and trust enough to follow on a strange journey; if the foreign locations had been shot in living beauty by a master cinematographer. It had a lot in common with The Darjeeling Limited: both feature characters questing in exotic foreign lands, and both are meticulously crafted, deliberate, and confident of their own worth. But where The Darjeeling Limited instantly became one of my all-time favourite films, Vacation was just that little bit underwhelming.

But take everything I say with a handful of salt: any book lacking aliens or spaceships will struggle to make me totally happy. (I only got through David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia by pretending it was set on Arrakis.) That I even finished this book, despite its shortcomings in the extraterrestrial department, shows it must have been pretty good. All credit to McSweeney's Book Club for getting me to try something new. If I've focused on the negative, it's only because those things preoccupied me while I was reading it: others may find much to love in this book.

Vacation, Deb Olin Unferth, McSweeney's, hb, 240pp.

McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #13, ed. Chris Ware

A stunning book, created and produced with immense skill and care. If, towards the end, I started to get a bit tired of reading about failed and struggling relationships, that’s probably just because I read the book out of order and left those ones till the end. The book only deals with one narrow area of comics – independents created by writer/artists – but since that’s an area that’s often hard to notice behind the glare and pizazz of mainstream comics that’s easy to forgive.

McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #13, ed. Chris Ware, McSweeney’s, hb, 264pp.