Now that Christmas is past, it’s time to start thinking about how you’re going to make it through the long, dark, cold, bitter winter. What you need is a good laugh and maybe some good conversation. No one is better suited to serve your needs than our friends McSweeney’s, a strange little concern that publishes both a quarterly magazine and some of the most original books around. Among their imprints are Believer Books (“H.P. Lovecraft, Against the World, Against Life” by Michel Houellebecq and “The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers” edited by Vendela Vida); Rectangulars (offering the novels “The People of Paper” by Salvador Plascencia and “The Facts of Winter” by Paul La Farge); McSweeney’s (offering a look at the pleasant and disturbing oddities of our culture with books like “Bicycles Locked to Poles” by John Glassie, “Dear New Girl” edited by Eli Horowitz, Trinie Dalton and Lisa Wagner, and “A Child Again” by Robert Coover); and Irregulars (“Baby Mix Me A Drink” and “Baby Make Me Breakfast” by Lisa Brown and “How to Dress for Every Occasion” by The Pope).
Here we review two of these books for your suggested pleasure, one for laughs and one for thinking.

The Better of McSweeney’s, Volume One—Issues 1-10
review by Michele Filgate

Oh, the joys of “McSweeney’s.” It is simply one of the best literary magazines out there, hands down. No other publication I’ve come across (with the exception of “The Believer,” which is associated with McSweeney’s) is willing to be as pretentious as they are and have fun in the process. And now, the editors have thankfully put together an anthology of the best pieces from their first 10 issues. 

The reprinted copyright pages from the first five issues is worth the price of the book ($18) alone. The editors share all—from how they are going to change style rules, to how once they finally got a return address stamp they went stamp happy. “He wanted desperately to try them out, thinking many times of popping into a restaurant or coffeeshop to pick up a free weekly or placemat or napkin or doily or whatever to try them out on. Stamp stamp stamp!” (This reviewer innocently wonders how much cooler The Wire would look like adorned with “McSweeney’s” in fine small black print). 

The letters to the editors are just as quirky. Sarah Vowell, one of the finest contemporary commentators and humor writers, shares how she had to read several authors in their entirety to write reviews for an anthology, and how she notices annoying trends surface repeatedly. One writer, for instance, has to have a pretty lady who has no need for makeup in almost every one of his books. A “McSweeney’s” reader asks to be assured that they are the only one subscribed to “McSweeney’s” from Bethel, Alaska. There is even a letter about shrunken heads, but I won’t ruin the fun of that one.

The scope of different pieces in this collection is fantastic. Two of my favorite fiction stories in recent years are featured—Kevin Brockmeier’s “The Ceiling” and Dan Chaon’s “The Bees.” Brockmeier’s story parallels a failing marriage with an object that reflects those below it gradually descending from the sky. The quiet reaction to it from townspeople and the narrator are eerie enough, and the tone is much like some of the best old school “Twilight Zone” episodes. Brockmeier is a master at instilling a tension that makes you want to keep reading, but also makes you worry about where the story will end.

There’s great nonfiction here, too. William T. Vollman, my new obsession, has a piece called “Three Meditations on Death,” which was later included in his 3,000-word treatise on history, “Rising Up and Rising Down.” His writing is lyrically resonant, which I never thought I would say for a writer who explores death. From the catacombs of Paris to autopsies in San Francisco, he writes about corpses, bones and his own reaction to observing it all. Yet his sentences read like poetry.

When visiting the catacombs, he describes “Walls of earth and stone encompassed walls of mortality a femur’s length-thick: long yellow and brown bones all stacked in parallels, their sockets pointing outward like melted bricks whose ends dragged down, like downturned bony smiles.” Now I want to read “Europe Central,” his work of fiction that won this year’s National Book Award.

With so many other predominant writers of the day in here—Zadie Smith, Jonathan Lethem, Rick Moody, George Saunders, Paul Collins, Ian Frazier—just to name a few, the collection is a must for all “McSweeney’s” fans, and those looking for some top-notch literary reading. 

The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers
review by Nick Gosling

“The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers” is exactly what its name implies.  Twenty-three writers, many of whom are rather distinguished, are interviewed by 22 other writers (editor Vendela Vida interviews twice), some better known then others. Published by Believer Books, a division of McSweeney’s, the collection is not only a window onto the lives, writing styles and thoughts of interviewees, but also onto the interviewers, who through their unique questions, comments and quotations, add their own perceptions to the interactions.

Each interview begins with a catchy, yet significant quote from the interview, and then an introduction by the interviewer noting some of the interviewee’s history, greatest works, and where/when and by what means the interview took place. For example, “this interview took place over two months and two continents (Banville lives in Dublin), and employed two technologies of communication (email and phone),” from Ben Ehrenreich’s interview of John Banville. 

The book progresses in alphabetical order based upon the interviewee’s last names, beginning with Tayari Jones interviewing Chris Albani, and ending with Julie Orringer interviewing Tobias Wolff. Other interviews included are Dave Eggers and Joan Didion, ZZ Packer and Edward P. Jones, Robert Birnbaum and Jamaica Kincaid, Vendela Vida and Shirley Hazzard, Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan, and Ben Marcus talking with George Saunders. 

The interviews cover a wide array of topics, usually about the novels or significant events the authors wrote or lived through. The Jones/Albani interview includes a discussion about the civil war in Nigeria in 1983, where Albani says “I was born in Nigeria, but left for England halfway through the civil war and returned at the civil war’s end…. The Igbos (overthrown faction) were considered the rebels. And there were army cantonments everywhere you went.” In the Smith/McEwan interview, McEwan discusses the significance of time slowing down for certain events, a reference to his novel “The Child in Time.” “Suddenly you’re dividing the moment with much more intensity,” says McEwan. “Even in describing it you’re slowing the movement. Because you think this is high-value, rich experience, therefore only two seconds are 1,200 words.”

Many of the interviews are succinct and interesting, true philosophical insight into the writers. But others feel more like the interviewee is more interested in him or herself than the subject, like the Smith/McEwan interview, in which more of the quotes are from Smith than McEwan. But if you’ve ever wondered what a writer is like without the mask of a novel, or why and where the writer thought up the ideas for a certain novel you enjoy, or if you are just interested in how writers think about life, then “The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers” is well worth your time.