This entry is just a marker that McSweeney's issue 11 arrived today. It is a beautiful pleather bound book with many secret messages on its cover. I am sure I will spend days and nights reading the cover alone.
The issue actually comes with a DVD and I think there are some really stunning little pieces on the DVD. Glad McSweeney's found out that I barely ever get past the first 5 pages or so in every issue. Adding a DVD will open the other pages to me. Well, I always read every word in the Lawrence Weschler pieces. (He appears to be a generally cool guy... I hope he will smile when he reads this...)
Issue 11 of McSweeney's contains pieces by people (and yes they are real, I just saw them on DVD) like Tom Bissell (he plays banjo, I think), A.G.Pasquella, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Alison Smith, Brent Hoff, Sean Warren (very cool guy, it seems), Stephen Elliott, Dough Dorst, Lawrence Weschler (!), Benjamin Lytal, David Means, Daphne Beal (what a fantastic interview on that DVD, with her husband on the left hand side...and some maps in the background... and she sings in Nepali too! oh my God!), Samantha Hunt, Robert Olmstead, Joyce Carol Oates and Denis Johnson.
(How is that for name-dropping.)
My issue also contains some pretty good little drawings by a Witold Riedel, but this could have something to do with me still holding a fountain pen in my teeth.
Did I ever mention that I am one of the lucky people who managed to get a lifetime subscription to the miraculous world of McSweeney's?
Yeah... I just hope they will not really start hating me when issue 50 comes out and they still have to send it for me as promised... will they then start to somehow "get rid of me?"...
They would never do that, I don't think. I hear they are all really nice people over at Timothy McSweeney's...
I hope to eventually expand on this entry and maybe provide more than just names. Even though they are pretty names, aren't they?
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update: The DVD contains a "director commentary" by Francis Ford Coppola. I laughed so hard that my stomach hurts. (Francis F. Coppola was obviously not the director of the piece on the DVD and was only provided with an almost muted version of the tape, which leads to the probably best director commentary I have seen on any DVD so far. Fantastic.)
it came shrink-wrapped this time and bc im busy with a move, i promised myself that i would crack it open on a quiet day after the move. but i broke down today in the middle of packing. read two stories. one was not a story, but an interview, the one with all the pictures (im like that. i always look for pictures in books and buy books based on pretty cover art, esp if its illustrated) of squid. liked the story very much. but also _really_ liked the story after that, which was the story about another squid (but a different kind).
also about your post that you posted after this entry: thank you for sharing that. i think the process of drawing circles is an interesting one.
what kind of work does your father do with respect to drawing?
What exactly were the contents of the "lifetime subscription? Like a box of raisins and stuff?