Edited by Claire Boyle
Painting by numbers
Beginning, middle and end—who needs it? Presenting problem, impediment, a resolution that goes aha!—we’re so over it. At least that was the argument at a recent City Lights Bookstore event with experimental storytellers Lidia Yuknavitch and Lance Olsen. I am attracted to the proposition and anxious to read their new books, “Verge” and “My Red Heaven.”
In contrast, McSweeney’s Issue 60 collects eight stories that are actualized by their conventional structures in ways that feel lively, lived-in and organic.
Set in the vibrant African immigrant community of Urbana, Illinois, “Variety African Healing Market” tells the story of a girl whose well-intentioned family gets swept up by forces beyond their control.
Anyone who has read Leigh Newman’s Alaskan memoir “Still Points North” will be on familiar ground with “High Jinks.” It’s a loving account of a father-daughter float trip that is at once light-hearted, funny and imbued with loss.
Through poetic language, in “In This Life or Another” we are plunged into the perspective of a boy who “lives between the world and his head,” who pines for his “mother who forgets she is a mother.”
“The Tum-Boon Brigade” takes us into a Bangkok that feels both exotic and intensely familiar, where volunteer accident responders nightly embark on a Buddhistic quest to accumulate boon or karmic merit.
“A Fresh Start Ruined” opens a window onto one evening of a family who has one foot firmly planted in contemporary American life and the other in Osage tradition.
“A Little Like God” weaves issues of national security, archetypal fear and Armageddon with the downward trajectory of a love affair.
One of the pleasures of reading McSweeney’s is every issue’s uniquely beautiful book design. Here the photo illustrations by Holly Andres act as visual commentary to each of these exceptional stories.