McSweeney's #63

by Stephen Dixon, Dave Eggers (Editor), Claire Boyle (Editor)

McSweeney’s Quarterly returns with our first issue of 2021, a handsome and sturdy hardcover with a beautiful foil-stamped cover by Jon McNaught. McSweeney’s 63 features four posthumous, never-before-published short stories by acclaimed author and dear friend Stephen Dixon, with an introduction and retrospective on the late writer’s work by author—and onetime Dixon student—Porochista Khakpour. To boot we’ve got brand-new fiction from Etgar Keret and Esmé Weijun Wang, Illustrated diaries by Abang and full-color comics by Michael Kennedy, letters from Kashana Cauley and Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, an essay on a grief and long-distance biking by Adam Iscoe, and so much more. Start your literary year off right with this sumptuous issue.

Featuring Original Stories by:
Esmé Weijun Wang
Kevin Moffett
Mikkel Rosengaard
Etgar Keret
Rita Chang-Eppig

I Drink a Glass of Water: four posthumous stories by Stephen Dixon
With an introduction by Porochista Khakpour

Illustrated stories by:
Abang
Michael Kennedy

An original essay by Adam Iscoe

An excerpt from You People by Nikita Lalwani

And letters by:
Gillian Linden
Jessi Jezewska Stevens
Legna Rodríguez Iglesia
Kashana Cauley
Marie-Helene Bertino
Larissa Pham

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literary Fiction

216 pages, Hardcover

First published May 6, 2021

About the author

Stephen Dixon was a novelist and short story author who published hundreds of stories in an incredible list of literary journals. Dixon was nominated for the National Book Award twice--in 1991 for Frog and in 1995 for Interstate--and his writing also earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy Institute of Arts and Letters Prize for Fiction, the O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize.

Reviews

[Paul Dembina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highlights for me were Adam Iscoe's Field Notes about his travels around America and Kevin Moffet's mid-life crisis comedy Bears Among The Living. Ah yes and also Etgar Keret's A World Without Selfie Sticks. Honourable mention goes to Stephen Dixon for his affecting Oh My Darling.

Now if someone could tell me what the heck Michael Kennedy's cartoon Dream of an Afro-Pessimist was about my life would be complete

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed this volume, especially “The Mating Call” by Mikkel Rosengaard. Kevin Moffet’s story also had some exceptional sections, like (paraphrasing) “I miss when my future was more interesting to me than my past. The other parents paused and looked at me.... I also miss scratch-and-sniff stickers, I said. Sighs of relief from the other parents.”

My first McSweeny’s quarterly and will add one additional observation: the best “letters to the editor” I’ve ever read!

[Mgb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these short stories hit the spot perfectly...others? I just don’t know. I haven’t read enough of McSweeney’s to get their deal, but they do seem to bring me something interesting and a little odd presented in an artistically pleasing format. A lovely read for a grey, rainy Spring day.

[Robbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I seem to be in consensus here that the two standouts were from Kevin Moffett and Adam Iscoe. I kind of liked Rita Chang-Eppig's story as well.

Porochista Khakpour's introduction to Stephen Dixon's stories was more interesting than the stories.

[Timons Esaias · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been a subscriber since the second issue, but had only read a few issues cover-to-cover until recently. Now I'm reading about one issue a month, bouncing around in the series, and one thing I have found is that the passage of time doesn't weaken these pieces. In this case the pandemic showed up in the Letters, and in a couple of stories, but that's about it for the times.

The Letters section is a kick to read, and that's true again here. There's a mixture of reality (including a cornbread recipe) and fiction, irony and idiosyncratic detail.

Four of the main pieces got my positive attention. Esmé Weijun Wang's "Peony" rated an exclam in the TOC. It's an end-of-the-world piece that doesn't play out the way you'd expect, four friends counting down the hours in a lakefront cabin. I marked "Bears among the Living" by Kevin Moffett as 'interesting' and it contains the key words for us to live by: Never trust anyone who owns a reptile or a riding lawnmower.

Adam Iscoe controversially calls Steinbeck's Travels with Charley a novel in "Field Notes", which I take to be a creative non-fiction. It's an oddly constructed description of a bicycle journey around the country, not told in order. But it keeps the attention and I'll be thinking about that structure down the road.

"A World without Selfie Sticks" was a laugh, and Etgar Keret's ending seems perfect. This one should be anthologized.

The ending of the volume is a group of four posthumous stories by Stephen Dixon, with a touching and effective introduction by former student Porochista Khakpour. I have heard about Dixon as a mentor more than as a writer, and may have read only one previous story. He's a hyperrealist, at least some of the time, and I often enjoy works of that ilk. Hyperrealism didn't work for me much, here. The first story is "Out for a Spin" and it's a great deal of artificial, overwordy dialogue between an aging couple who are very bad at answering questions. I can see a point to the plotless narrative, but there were too many artificialities to ignore. Nobody, ever, would really talk like that; and it wasn't amusing.

The other three stories were better, but they didn't convince me to read more. "Finding an Ending" is a writer's story, and if it were the only one I read, might have sold me on Dixon. The experimental "Oh My Darling" is a six-page run-on paragraph that keeps retelling the same episode with different dialogue and different outcomes. It's somewhat of a writing instructor's story, because it quickly demonstrates how many different stories you can generate from the same premise, through rather slight deviations in the early steps.

I don't mean to sound peevish about the Dixons, because that section is an example of one of the strengths of McSweeney's. They take the time to introduce you to an author they think you should sample, or a group of unknown Icelandic writers, or Latin American mysteries, or whatever group that you'd never run across as a group in your normal course of reading. This selection, greatly enriched by Khakpour's introduction, gave me a chance to hear about a great teacher, and get a taste of his idiosyncratic work. That's a good thing.

[Ostap Bender · Rating 3 out of 5]

The latest installment from the fine folks at McSweeney’s is a mixed bag, as invariably such collections are. When the stories connect they’re a real delight, and there is great emotional power in a few of them – the first two I list below, as well as ‘The Lost One,’ by Stephen Dixon. Worth checking out.

Loved:
Bears Among the Living, by Kevin Moffett
Field Notes, by Adam Isoce – a real standout, and easily my favorite

Liked:
A World Without Selfie Sticks, by Etgar Keret
Nights, by Abang (graphic art)
Ebbing’s Cursed Toccata, by Rita Chang-Eppig
The Lost One, by Stephen Dixon

Ok:
You People, by Nikita Lalwani (excerpt from her upcoming novel)

Didn’t care for:
Peony, by Esme Weijun Wang
The Mating Call, by Mikkel Rosengaard
Dream of an Afro Pessimist, by Michael Kennedy (graphic art)
Out For a Spin, by Stephen Dixon
Finding an Ending, by Stephen Dixon
Oh My Darling, by Stephen Dixon

[Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book about art and loss. Most of the stories feature the theme in one form or another. Unfortunately almost all of them come so bloated with pretension and self-regard that reading them made me feel physically ill on occasion. The exception, by a long shot, is Etgar Keret's contribution, which is a memorable wonder of writing. Mikel Rosengaard and Rita Chang-Eppig were not too shabby either.

[Gerard Van Elzen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Standout Stories:
Adam Iscoe: Field Notes;
Etgar Keret: A world without Selfie Sticks
And especially the gothic horror of Rita Chang-Eppig's Ebbing's cursed Toccata.

I also very much appreciated the introduction into Stephen Dixon's Stories, whom I had never heard about. The last story: "Oh My Darling" was very interesting. Also really liked "The Lost One". I think I'll try to search out some more of his, apparently, astoundingly large body of work.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading McSweeney's makes me a better reader and a better writer. I always feel like a few themes jump out at me in each issue, and for this one, it's the idea of grief. So many of the stories here explore that open wound, and I found myself tearing up on more than one occasion. Not a beach read issue, perhaps, but worth your time if you're feeling emotionally resilient.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection!

[Melanie Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid 4.5, fantastic issue. Standouts were Adam Iscoe’s Field Notes and Stephen Dixon’s Oh My Darling.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was enjoying the first chunk well enough but the Stephen Dixon stories really blew me away. Can't wait to dive into his other work.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked: Peony - Esme Weijun Wang
The Mating Call - Mikkel Rosengaard
Field Notes - Adam Iscoe
A World Without Selfie Sticks - Etgar Keret

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another really solid collection of short stories. Love the cover art and the four Dixon stories. Great all around read.

[Kristopher Larsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ebbing's Cursed Tocata was just a perfect story to read on Halloween!

[JP · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the one about the Ebbing Curse, Peony, Field Notes and as always Etgar Keret rules.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad collection, just didn’t feel like I am likely to revisit any. Four Dixon stories was probably at leadt one too many given there didn’t seem to be much range in his writing.

[Geoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous collection of short fiction.

[Kate Landry]

pulled this out of a little library in west u sometime after college because i liked the look of it and actually really ended up enjoying the short stories

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adam Iscoe's "Field Notes" is the stand-out piece here; I plan on re-reading it so I can fully appreciate the complex emotions he conveys with each new encounter on his bicycle tour of America. I really liked Esmé Weijun Wang's "Peony" and Etgar Keret's "A World without Selfie Sticks" and liked Mikkel Rosengaard's "The Mating Call" and Rita Chang-Eppig's "Ebbing's Cursed Toccata." Kashana Cauley's letter was so funny that I pre-ordered her book.

Unfortunately, as much as McSweeney's wanted me to appreciate Stephen Dixon, who they call a "literary treasure and master of the short story form" here, I disliked all four of his stories. As Dixon himself notes in one of them, all four stories cover very similar ground. "Oh My Darling" is the most interesting of the lot given its play with form, but the story barely exists beyond that purpose. I can appreciate the craftmanship ("Finding an Ending" is similarly form-driven), but they don't make for particularly engaging stories.

Without the Dixon pieces, I probably would've given this one four stars, but with them I think three stars is the most appropriate ranking.

[John Barbery · Rating 4 out of 5]

McSweeney’s Sixty-three. McSweeney’s is an independent nonprofit publishing company that elevates and promotes writers who are overlooked or don’t quite fit mainstream publishing. I’ve followed them since the early aughts and some of my favorite writers were first published on their website or in quarterlies like this one. I’ve never been disappointed with the material I’ve read online or ordered from them directly. This edition was my first exposure to Kevin Moffett and Stephen Dixon, probably the stories I enjoyed most from this collection and have added their work to my reading list.