McSweeney's Issue 39 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern)

Dave Eggers (Editor)

• ISBN13: 9781936365104
• Publish Date: 27 December 2011
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 13 December 2014
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: McSweeney's Publishing
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 300
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

What is indispensable here: Václav Havel’s essay, “Politics and Conscience.” What is good: Jess Walter’s “Anything Helps.” And what is great fun: Elmore Leonard’s “Chick Killer,” his return of Karen Sisco.

(Karen Sisco!)

But yes, Elmore and Havel, and even Walter, I presume, are to be had in better ways elsewhere. The rest didn’t quite live up to the fun or indispensable. Certainly nothing as indispensable as this, more relevant today than in 1984, Havel echoing Wendell Berry (et. al.) from half a world away:

Thirty years after the tornado swept the traditional family farm off the face of the earth, scientists are amazed to discover what even a semiliterate farmer previously knew— that human beings must pay a heavy price for every attempt to abolish, radically, once for all and without trace, that humbly respected boundary of the natural world, with its tradition of scrupulous personal acknowledgment.

They must pay for the attempt to seize nature, to leave not a remnant of it in human hands, to ridicule its mystery; they must pay for the attempt to abolish God and to play at being God.