I just subscribed to McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and I am so flippin excited about it, I can hardly wait for my first issue to come! The journal is published by author Dave Eggers’s (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and What is the What?) publishing house, McSweeney’s. As you can see from the picture, each journal contains beautiful original artwork as well as fresh literature. The McSweeney website, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, is funny, odd, and just delightful to poke around in. I purchased the subscription for a couple of reasons: 1) I am currently reading What is the What, which is the first book in quite a while to make me laugh, and then cry in rapid succession, and is just written so beautifully and about subject matter so compelling and important that I really don’t like putting it down; 2) Original art AND literature at one time; 3) I NEVER do (buy) stuff like this, the other journal I subscribe to is Social Justice, which, while very important and close to my heart, is very much in the same vein as what I’m constantly reading for school and my thesis; 4) it just looks freaking awesome.

Here’s the description for the next issue:

THE NOT-SO-DISTANT FUTURE, ISSUE 28:
In eight illustrated books, elegantly held together in a single beribboned case, McSweeney’s 28 explores the state of the fable—those astute and irreducible allegories one doesn’t see so much anymore in our strange new age, when everyone is wild for the latest parable or apologue but can’t find time for anything else. Featuring fable-length work by Daniel Alarcón, Sheila Heti, and Nathan Englander, and different illustrators for each piece, McSweeney’s 28 promises to offer many nights’ worth of fine reading.

No doubt I will be posting about it once it arrives.