Timothy McSweeney's Impressive Ambition

The brand-new DVD magazine, Wholphin, is sold bundled with the latest issue of McSweeney’s for $22.00. I reviewed them both separately, in an attempt to come to some general conclusions about Timothy McSweeney’s Publishing Empire or whatever they’re calling it these days.

Wholphin #1

The latest offering from the folks at McSweeney’s is a DVD quarterly called Wholphin, the idea being, I guess, that there is enough quality short video being produced, but not released, that there is a need to collect it and an audience hungry enough for obscure, absurd afterthoughts that it will be consumed. It’s a pretty good idea, too, when you think about it.

The greatest moment in Wholphin isn’t even on the screen; it’s just holding it in your hands. A DVD magazine! It comes in a beautiful white DVD case with a slightly rough texture and there is a small booklet inside. The booklet contains less useful, interesting information than you’d hope or expect, but enough to make skimming it once, at least, worthwhile. Don’t look to it to explain what exactly you’re watching, if you find yourself puzzled by the mystery of a lovely, hypnotic film of a hovercraft crossing a body of water. Don’t expect the booklet to explain who the director or what the title is of every single piece!

It’s not that it’s all downhill from the moment when you're sitting there holding the package in your hands, but it’s safe to say that Wholphin has not lived up to its potential yet. Like a fiction quarterly—except you don’t read it, you watch it—each "issue" contains several short pieces. On Wholphin #1, the pieces range from three to twenty-five minutes in length and run the gamut both in terms of tone and quality. When you put in the DVD, a menu comes up with a movie behind it: a man’s face and beside it, a list of short films you can watch. If you just let it be, as I definitely felt the urge to do, the choices go away, and you’re treated to a short film of a man named Patton Oswalt making faces for about five minutes before the camera follows a janitor down a hall to some kind of storage unit within which David Byrne is playing guitar and singing music—beautifully. Absurd? Yes. Interesting? Yes. Vaguely amusing? Yes. Satisfying? Not really. Too bad we don’t get to see more David Byrne, whose song and performance are the treat. There are two other menus that turn into scenes, both a little better than the first. I don’t want to give away much about them, but you may find yourself watching them more than once as you try to figure out what it is that you’ve seen.

Spike Jonze and David O. Russell are among the biggest names with films on Wholphin #1, and I imagine they will probably be responsible for most of the public interest in Wholphin, such as there is. Spike Jonze’s documentary about Al Gore would have been relevant five years ago. Too bad there was no Wholphin then. I might have cared. The David O. Russell documentary "Soldier’s Pay," about Gulf War soldiers who find a bit of Saddam’s cash horde, is absolutely fascinating, but begs further development—it is cut of solely "talking head" interviews—but the story is so compelling it demands more, reinforcing the viewer’s suspicion that he is watching a collection of the coolest movies that the editors could find—with some throwaway crap from big names included to sell it.

Further reinforcing this idea is the fact that the Miranda July-Miguel Arteta collaboration—too long at just over three minutes—actually is throwaway crap. But it features actors you will recognize and whom you have previously admired, so you don’t wonder why it was included. Someone stroking himself would call it "gemlike" or a "haiku" but a rational person who does not work for McSweeney’s would point out that it is "underdeveloped," and "disappointing."

Carson Mell’s mostly-animated film, “The Writer,” on the other hand, is the funniest on the DVD. It’s a joy to watch and I’ve probably watched it ten times. The filmmaker’s perspective is unique, the pace is fast, and it could not have existed in any other medium. It made me glad that there are people like Carson Mell making movies and that there is such a thing as a DVD magazine—even one with a name as stupid and sure to annoy as Wholphin—to bring them to my living room. I look forward to seeing what’s on issue #2.

http://www.wholphindvd.com/

McSweeney’s #18

There have been occasions in the past where the presentation, the creative packaging, of McSweeney’s has upstaged the content. Style has trumped substance. I don’t deny that some of Eggers’ and the other McSweeney’s editors’ ideas have been good ones. Some of them have been pure, inspired genius: like issue 4 (the first issue I was aware of and one that I still think was brilliant): a box containing fourteen separate booklets; or issue 13, the comics issue, guest-edited by Chris Ware, which was gorgeous; or the one that came with a CD you were supposed to listen to while you read it. But that’s why it’s nice that the most recent issue, #18, is more or less a regular book featuring a sequence of short fiction. It’s nice because it lets a reader focus on the work, not on the packaging.

I have respect and admiration for McSweeney’s—I have to, because Dave Eggers and gang have done it. For better or for worse, ever since it began publishing in 1999, McSweeney’s has mattered as a publication in a way that other editorially-sound literary reviews, say, Tin House, Zoetrope All-Story, and the Paris Review (at least in my lifetime), have not. (Although I admit that this is equivalent to proclaiming that chicken noodle is the most delicious of all of Campbell’s condensed soups or that Luxembourg far outstrips any other Grand Duchy in northwestern continental Europe in terms of economic might—though undeniably true, it’s still not saying much).

But when I stare right in the face of it, the respect and admiration I have for McSweeney’s is respect primarily for a brand, rather than the art that each issue contains or the editorial philosophy that guides it. McSweeney’s is impressive to me primarily as the phenomenon that first capitalized on the obvious need for an independent alternative to mainstream publishing and only secondarily for its content.

When I say that Eggers’ vision as an entrepreneur and publisher is more powerful than his vision as a writer or editor, it’s no slap at his writing or editing: he’s a good enough writer and, as an editor, he’s shown an admirable savvy in choosing to publish, in addition to unknown writers, a mix of known but (at least at the time) underappreciated writers like George Saunders and Jonathan Lethem; but he’s a fucking ninja when it comes to creating and marketing a product that walks the razor line between mainstream profits and the damaged credibility that follows mass acceptance.

As a writer, hell yeah, I’d want to be published in McSweeney’s, because of its (again, relatively) large audience and because publication in its pages bestows at least a passing membership in a community with an attractive hipness. But editorially? Reading this issue, I found it hit-or-miss. I could take it or leave it. But maybe that’s the best that a publication can do.

There’s a bit on the submissions page of McSweeney’s.net that reads as follows:

"We're not concerned about writing degrees or past publications, though, so don't be daunted if you don't have an MFA or much in the way of previously published work."

Yet the pages of McSweeney’s 18 are filled not with the raw, fresh voices of amateurs, as the above might lead you to imagine, but by A) work from the pseudo-professional writers, i.e. MFAs, Michener Fellows, a professor in the writing program at the University of Idaho, the director of the Institute for Humanities at NYU and the like; and B) even worse: second-rate crap from big names like Joyce Carol Oates, Roddy Doyle, and Edmund fucking White. I’m sure the inclusion of Joyce Carol Oates’ story “Bad Habits” had nothing to do with the fact that she’s Joyce Carol Oates! There’s no reason they shouldn’t include professionals if the work is strong, but why say that they don’t care?

That said, there was one story in this issue, "Hot Pink" by Adam Levin, that is everything I would wish a story to be. It absolutely knocked my socks off. Offering an unexpectedly moving variation on the themes (and even language) of The Catcher in the Rye, the story manages to evoke an old favorite while exploring new territory. The story and character are original, surprising, entertaining, sweet, intelligent and funny. There’s a really good feeling I get sometimes when I read a really great story. I got it when I read “Hot Pink.” I wished I’d written it.

www.mcsweeneys.net
Issue 18 at McSweeney’s online store