The Best of McSweeney's - Deluxe Edition [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION by DAVE EGGERS PUBLISHING OTHER PEOPLE'S work is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than publishing your own. Publishing your own work is fraught with complicated, even tortured, feelings. Invariably you believe that you've failed. That you could have done better. That if you were given another month or another year, you would have achieved what you set out to do. Actually, it's not always that bad. But usually it is. Publishing someone else's work, though, is uncomplicated. You can be an unabashed champion of that work. You can finish reading it, or finish editing it, and know that it's done, that people will love it, and that you can't wait to print it. That feeling is strong, and it's simple, and it's pure. That's what's driven McSweeney's for fifteen years now—far beyond the four or eight issues we originally thought this journal would run. We thought the fun of it would end after a year or so, but that feeling, of finding a new voice, or a new piece by an established voice, and setting it into type and printing it and sending it into the world, is still just as good as it was back when we started in 1998. Back then, it was me opening submission envelopes in my kitchen, and being astonished that anyone would trust this new quarterly with their work. When I was the only one reading the submissions, I was an easy audience. I was so overwhelmed with the whole thing that I pretty much accepted every other story. And then 1 couldn't wait to get them into print. I would usually accept a story and lay it out the same day. If I couldn't get a digital version of it soon enough, I would just retype the whole story and lay it out that night. This is what I'm talking about: this simple and good feeling of knowing you'll be able to introduce a new writer to new readers. Early on, most of the writers in McSweeney's were lesser known, or were starting out in their careers. After a few issues, we began getting work from some established authors—even without asking, which was startling—and since then, our goal has been to balance these known quantities with the newcomers, and balance both of them with an eye toward occasional experimentation—some of these experiments improbably successful. Sometimes these commissions were simple acts of matching a great writer to unusual subject matter. Thus we sent Andrew Sean Greer to a weekend NASCAR