A quarter of a century later, the show continues

October 29, 2023 1:18 PM

Dropped on the world as a kind of polished, keenly self-aware zine at the dawn of what would become the era of digital publishing, McSweeney’s was, in other words, a Statement, an anti-magazine created by rogue magazine professionals. Eggers had already cofounded Might, a short-lived San Francisco magazine with a cult following, but McSweeney’s was simultaneously more ambitious and stripped down. “This thing will be more about trying new, and almost certainly misguided, ideas,” he wrote in an email to would-be contributors in 1998. “It’ll be fun, and if we’re not careful, we might make publishing history!” Eggers expected it to run for four issues, eight at the most, but he was so wrong. from Dave Eggers’s Pirate Ship
posted by chavenet (16 comments total)

Apart from the subscription fee required to read it unblurred, it would seem to be an interesting article.
posted by y2karl at 1:27 PM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Dave Egger’s Pirate ship unmoored
posted by chavenet at 1:35 PM on October 29, 2023 [10 favorites]

It's paywalled, unfortunately. But I'll take this opportunity to tell my McSweeneys story. Somewhere around issue 3 or 4 they were still offering a lifetime subscription. I think it was something like $120. After 20-some more issues they finally sent a mea culpa begging lifetime subscribers to let them stop (and offering a free tote bag and some swag). I figured it would have been a dick move to not accept it, especially since oftentimes the quality of the printing was higher than the quality of the writing.
posted by rikschell at 1:35 PM on October 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

I still have issues 2-6 of the print.
posted by slogger at 1:38 PM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Issue 71, mentioned there at the end, is sitting on my desk right now, with its slipcase somehow evoking YA paperback-horror charm and those medical books with the clear plastic pages where you could flip your way through layer after layer of a human body. (I've said that the real horror is trying to get the slipcase to give up its hold on the...second slipcase...which must then relinquish its death-grip on the...third slipcase...inside of which is a bible?) I've been reading ebooks almost exclusively over a year now, so it's shocking how physical this thing is, how careful it is. Simultaneously grim and thoughtful! (And Brian Evenson guest-edited!)

It really does feel like at some point The Discourse forgot how to tell the difference between twee and taking an extraordinary amount of care, and I'm glad Eggers has managed to show that the latter has a place in the world.
posted by mittens at 1:40 PM on October 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

Dave Eggers has vacillated from a personal hero of mine to someone I regard with considerable suspicion and back, settling finally on something of a mix of the two, but the 826 non profit remains, as far as I can tell, something that is pretty unambiguously a good thing. I went back last time I was in SF a couple of years ago and while it didn’t charm me in quite the same way as it did in 2006, I was very glad to see it was still there, doing its real job along with selling archly twee pirate merch.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:52 PM on October 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

(Eggers, a shrewd critic of media, including his own, used his Stowe-adjacent copy, not much more than a caption, really, to critique the photo itself and the objectification of women by magazines in general.)

Now I want to see the photo and his accompanying copy.

I was unaware of the writers he'd supported and their appreciation for his involvement.

Thanks so much for posting this, chavenet - this is most interesting!

(Also: I still have at least one copy of Might, in which I ran an ad for my little indie record company. Might was great.)
posted by kristi at 3:04 PM on October 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

I recall in one of the first couple of issues, a line near the bottom of the masthead that read something like "Made with software you own, with fonts you already have. Printed in Iceland, because that seemed cool." It really did feel at the beginning like it was done both as a lark and as a meaningful planting of a flag in the ground. I loved how you never knew what the next issue would look like, at all.
posted by gwint at 3:04 PM on October 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

Eggers is a douche but agree that 826 did/does cool stuff.
posted by aspersioncast at 3:44 PM on October 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

I had a subscription to McSweeney's from around issue 15 to issue 45(?), and I bought from their website all of the back issues I had missed.

I have not read a single issue cover-to-cover, and though they are packed away in a storage box, I treasure every one of them, and wish I had the free cash to re-up my subscription and buy all the back issues I have missed, and the space to shelve them. McSweeney's is a treasure.
posted by JohnFromGR at 3:46 PM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm forever grateful for web McSweeney's giving us "My name is Elon Musk and I want to help you die in space"
posted by MengerSponge at 8:01 PM on October 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

Eggers is a douche

what? has he killed babies?
posted by philip-random at 9:29 PM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

this is cube steak
posted by juv3nal at 5:25 AM on October 30, 2023 [2 favorites]

I had no idea Dave Eggers was connected to McSweeny's... TIL, etc.
posted by subdee at 10:20 AM on October 30, 2023

McSweeny's always looks really interesting but also like too much of a commitment. I bought one issue from a bookstore, it was one where they put out a newspaper, and it was great but it took me a very long time to even finish that. There's little chance I'd find myself finishing one of the book-sized issues before the next one came out. I'm glad it's out there and wish I was the sort of person that could subscribe to it and read it.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:43 PM on October 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

It was issue 26 they stopped the lifetime subscription.
posted by rikschell at 6:05 PM on November 2, 2023