Practicalmadness

Meanwhile, one evening recently I asked a salesguy at the Borders Books' Lincoln Park branch (Tom Wolfe gives it three 'huh-huuuuuuunnnnnnggggghhh!!"s up) where I could find McSweeneys. He led me to a McSweeney's-published compilation of genre stories by major authors including Michael Chabon and Neil Gaiman. This, I believe, was the text of the mythical McSweeney's #10, which came with a DVD if you were a subscriber, and came in a cheesy-looking Vintage Contemporaries paperback if you were not.

"Anyone who tells you different is just frontin'," he said, evidently proud of his knowledge of the One, True Current McSweeneys.

I didn't buy it, as most McSweeneys publications (including the new, non-Eggers-headed monthly magazine The Believer) are as nice to look at as they are to read, and this had none of that Eggers-influenced type design and whatnot. It was just a book, designed seemingly by a colorblind intern whose uncle got him a job at a major publishing house.

I'm sorry, but it was ugly. As we say in Alabama (paraphrased), "don't you buy no ugly books."

Salesguy was operating under several misconceptions:

1. A subscription to McSweeney's does not cost $250. It costs $65. This makes no difference to an individual if the most you can afford to spend on your magazine subscriptions is It Came With The Computer, but I expect accurate depictions of unattainable products from my booksellers.

2. Regardless of the number of tattoos on one's forearms, the term 'frontin'' is generally not in the retail vocabulary. (Except in Wicker Park, where one often finds such polite merchant terminology as 'asshole' on bookstore signage.) "Providing bad information", "misrepresenting" and "lying like a dog" are perfectly acceptable substitutes.

3. Am I expected to believe that people actually read McSweeney's?

I could have looked for the One, True McSweeney's #10 while I was brunching in Wicker Park yesterday, but does one -- especially an individual dressed in a clean, silver-gray, collared piece of Lincoln Parkiana -- just walk into Myopic Books and ask, "hey, where can I find, uh, McSweeneys?" Is that deck? I would suppose not.

The quest continues. Next stop: Tower Records.