McSweeney's Issue 20 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern)

McSweeney's Issue 20 is one focused on variety of artwork and stories; its pages are scattershot with artwork from many different artists and its cover is a stunning work by Jacob Magraw-Mickelson. The writing is an outstanding hodgepodge as well, with stories of a bizarre courtship (by Kevin Moffett), a man who married a tree told in interviews by those who witnessed it (by Tony D'Souza), and a hilarious story of an erudite smalltown Alabama reporter very similar to Toole's Ignatius Reilly (by Jack Pendarvis). It also includes a story of Saddam Hussein writing a romance from jail (by Sam Miller), a fable of an Eden island (by Sarah Raymount), a detailing of a breakup prank (by Anthony Schneider), and a recounting of a civilization's rise to fall (by Roy Kesey). All of which isn't to say the stories are in any way "light" or insufficient or inferior--they may be imaginative, but they're also very well done. The weaker stories are either tiny or competent if less compelling, but are in any case far outweighed by the stronger material. For the most part, everything in the collection feels like discovered gold.