McSweeney's Issue 25 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern)

A small, tidy volume of mostly very good stories along with some "horses saying 'what'" art by Amy Jean Porter. Best is Steven Millhauser's story of building a tower to heaven, and the details and reaction to its actual construction, a great idea executed flawlessly. Emily Anderson writes a very sharp story about going West in the modern day, Padgett Powell has a hilarious, acute story of a girl running away to Kansas for the good life, and David Hollander has an irresistibly imaginative story about a crew of ruined shipmen discovering strange and awful islands. There're also good ones by Connor Kilpatrick (about a warehouse worker phenom), Alexander MacBride (about Tarzan's lost brother), and Kenneth Bonert has a novella about a journalist in Serbia not finding a single answer. There's a so-so story by Joyce Carol, and duds by Terry Wright and Chloe Hooper, though Wright's dud is only about 100 words long. As usual, the good far outweighs and outshines the bad, and the stories are extremely creative while making good on their often outlandish premises. Because what's better than writing about something very interesting exceptionally well?