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McSweeney's Issue 22

Issue 22 is a three-part exercise in inspired restriction — of author, of content, and of form. In section one, poets (yes—poets!) including Mary Karr, Denis Johnson, Michael Ondaatje, and DC Berman initiate poet-chains, picking a poem of their own and one by another poet, who will then, thus inducted, do the same, and then again, and again, and so on until an appropriate moment. In section two, Fitzgerald (yes—F. Scott Fitzgerald!) provides a list of unused story premises first cataloged in The Crack-Up; his mission is completed by writers like Diane Williams, Nick Flynn, and Sam Lipsyte. In section three, finally, the president of France's (yes—France!) legendary Oulipians offers a rare glimpse into his group's current experiments with linguistic constraint. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.