McSweeney's Issue 29

With our biggest line-up in quite a while – fifteen stories from writers like Yannick Murphy, Roddy Doyle, Ben Greenman, and Peter Orner – McSweeney's 29 offers everything a good book should: there is jungle warfare, there are boomerang factories, there are tragedies and romances and animals it might not have been wise to bring home. There is also art on every damn page, and a finely die-cut cover, wrapped in several kinds of cloth, that will make other people want to grab this one right out of your hands, so watch out.

Table of Contents

Brian Baise – It’s Nice When Someone Is Excited to Hear from You
I made a mistake a few years ago and took a job selling software on commission in Toledo, Ohio.

Dawn Ryan – The Strauss House
Barbara and Sam met their freshman year in high school running cross country on the JV team.

Nathaniel Minton – The Land of Our Enemies
Peterson did everything by the book.

J. Erin Sweeney – Augury
When I was young and traveled a great deal, I once passed through a foreign land with a lovely local custom.

Peter Orner – Kosciuszko
Barkus and I used to buy dope in Humboldt Park, beneath the giant equestrian statue of Thaddeus Kosciuszko.

John Thorson – Following a Lifetime of Fabrication. In the Wake of Decades at Sea
After years of pretending to search for a creature I’d imagined, I accidentally discovered it.

Laura Hendrix – A Record of Our Debts
Selma’s on the woodpile now.

Nelly Reifler – History Lesson
He pried the log open. Half-rotted, it split easily.

Blaze Ginsberg – My Crush on Hilary Duff
In 2002, Blaze Ginsberg was the subject of Raising Blaze, his mother’s account of her efforts to shepherd him through the public-school system.

Roddy Doyle – The Painting
Adam came to Ireland because it was a rich country but also because it was an island.

Ben Greenman – The Govindan Ananthanarayanan Academy for Moral and Ethical Practice and the Treatment of Sadness Resulting from the Misapplication of the Above
The academy only lasted a decade, though the building that housed it, a former boomerang factory, still stands on the border between India and Australia.

Erica Plouffe Lazure – Cadence
Something ate a hole through the oil tank, so we called Joey in from the pumps to fix it.

Yannick Murphy – Calls
Call: A cow with her calf half born.

Joyce Carol Oates – Labyrinth
A childish and surely baseless fear of being buried alive was a lifelong obsession of young N.