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Now available for preorder:
The San Francisco Panorama
.

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D A V E   E G G E R S .

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Copyright 2002 West Egg Communications LLC
Book
Nov-Dec 2002 p14(1)

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Weird! McSweeney's in Brooklyn. (Shopwatch). (Brief Article)
Anna Weinberg.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2002 West Egg Communications LLC

IT TOOK BROOKLYN AUTHOR CLAY McLeod Chapman a year to muster up the courage to walk into 429 7th Avenue, a bookstore in the borough's Park Slope neighborhood that just happens to be owned by offbeat publishing and Internet impresario Dave Eggers. Why so long? "I thought it was a dentist's office," Chapman says.

His confusion is understandable. The door and windows of the McSweeney's store, as it is known, are unmarked; the shelves that line the interior walls are filled, for the most part, with orthodontic tools and vials of dirt; and the main counter is stocked with pewter casts of birds' feet. All in all, the place looks more like the apartment of a demented shut-in than it does a dentist's office, much less a literary destination.

[Graphic omitted] But look carefully amid the clutter and you'll see work by Jonathan Lethem, Haruki Murakami and Neal Pollack, as well as titles by many other writers who show up on Eggers' Web site. And if you come on the right day, you might catch one of them there, doing a reading--or you might catch some store volunteers taking a group nap on the floor. Or a couple on a publicized blind date, or patrons eating at the one-table "restaurant" that occupies the store's front window.

Strange, yes, but not out of character for the enigmatic Eggers. His latest project, incidentally, is a writing workshop in San Francisco that also stocks and sells pirate supplies.

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