Issue No. 3
T I M O T H Y M c S W E E N E Y ' S
W I N D F A L L R E P U B L I C
(Incorporating Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and Timothy
McSweeney's Blues-Jazz Odyssey, and predating Timothy McSweeney's
Unsuccessful Inward, Timothy McSweeney's Finicky Corridor, and Timothy
McSweeney -- Leprosarium Years.)
- - - -
Issue 3 is 288 pages long, and contains three color foldouts. It weighs
about eleven pounds.
This issue is out of print.
The issue contains:
In the Kingdom of the Unabomber -- a 23,000-word piece by Gary
Greenberg, a Connecticut psychotherapist who has maintained, for almost
two years now, a correspondence with Ted Kaczynski. This is a superb
essay.
Flush, by Judy Budnitz
[Fiction. A family gets cancer]
Anecdotes, Three of Them, by J. Robert Lennon
[Three tales that surprise, then edify]
Convergences, by Lawrence Weschler
[Seemingly (aren't they always?) random images come together and ignite
short essays, and give rise to gatefolds]
Tin Chicken, by Tracy Olssen
[The pages of this story, about a household open to the public, are
trifurcated, to encourage the flipping back and forth of their segments,
much like those head-torso-leg books enjoyed by children of all ages.
Really, this story has been engineered, painstakingly, so that it works,
makes sense, whatever permutations applied to it. Try it. We fear few
are trying it, but it must be cut with scissors and tried to be
believed.]
"Spider Silk Is a Neat Material the World Wants. Can We Make This in
Goats?" by Brent Hoff
[The McSweeney's Science Person here explores efforts afoot in Canada to
take the properties of spider silk and apply them to building materials,
but not without first sending the genes through BELE goats, miniature
versions of that animal, found in Madagascar. This is a true story, told
in roundtable form.]
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Christmas Story Trilogy:
Hark the Herald, by Magnus Mills
[Mills, whose Restraint of Beasts was shortlisted for the Booker Prize,
here tells of a man who heads for the seaside in search of Christmas
cheer, but misses it by inches]
Christmas in China {O-E-O-E-O!), by T.Z. Parsa
[A half-dozen interwoven lives, on Christmas Eve, in a city much like
your own]
Santa and Son, by Steve Amick
[Santa's lone (legitimate) progeny, Gunta, returns home]
-----
Confessional Poem, by Rick Moody
[Answers all your questions]
A Small Reception, by Mark O'Donnell
[A musical involving catering]
Red Dresses, by Ken Foster
[Fiction, with running commentary by Ana Marie Cox]
Tiny, Tiny, Vibrating Strings, and an Eleven-Dimensional Universe
[Interview with string-theory physicist Brian Greene, by David
Steinhardt, who shared an apartment building with him as a child]
The Circus Elephants Look Sad Because They Are, by John Warner
[Hooper Award-winner Warner here discusses Gung Fu and suicidal books
in short fictional form]
Banvard's Folly, by Paul Collins
[Continuing his Loser series, Collins here tells the story of John
Banvard, a 19th-century showman and inventor of the "Three-Mile
Painting." How did the most famous artist of his time die broke and
unknown?]
Also in this issue:
- Stories of ol Virginny, by Arthur Bradford
- Desperate and appreciative and sometimes angry letters sent to Fresh
Step, an adorable, soulful vocal group created by the writers of The
Late Show
- Another irate message to the New York Times, by Zev Borow
- A letter from Paris, about crumbling, from Sarah Vowell
- A letter from Vegas, from Camden Joy
- A short piece of un-illustrated fiction by Tom Tomorrow
Not to mention contributions from:
Paul Maliszewski
Komar & Melamid
David Shields
Lucy Thomas
A.G. Pasquella
Chris Sorrentino
Ed Weinberger
Edwin Rozic and A. Hemon
Amy Krouse Rosenthal & Cynthia Kaplan
Colleen Werthmann
Tim Carvell
Morgan Phillips
Jim Hanas
Christina Nunez
And Jason De Joux, of New Zealand
And on the spine of Issue No. 3 is an original story, by David Foster
Wallace, about child abandonment and trucks
Red dot denotes content that is new today.
Black dot denotes newish content.