McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern is a literary journal that usually focuses on short fiction. They make a point of not sticking too closely to the formula though: one poetry-focused issue included a poem, whose author picked a poem by another poet, whose author picked a poem by another poet, etc. Another issue featured 8 individually bound modern fables. One issue included stories written by contemporary Icelandic authors. One issue included a complementary comb bound into the book. Another issue was packaged like a bundle of mail, with different stories printed as letters in envelopes or advertisements. I could keep going for quite a while with this. I think the mail bundle issue might have provided the creative spark for their current issue, which I think is their most ambitious and exciting idea yet.
For their newest issue, McSweeney’s has created the San Francisco Panorama, a Sunday-edition-sized newspaper featuring 320 pages of original content, printed on newspaper-sized newsprint. This thing looks like a real newspaper. And it’s big. It features a news section, with actual news tied to the day it came out, sports and arts sections, a 16 page color comics section with comics from the likes of Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, and Art Spiegelman. It also features a magazine (think The New York Times Magazine), and a 96 page books section.
Yesterday across the San Francisco Bay Area, actual newsies were selling the issue on the street. I am unable to confirm whether they employed children in newsboy caps to hawk the papers.
The issue arrived at my door this morning (like a real newspaper!), and I can’t wait to read every page.
