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[Please send printable correspondence to mcsweeneysmail@yahoo.com. Thank you.] - - - - Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000From: B.R. Cohen Subject: special note redux McSweeney people, That last set of letters you had had the one about the guy in Spain. And that was a really nice letter. And then, that Ben Greenman story a few weeks ago, that was really, really good too. So, sometimes it gets confusing, because I laugh and get along well with the site, and the magazine, but then you throw in those 'real' ones, and I don't know what to make of it. I think I first figured this out when I read the Kazcinsky interview a few issues back. That's what first threw me. But now I've come to terms with it. I'm sorry this letter isn't clever or entertaining. You don't have to put it up or anything. It's just that lots of people don't recognize what's going on here. It's a real shame, that. Just some thoughts, Ben - - - - Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000From: CUL Kiosk Subject: Man Seen Buying Dirty McSweeney's Dear McSweeney's, So I was recently in New York (a large American city near New Jersey) and went to visit the famous Gotham Book Mart, a very old and cramped and terrific bookstore a few blocks from Times Square. While I stood in line waiting to buy some books, I noticed that the guy in front of me was holding a copy of McSweeney's No. 4. This particular copy was one of three that I'd seen in a pile in the back of the store, with the other literary magazines; the other two copies were pristinely shrink-wrapped, while this one was crumpled, browned, and furred at the edges: not only the edges of the box, but of the booklets inside. It was, you see, the display copy. Anyway, this guy WANTED the display copy, despite the availability of nice crisp new copies, and when they told him he would have to pay the full price, which I think was $22, he didn't even bat an eye. He ponied up and took the thing home in a paper bag. Which makes me wonder if you ought to be offering PRE-BROWSED copies of the magazine on an official basis? Like featuring official Literary Cult Hand Grease? Just a thought. Yours absolutely, J. Robert Lennon Ithaca, New York - - - - From: Gavin PurcellSubject: What the little person said Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 Dear McSweeney's, Having recently come across your letterhead and thus finding the letters attached, I found my legs clenched in an interesting predicament. Whether or not to share my profound experience with the leather clad little person or to keep said experience all close to myself. But here I am and the little person he doesn't go away. Appearing on my desk this Monday morning, the desk set amongst the other smarmy gossip mongers I work with in syndicated-strip television. He slipped under the radar of the security guard and hightailed it to my spot. He waited until I arrived but at that very moment he belched out this: "An' heaven and earth shall split an' in-between shall bubble the sick an' out of the sick, from the spit shall come these people, an' all this shit" And he proceeded to attach himself to my leg, intertwining his gnarled fingers around one another, his ankles twisted like petrified tree roots. And there he sits, an ankle weight of guilt, a single cement boot waiting for me to be thrown somewhere. What to do? What to do? What to do? Best, Gavin - - - - Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000From: a collins Subject: some horrid mix-up Dear Mr. McSweeney, I recently sent you a short belletristic piece in the guise of a note found on the door of an MIT faculty lounge and you found it fit to display on your website. I am very flattered. Please don't let what I am about to say undercut how jolly I am to be part of your literary hyper-establishment, but I was hoping to get a little credit for the letter. I mean, really, the whole unreliable narrator point of view being founded on the premise that someone else other than the actual person writing the words is telling the story, I couldn't very well sign my own name to the letter; never mind it was not a real note found on a real door at MIT. That would be like conceding to the idea that I actually pulled a stunt like spitting salt water into a soda machine for a few free beverages. So what if i did? College was a rough time and I'm a writer now. Look, Jimmy Logan, Ph.D. doesn't even exist. I made him up. The point is now all these literary minded people are going to be going out and looking for the next clever short collection of works by Jimmy Logan instead of me. Thanks A Bunch and Regards, A.(like it even matters now, man)Collins - - - - Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000From: luke o'neil Subject: 47 Dear McSWeeney's, This nervous sort of Eastern European girl comes into the West Side Lounge in Cambridge almost every Thursday and eats alone. I think she is a student at this local University which is just up the street in Harvard Square. She usually has a book. She almost always sits in my section, and I find her rather attractive, so I have been starting to get ideas... Two weeks ago, I noticed she was reading Auden's collected works while I was refilling her water glass, so I asked her if she new the poem "No Second Troy." "That's Yeats," she said. "So it is," I said. She didn't come back the next week. - - - - Date: 20 Nov 2000From: Alison Garfield Subject: What gives? Dear McSweeneys, Why do you only publish letters from Mike Topp, Dan Kennedy and Bryce Newhart. Poor. Very poor indeed. Signed, A questioning Alison Garfield - - - - Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000From: Erik A. Kraft Subject: let us not forget the current administration Dear McSweeney's, I just woke up with the following running through my head, mantra-like: Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Carter Eskew. Erskine Bowles. Weird, huh? In other news, it is snowing here, but not enough to cover up the broken stuff. Yours, Erik Kraft Chicago - - - - Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000From: Andrei V Sinioukov Subject: Mr. Polish Pescada and McSweeney's McSweeney's Books page (http://www.mcsweeneys.net/books) as translated from English into Portuguese and then back into English by Altavista: McSweeney's Books: [This plugging will supply the notice on the books that are being published under new ours imprint. It will be brought up to date as needed ] For some months we suggest here and there on advent of books of McSweeney's, an arm of the operation of McSweeney's that he will publish and sell those things. Books. We have intimated that one of our first books would be for Lawrence Krauser and that, if we are called the lemon or the Citrussexual or something another one, its book will involve a case epic of the love between a man and a small yellow fruit. This book is in many ways a very serious book, despite the whimsical turned pages one subject substance. Now we would like to announce that we have gained the right recently to publish a collection of the work of fished Polish of Neal, a favourite person or thing of the website. The book will be available in September, or possibly in August. It will have this heading: Anthology of the Polish fished ones of American Neal of literature In publishing this book, us we will be making some new things. This book will be sold first in string, will be distributed though sufficient through the narrow channels that we in use them for the version of the copy of McSweeney's. Now, as, you ask for, can we have features to publish such book? Well, first from everything, Mr. Polish Pescada will not be receiving an advance for its book. Instead, Mr. Polish Pescada will receive 100 percent from the profits from its book. McSweeney's will not be making examination of no percentage. This is the way that we will be making ours to publish of the book. Given the fact that we have nenhumas almost overheads, and that we can use our website to supply the comment of the availability of these books, our costs in producing these books are very small. We will not have none salespeople in the field. We will not print no catalogue of the advance. We will not be paying to none typesetters, and all to edit and to project will be made by the friends of the author, who is as he works generally in any way. Thus, in the extremity we only have that to pay for the physical production of the books of Mr. Polish Pescada, that will be printed in a considerable edition of hardcover. Now, if Mr. Polish Pescada published this book through publisher existing and great of New York, everything of who makes the good work and staffed for pleasant peoples, following the not obstante one would be true, data rarefied the nature of the work of Mr. Polish Pescada and the nature to times one in such a way more less subtlety-subtlety-accepting of the business: ** teams-out ** even so book est termin now, April 2000, glacial d rhythm industry and reliance in top catalogue system -- wherein book dev est entalh for inclusion a certain station catalogue, that catalogue est produces one ridiculously long time before station asks -- Mr. Pescada book not t est available public even, in advance, spring 2001. One year daqui, even so is finished for the right now. b) For its efforts, Mr. Polish Pescada would be paid approximately $10.000, high ones, because the authors of such books -- books that contain laffs -- are paid rare upper-class by its efforts, because publishers is vain who such books do not sell, because the applicable compartments of commerce had said thus to them, to citing sales yielding of the recent compilations of cartoon of Drabble upper-class, that they are grouped invariāvel inside with the work of the peoples as Mr. Polish Pescada. c) ** teams-out ** now, nivel if Mr. Pescada book est compr and public -- to the little one year now, of course, fast material t torn old meantime -- t est imprim paperback-only-somente form, and with cheap available paper, as full vacant witty invariable book est produces, this choice reflet low consideration that such book est mant its publishers. d) to alliviate to the fears of publisher on the understanding of the public of the book, the book cover he would be wacky, perhaps with a picture of Mr. Polish Pescada in its underwear when making a funny face, to indicate the potential readers that inside of the book they would be laffs funny there. OK, I got tired at this point. I am sure you can do the rest by yourself. Thank you, Andrei. - - - - Read Previous Letters:
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