Some half-dozen gems

from (the typically-beautiful) McSweeney's Thirty-One - Vikings, Monks, Philosophers, Whores: old forms, unearthed:

parchment is replaced by pen and paper, which is replaced by predictive text on Finnish cell phones.

- Darren Franich and Graham Weatherly, 'Introduction'

MARCI: I think everyone likes the penis. Lesbians just don't like how men are attached to the penis.

- Mary Miller, 'A Dialogue Between Two Maids in the Twenty-First Century, One of Whom is Skeezy: a new whore dialogue'

SOCRATES: ... It is not always the keenest eye that is the first to see something.

- Plato, The Republic

HEMINGWAY: I've been to every place I used. I'd seen the mountains in the early morning. I'd tasted the wine.

- David Thomson, 'After Citizen Kane: a new Socratic dialogue'

the goal of Socrates is not to answer a question, but rather to reveal that the preexisting answers are incorrect or deficient.

- Eds. marginal note

the letters are minute and bristle with serifs like little hooks (inducing a half-conscious discomfort in the throat-clearing reader).

- Shelley Jackson, 'Consuetudinary of the Word Church, or The Church of The Dead Letter: a new consuetudinary'

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