Favourite footnotes: 6

Editor's Note: As of August 14, 2006, we are no longer accepting sestina submissions.

- Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency

Favourite footnotes: 5

I took some liberties.

- Dave Eggers, on 'The Animal of the Church', his translation of 'Los Murmullos' by Alejandro Zambra, a translation of 'The Creature in Our Shul' by Nathan Englander, a translation of something I can't read in Hebrew by Etgar Keret, a translation of 'In Our Synagogue' by John Wray, a translation of 'Das Tier in der Synagoge' by Franz Kafka, in Multiples (ed. Adam Thirlwell)

Favourite footnotes: 2

E.g., “Jeffy-Weffy Ringle-Dingle Ding-Dong,” “Jeffy-Weffy Ram-A-Lama Ding-Dong Dummy,” “Dumbfuck,” “Jefster-Wefster Dingster-Dongster Dickface,” etc.

- John Howell Harris, THE EFFECTS OF BEING REPEATEDLY CALLED “JEFFY-WEFFY DING-DONG” ON THE HUMAN RAGE RESPONSE IN SUBJECTS NAMED JEFF

Best pitch EVER!!

Just say yes or no to this: Kafka, Woolf, Hemingway, Chaplin, and Sontag are debating the best movie ever made.

- David Thomson, to the editors of McSweeney's Thirty-One - Vikings, Monks, Philosophers, Whores: old forms, unearthed

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'

we hope you'll enjoy this issue, and that those of you who have recently graduated, or been laid off will consider McSweeney's for your internship needs. You will be valued, if not adequately paid.

- McSweeney's (per se)

Equinimity (and other Kafka jokes)

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks, “Why the long face?” 

“I was born into servitude, and when I die, my feet will be turned into glue,” replied the horse. 

The bartender realized he would not be getting a tip.

- John McNamee, 'Kafka's Joke Book'

Yes!

Coming soon. Or sooner.

On a career in creative insanity

I know my work is good. Not everybody likes it, that’s fine. I don’t do it for everybody. Or anybody. I do it because I can’t not do it.

- Maurice Sendak, in The Believer

On the two types of story (superb!)

the hectic experimentalism of the so-called McSweeney's short story (reflexive, impertinent, typographically playful, slightly annoying)... emerged around the turn of the millennium to challenge the dominance of the so-called New Yorker short story (calm, humane, sparse, slightly dull).

- Robert Macfarlane, Sunday Times

Famous plays in space

Theatrical classics via McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

McSweeney's sale

Now on. But move fast.