McSweeney's 35

From the credit's page:

By God, it never gets old. We're twelve years in the the life of this journal, and there's always something, or someone, that jolts us wide awake again, lest we get at all complacent about the possibility of words on the page. This time it started, if we remember correctly, with a query to Hilton Als: "You ever gonna write fiction?" we asked. See, we've been devout fans of his critical writings and magazine profiles for as long as he's been writing them, and so we wondered—given his lyricism, given his passion, given his ability to paint a moment so beautifully (have you read his profile of Derek Walcott? Has anyone ever captured a person, in a particular moment, in a particular place, so deftly?)—we wondered if Hilton had ever attempted, or hoped to attempt, fiction. Would not his skills be applicable to this form? If Hilton was one of the best prose stylists alive and working in the U.S., shouldn't we get the benefit of him writing fiction? "What, what?" we wondered, breath bated. "Well, it's unconventional," he said, and we said, "Yes, of course, only that, that's all we want or would expect from you." And so began about a year of correspondence, and excited editing and encouragement, resulting in the bold and brilliant and outrageously original piece included in this issue, called "His Sister, Her Monologue." It's only the second piece of fiction he's published, the last being in 1979. So we are proud to have it in our pages, knowing as we do that we exist, and are kept alive, by publishing writers like Hilton at their most daring and unprecedented. And of course then there's Roddy Doyle, without whom the world would be far dimmer. Thank God for him, and for him being reckless enough to entrust us with his stories. Here he gives us another portrait of modern Ireland, an Ireland that would scarcely have seemed possible even twenty years ago. In this issue we also have another instant classic by Mr. Millhauser, whom we have never met, living as he does far away and in the woods (we presume) but whom we also thank for his blind faith in us. Thank you also to a newer writer named Patrick Crerand, who reminds us of the literary humor we used to publish in greater quantity, and thank you also to the nation of Norway. There is a good deal of interest in the literature of Scandinavia right now, the world being in the thrall of Stieg Larsson and Per Petterson (who is included here, on page 249), to name a few. Our foray into Norwegian writing began a few summers ago, when one of our editors spent a week in Oslo, and there he met dozens of writers, all of them serious and most of them experimental, and on the spot asked them if they would put together a section for McSweeney's devoted to all that was happening in contemporary Norwegian writing. The man for the job was John Erik Riley, an affable (wouldn't he have to be?) half-American, half-Norwegian novelist-editor living in Oslo. We're so happy to bring you this primer, in hopes that it will push open the door, just a bit more, to the reading of more new fiction and poetry in translation. Thank you as always for indulging us.

© 2010 McSweeney's Quarterly Concern and the contributors, San Francisco, California