The Rarefied Niche of McSweeney's

The Sacramento Bee celebrates the McSweeney's publishing house.

From the article...

From its start in 1998, the award-winning Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern was a maverick within a conservative publishing segment whose heritage was more insular than democratic, more New York Times than New York Post.

At first, Eggers and his staff took ironic pride in publishing "only works rejected by other magazines." That conceit soon changed, and the journal expanded to include A-list authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, T.C. Boyle, Ann Beattie, Steven King and National Book Award-winner William T. Vollmann of Sacramento.

Yet a statement on the website reminds writers and their readers that McSweeney's remains quite approachable: "We're committed to publishing exciting fiction regardless of pedigree."

"McSweeney's flaunts every rule you can think of, and you want them to get away with it," said writer-publisher Malcolm Margolin, founder of Heyday Books in Berkeley. One of Heyday's titles is the anthology "New California Writing," which draws heavily on the previously published contents of literary magazines – including McSweeney's.

"McSweeney's is like watching trapeze artists doing spectacular tricks," Margolin added. "You're just hoping they have a net."

It's doubtful the staff at McSweeney's worries about safety nets. Scanning the contents of its books, magazines, online humor site and smartphone application, it appears the editors appreciate contributors who not only go to the edge of the literary cliff but parachute off it.