Just on the heels of Mike's recent review of McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, I finished the same book and feel compelled to draft a response. I do this with some reservations, as literary criticism was never something I was very good at and in this day and age any random author namesearching himself or herself can easily swoop down and smite you. Nevertheless, tonight this is what passes for adventure in my world, so here goes.

Mike's review gives a nice summary of the main thrust of the anthology ("adventure stories"), which I won't attempt to recap. I'm not a science fiction fan, so I may not be the target audience. But I applaud the return of the plot; if I never have to read one more piece of "kitchen-sink fiction" with an ambiguous ending again, I'll be a happier person.

This is a good start down that road, although interestingly, and perhaps predictably, I liked somewhat different things than our sci-fi lovin' Seattle correspondent. Notable: Nick Hornby's and Kelly Link's stories, as well as (as Mike notes) "Chuck's Bucket" is a pretty neat story, as is the Neil Gaiman story, which was downright creepy. Rick Moody's story alternately freaked me out with apocolyptic visions and bored me with pseudoscience, which is a rare combination.

Less impressive: I couldn't make heads or tails out of whatever dialect Stephen King seemed to be creating. ("The front was festooned with reap-charms in honor of the season; stuffy-guys with huge sharproot heads stood guard." Translator needed on aisle two!) Language use and abuse bothered me elsewhere, too; I thought the Nazi-era detective story by Michael Moorcock was a neat trick, but again I felt distracted by some of the language that fell flat ("The huge silk Nazi 'hooked cross' banners were very striking as they stirred in the faint, westerly breeze.""The car's brilliant headlamps made day of night." Reminds me of the old classroom canard "show me, don't tell me."). I had high hopes for the Sherman Alexie story, but since it seemed to me to be over just as it began, in the end it was pretty much just gross.

I spontaneously described this as "kind of a boy's book" to someone and am not even sure what that means. But I'm not sure it's far from the truth, particularly given its old-skool pulp fiction packaging. By the end of the anthology, I felt the absence of the feminine perspective. The only relief came with the stories by Laurie King and, surprisingly, Dave Eggers, whose story (with a female protagonist) seemed to me to have more empathy for its characters and a certain humane quality that others lacked.

If there hadn't been a McSweeney's, someone would have had to create it. There's more than a grain of truth in Neil Pollack's parodic interview with Hillary on the subject: "I want literature about real things, not some fucking sacrificial hipster rite. Who cares if it's well designed?" (via Mimi Smartipants) Although I've always enjoyed the typographical stunt work, I'd had the feeling in the last few issues that the magazine's editorial focus was getting a bit...diluted. This volume is anything but diluted, which is refreshing. It'll make you the coolest kid in the office lunchroom.