McSweeney's Issue 22

Book excerpt: This new and brilliant issue of McSweeney'scomes in three parts, held together by a magnet. In the first, poets including Michael Ondaatje and Denis Johnson initiate poet-chains, picking a poem of their own and one by another poet, who then does the same, and so on. In the second, F. Scott Fitzgerald provides unused story premises first catalogued in The Crack-Up; his mission is completed by new writers. In the third, the president of France's legendary Oulipians offers a rare glimpse into his group's current experiments with linguistic constraint. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose . . .