Words to live by from McSweeney’s
My fondness and respect for indie publisher McSweeney’s is pretty huge. They publish some of my favourite writers, do fun (and worthwhile) things like teach kids how to write and they do it all with style.
The 99% blog gives me yet another reason to love the gang from San Francisco.
On the early side of the ’00s, a post-college, pre-McSweeney’s Eli Horowitz sat down in the middle of rural Virginia and stared at a pile of nails, wood, and glass. Against all odds – in particular, those stating Eli’s heretofore untested ability to build things – the items had conspired to become a house, and it was finished save for one small detail. Eli was tired, and the window trim that made sense during the home’s excitable blueprint stages seemed less important here in the wilderness, where his only neighbors were bats and foxes.
So, like any good recently graduated Philosophy major, he thought about it. What was the purpose of window trim in the Blue Ridge Mountains? No one would see it, it had no utilitarian purpose, it didn’t have feelings – nope, there was no real reason to go ahead with it. On the other hand, it would look nice. And that wound up being reason enough for Eli. From this story, a typical McSweeney’s mantra emerges. It goes: Never having done something before is a bad reason not to do it.
There you go everyone. Your mantra for 2010.