Dave Eggers Desperate To Welsh On Bad Bet

The offer at right (click to enlarge) recently went out to lifetime subscribers of Dave Eggers' whimsical quarterly McSweeney's. Written in that publication's oh-so-precious house style (which was funny seven years ago but now just makes you want to punch someone) the note starts off as a standard change of address form. But wait, there's more! They want to renege on that whole "lifetime subscriber" thing.

We know that many years ago, you lifetimers gave us $100 for an everlasting subscription and helped us through our infancy. We can't tell you how much we appreciated that. Now that we've somehow kept this thing going for twenty-two issues, we thought that we'd check in with you and see if we could maybe, you know, move on.

The 'sweensters promise that this is totally optional, but to entice you to give up your right to receive what you paid for long ago, they're offering a year's subscription to the publication, a "CERTIFICATE of LIFELONG GRATITUDE" (please stop with this fucking cuteness already, you're killing us), a Marcel Dzama card game, and a signed copy of Eggers' What Is the What, which, clearly, they cannot give away.

Now, far be it from us to suggest that there's something untoward about the whole thing, but think about it: You pony up a hundred bucks that you probably really needed back then to support a magazine that (given the history of Might) was probably going to fold after a few issues. Now that the magazine has made it, spawned a couple of other publications, and foisted Neal Pollack on the world, they'd like to renegotiate. Dave Eggers is like a character in a bad comedy who thinks that he has six months to live and makes all sort of wacky promises, only to survive and be forced to carry them out. Actually, that might make a great subject for his next novel!

Contact information for this author is not available.