McSweeney's Field Recordings Volume 1Close Calls and Dangerous Propositions

McSweeney's authors get bloody in this eMusic exclusive.
On a McSweeney's audiobook, it's totally fine if a narrator takes a moment to grab a glass of water or pauses mid-reading to be sure that no children are in the vicinity before he lets loose a torrent of naughty words. These idiosyncrasies lend personality, like the sighs and throat-clears that pepper this excellent collection created specifically for eMusic. Creativity and intimacy rightly outweigh professional polish, the traditional rules of mainstream publishing disregarded with a distinctively McSweeney's attitude. Appropriately enough for an audacious first-time audio foray, danger pervades this collection — gruesome, bloody deaths narrated via adventure, sci-fi and noir tales.

McSweeney's is known for championing emerging literary voices, so it's thrilling to actually hear what these voices sound like. For nearly a decade, the publisher has embraced a scrappy, renegade spirit that has translated into the creation of a highly influential indie publishing empire encompassing an incredible literary journal, books, magazines and DVDs. McSweeney's has come to represent a very specific outsider literary voice — one that's witty, knowingly ironic and, yes, hip. Most important for you, however, is that the five stories that comprise Notes From the Field are excellent, varied and, above all, entertaining.

In "The Death of Mustango Salvaje," Jessica Anthony deftly takes on the persona of a female bullfighting sensation. The beleaguered matadora must decide which are more hazardous to her health: angry 800-kilo bulls, or the exploitative people around her. Claire Light's "Pigs in Space" is your typical girl-meets-evil-swine story, set on a spaceship in an alternate universe. Light's narration imbues her piece with an undeniably creepy tone, whereas Jack Pendarvis's mellow drawl belies the hijinks to come in his story, "The Big Dud." Dud is an Alabaman widow whose misguided intellectual aspirations are on par with Ignatius Reilly's, the bumbling hero of A Confederacy of Dunces. Dud's self-described fatal flaw is that he has too many brilliant ideas; his decision to accompany an aspiring P.I. on a stakeout is definitely not one of them.

Interspersed throughout the collection are segments of Keith Pille's hilarious journal of an eager young COBRA recruit who is in training to fight GI Joes. His numbing daily routines in service of Destro are absurd, and also bizarrely touching: while he prepares for battle, an internal war rages between endless enthusiasm and disheartening ennui. He also shouts "COBRAAAAAA!" a lot.

But the collection's high point comes when Jonathan Ames narrates "Bored to Death," his modern day, New York-spanning detective noir. In a performance as commanding as his prose, Ames explains how Craigslist turns out to be the perfect venue for a self-loathing, Raymond Chandler-obsessed recovering addict to offer his amateur investigative services. The tropes familiar to all Hammett fans are well played, and Ames' voice — guttural, beleaguered and resigned — brings an alarming authenticity worthy of 1,000 Bogarts. And you can't get much more dangerous than that.

McSweeney's liner notes for Notes from the Field are available as a .pdf here, or in HTML format here