McSweeney's 2 Granta 1

I've been reading and researching McSweeney's this week in preparation for a story in The National about its 10th anniversary. For those of you that haven't come across McSweeney's, you're likely to know about Dave Eggers. And McSweeney's was started by Eggers as a quarterly magazine packed with new writing. The packaging is frequently lovely - in fact, as Nick Hornby says in the introduction to The United States Of McSweeney's: Ten Years Of Accidental Classics, "I hadn't actually read many of the actual, you know, stories themselves. I had merely oohed and aahed at the extraordinary and elaborate constructions which illuminated and, on occasions, imprisoned them."

Hornby goes on to admit that it does McSweeney's a massive disservice to concentrate on how it looks - and a beautiful story by Roddy Doyle two pages later confirms that. It's not just established writers that make McSweeney's so important though: it's the sense that it's a great place to talent spot. Philipp Meyer - who I've just spoken to and cannot underestimate how important McSweeney's has been to him - was first published here, and it gave him the impetus to write one of my favourite books of 2009: American Rust. Here's a review, by, er, me!

Anyway, my real point is that McSweeney's is not always brilliant, but it's always interesting. I've been trying to make a UK comparison, and really all I can think of is Granta. I subscribe to Granta and have done for two years, but it often gathers dust on my shelves. There is some great work inside - more Robert Macfarlane please - but it seems constricted by its format: A5 book. The last McSweeney's I had came as eight mini books containing short stories, which when you put them together made a big picture. Twice. As I said at the time, it looked better than it read, but still. There was a real desire to push the envelope. An oddly shaped envelope.

Meanwhile, Granta has been through at least three editors in the last two years (McSweeney's is still put together by the same people who founded it - for fun - ten years ago) and seems to be drifting. I don't know if I'll re-subscribe next year. But I do know that I want McSweeney's Issue 32, where all the stories are set in 2024. Sums it up really: they're forward thinking.