Books by Daniel Levin Becker

McSweeney's Quarterly Concern has been printing issues since 1998, and sending them into the world with reckless faith. Now and then, the world writes back. In two decades and change, we've accumulated a heady archive of dispatches, pleas, confessions, treatises, ruminations, rants, raves, and the occasional misdirected customer service query. Collected here are one hundred installments from this sprawling many-to-one correspondence, including but not limited to musings on moths and mummies and macaroons, cats and armadillos and homicidal sea worms, and the arcana of Jerry Lewis's acting career. By turns poignant and absurd, these letters are a sparkling glimpse into the strange and unforgettable lives of McSweeney's readers. Featuring letters by Sarah Vowell, Brandon Hobson, R.O. Kown, Jonathan Lethem, Jenny Odell, Hanif Abdurraqib, Julie Klausner, Thao Nguyen, Ana Marie Cox, Jason Polan, and dozens more.

The youngest member of the Paris-based experimental collective Oulipo, Levin Becker tells the story of one of literature's quirkiest movements-and the personal quest that led him to seek out like-minded writers, artists, and scientists who are obsessed with language and games, and who embrace formal constraints to achieve literature's potential.