Aaaand I'll jump in right here.
So I don't read McSweeney's or the Believer. And believe it or not, I've never had the desire to pick up A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genuis. This is not because I have something against Eggers. I just haven't gotten around to it. I know the magazines and have read a little bit of them but not enough to qualify me as "one of them." That being said, this article was nothing but cheap laughs to me. Obviously it was satire. I got that much, but not being on the inside with the McSweeney subscribers it was hard for me to appreciate it as satire. I felt like I was on the outside of an inside joke most of the time and although the footnotes were pretty funny, they did nothing to involve us outsiders.
I do have to agree with Casey in the fact that satire is supposed to poke fun at things that have grown too big for their own good. The fact that McSweeney's is a zine that was probably never meant to get this big and most likely started out making fun of others who have "sold out" (like most indie things), is funny and ironic.
On a random note (because it just popped into my head) I may have found a slight error in Lanham's tiny tangent about Stephen King and plot. In King's "On Writing," he talks about how he does not worry about plot much:
"...You may wonder where plot is in all of this. The answer-my answer, anyway- is nowhere. i won't try to convince you that I've never plotted any more than I'd try to convince you that I've never told a lie, but I do both as infrequently as possible. I distrust plot for two reasons..."
Anyway, you get the point. It might not change much in Mr. Lanham's self-indulgent satire but it makes me happy to know that there is a tiny error in one of his footnotes.
Or maybe I'm wrong and this was a side note of satire as well. That's what I don't like about satire. It can get sticky and confusing and if you're just going to confuse your readers, then there's no sense in writing.
I feel like this "debate" going on right now in this very blog is exactly what Lanham wanted to evoke and I can't help but imagine him sitting alone in front of his computer, googling his name and reading this blog.
On an ending note, those writer trading cards are a pretty sweet idea.