Taking up more room on my bookshelves than any other item, this issue is in the form of a large square box illustrated with a severed head of a red-faced, sweaty, blue-eyed man. The twelve or so booklets in the box are introduced as the thoughts within this man's head, but it really amounts to a hodgepodge of things that McSweeney's had going on at the time and didn't really know what to do with. The production is great and it must have cost them a mint to print and mail!
The contents are heavy on humor and whimsy, for example, Wajahat Ali's "Domestic Crusaders," a play that reads like a Pakistani version of a TV sitcom, Jack Pendarvis's "Jungle Geronimo in Gay Paree," a take on Edgar Rice Burroughs' adventure novels from the early 20th century, and Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington's parody sendup of a screenplay for a Mike Myers/Dana Carvey baseball/bicycle comedy.
There's four chapters from Michael Chabon's abandoned novel, "Fountain City," annotated by the author with deprecating explanations of what he was attempting and where he went wrong. It's exactly the kind of second novel that Grady Tripp of "Wonder Boys" is hilariously forced to walk away from. More than anything here, it puts you into another's head. Of course, there's the collection of letters and short stories that McSweeney's usually publishes; this time only four short stories but three are fantastic. In addition, you get some artwork, a very funny scroll of fortune cookie fortunes, and previews and teasers for other books and book series coming from McSweeney's.
Overall, an extremely entertaining and thought-provoking collection. I just wish that damn head wasn't always staring at me! ( )