The physical format of this edition is a very rough cardboard cover with no artwork besides the McSweeney's logo. Free-floating inside are nine separate booklets, each with their own cover art. The booklets were originally held in place by a big rubber band around the entire package but that has long since crumbled away.

The contents are mostly fiction with two exceptions: a 100-page excerpt from William T. Vollmann's massive study of violence, "Rising Up and Rising Down," which McSweeney's would later publish in a limited, multi-volume set after no one else would; and a pair of essays about short story master Allan Seager, along with his early work "This Town and Salamanca."

Besides Seager's excellent story, the standouts in the fiction are
The Ceiling by Kevin Brockmeier about the sky literally falling on a town as a marriage falls apart
Un-Told Tales of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (with comic book cover by Chris Ware) that will be a delight to all that have read and loved his Pulitzer-prize winning novel
Red Ant House by Ann Cummins, a story from a child's perspective that nicely captures the weird places children get into when trying to interpret the adult world. ( )

A collection of nine booklets, none of which held my attention very well at all. Another miss, I'm afraid. ( )