The first three issues of McSweeney's Quarterly were uniformly sized paperback books densely covered with text and odd diagrams. The magazine's goal was to highlight writing that couldn't get published elsewhere in a way that made fun of the industry itself. Out of nowhere came Issue 4, a thick white box with a strange color illustration of a bird with human arms and wooden planks for feet. Inside the box were thirteen booklets, each containing just one story or essay, and a longer booklet containing the letters section and thirteen shorter pieces. It immediately sold out, became a collector's item, and began McSweeney's experimentation with the physical format of their issues.

While the author list is star-studded and the booklets are beautiful little things, the actual writing doesn't always match the presentation. The standouts by far are the non-fiction pieces:
"Symmes Hole" by Paul Collins about a man who advanced a theory that the earth has another world inside it complete with continents, oceans, and animals
Paul Maliszewewski's fascinating article, "Paperback Nabokov," which details the very specific ideas for cover illustrations the famous writer battled for
Another set of art history "Convergences" by the brilliant Lawrence Weschler.

The very short pieces collected in the longer booklet are generally humorous and suffer from being so short they don't engage and often rely on cliché. There are a couple of good pieces, but now most of this material would be published on the McSweeney website. The Letters section is particularly good.

Although the actual contents are a little disappointing, the issue is a beautiful object to own and enjoy. The issue I have is a 2010 second printing of the 2000 original with a sturdier box. ( )

Many interesting words interestingly presented. ( )

A collection of fourteen booklets housed in a box. A wide variety of material is included; the most immediately interesting to me was Paul Maliszewski's essay on Nabokov's book jackets, and the great Paul Collins on the hollow-earth folks active in the early years of the nineteenth century. ( )