McSweeney's 17 is a bundle of mail. That's right, a bundle of mail (addressed to Maria Vasquez of Arlington, VA), rubber-banded together. A full color advertisement flyer for Pantalaine ("Provisioners of America's Finest Plural Clothing") surrounds the rest of the pile, which includes a brochure for Tyrolian Harvest gift baskets, some "snail mail spam" from a Bangladeshi widow, a very odd legal document containing many pictures of red cars and dead fish, a prospective periodical of "very new artwork" (Envelope), and two journals: Yeti Researcher ("The magazine of the Society for Cryptic Hominid Investigation") and Unfamiliar ("a twice monthly magazine of different fiction").

Very imaginative, and quite entertaining. It must be so fun to sit around and come up with ideas for things like this! While some of the short stories in Unfamiliar were a little bizarre, the rest of the packet was fascinating to read through. Kudos, McSweeney's folks.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2009/... ( )

I'm a huge McSweeney's fan, and one of the things I love most about it is that every issue is different and a design marvel. This one, I fear, was not a success. The concept is great, but the offerings were a bit slim. There may be some novelty in a fake Yetti Researcher magazine, but it's not something I really want to read.

The main magazine portion is good. there are a few really good stories, but the whole thing felt a little heavy on the concept and light on the content. ( )