Books with title McSweeney's Issue 23

With a special section on Donald Barthelme, including remembrances from Ann Beattie, David Gates, and Oscar Hijuelos, and some of Barthelme’s barely published and never-collected early work, and a highly theoretical but potentially amazing Z-binding that we can’t describe very well here, or even to each other, McSweeney’s 24 will never be mistaken for anything else. (Except possibly the June 1978 issue of Popular Mechanics.)

Our return, after four issues, to pure hardcover bookness features Jonathan Franzen on Upper East Side ambition, Jess Walter on the men who ride children's bicycles in Spokane, Washington, Joe Meno on women who want to be eaten by lions, Etgar Keret and Joyce Carol Oates on murder and language in a restaurant called Cheesus Christ and at Gate C34 of Newark International Airport, respectively--and ten more stories besides, five of them strange and beautiful pieces from Kenya that will tell you, indelibly, what it's like to be drunk for seventy-two hours straight in Nairobi or to smuggle contraband jam into the girls' dormitory of the Precious Blood Riruta Secondary School or to fly over the Kalacha Goda oasis in a small plane, at sunset, with your brother in a coffin next to you. Other topics covered include unemployment, drumming vs. painting, and Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square car-bomb attempter. As if that wasn't enough, this one is our first full-color issue in quite a while, too, with illustrations on every page—so if the absence of art was your last excuse, you no longer have any reason not to subscribe in time for this one.

If issues were anniversaries, this one would have to be printed on silver plates. You could melt it in some sort of forge and then pound it on an anvil until you had a set of earrings. Instead, it's a hardcover book with stories by a few of our old favorites—Steven Millhauser, Joyce Carol Oates, Padgett Powell—and more than half a dozen others, investigating everything from ape men to unlucky island-hoppers to what happens when Canadians go AWOL in Bosnia. Pound this one on an anvil and it'll pound you right back.Featuring three different cover types, and illustrations of various horses by Amy Jean Porter

McSweeney's Issue 23 includes ten stories from ten excellent writers, including Wells Tower, Chris Bachelder, Ann Beattie, and other agile talents bringing visions of the Dallas/Fort Worth fake-watch trade and Papua New Guinea in the 1960s. Every story gets its own front and back cover drawn, collaged, or embroidered by the polymathic Andrea Dezsö. The whole thing is wrapped in a jacket that unfolds into five square feet of double-sided glory — spread it out one way for dozens of very short stories by Dave Eggers, arranged in what we're pretty sure is a volvelle; flip it over and witness all those Dezsö illustrations stitched into one unbroken expanse.

McSweeney’s Issue 4 is a box containing 14 booklets. The booklets feature fiction and nonfiction, from Denis Johnson, Haruki Murakami, Sheila Heti, George Saunders, Jonathan Lethem, Rachel Cohen, Lawrence Weschler, Rick Moody, Lydia Davis, and many others. The first of many experiments in book and magazine packaging, McSweeney’s Issue 4 marks a departure from the simpler paperback mold of the first three issues. For this issue, authors chose the art and design of their booklet. So, for example, Denis Johnson chose to use his son Matt's doodle for the cover of his three-act play "Hellhound On My Trail." George Saunders gave us a photo he took years ago, in Russia, for the cover of his "Four Institutional Monologues." And we took all of these booklets, and fit them in a box with a wood-footed bird adorned on the top. (For those asking Why?, there is also a booklet devoted to answering that question, written by editor Dave Eggers.) This rare issue, virtually out of print since it was first published, is now lovingly remade with a sturdier, more archive-worthy box and the same wondrous collection of prose.

Plunging straight into the grayish, faintly understood area of the art world that involves oddly drawn objects coupled with uncertainly spelled text, McSweeney's Issue 27 brings together a previously uncategorized cadre of pithy draftsmen, genius doodlers, and fine-artistic cartoonists, and buffets them with articles examining just what it is that these people are doing and why the world should know about it. Featuring work from David Shrigley, Tucker Nichols, and many others — including an unreleased Art Spiegelman sketchbook — the latest quarterly from McSweeney's presents a new kind of contemporary art.

With our biggest line-up in quite a while – fifteen stories from writers like Yannick Murphy, Roddy Doyle, Ben Greenman, and Peter Orner – McSweeney's 29 offers everything a good book should: there is jungle warfare, there are boomerang factories, there are tragedies and romances and animals it might not have been wise to bring home. There is also art on every damn page, and a finely die-cut cover, wrapped in several kinds of cloth, that will make other people want to grab this one right out of your hands, so watch out.

Even beyond Edmund White's youthful hustler, Joyce Carol Oates's fatherly killer, and Roddy Doyle's Rwandan refugee, Issue 18 will not stay at home. Bears, clouds, assassinations, and demons lurk in a high-concept labyrinth of stories. And for those who have decided that the written word is simply too static a medium for their active lifestyle, we'll be inserting the first issue of a new DVD magazine called Wholphin, which includes films by Spike Jonze, David O. Russell, Miranda July, and the National Clean Up, Paint Up, Fix Up Bureau.

With tremendous new stories from Steven Millhauser and Roddy Doyle, an epic, genre-shattering novella from Hilton Als, and a really excellent special section on Norway's finest writers (featuring not just Per Petterson but also Kid Icarus and a woman named Blind Margjit)—along with, probably, correspondence from a man we can't yet name and an unbelievable disappearing-ink cover done by Jordan Crane—Issue 35 is a full-to-bursting edition in the tradition of the best ones we've ever done. For several hundred pages of unrivaled summer reading, this is your book.

Inside this 275-cubic-inch full-color head-crate, there are all the things you'd hope for: a 100-page annotated fragment of Michael Chabon's lost novel, incredible new stories from John Brandon and Colm Tóibín, Jack Pendarvis's "Jungle Geronimo in Gay Paree"—eight astounding booklets in all, along with some other things on top, enough for hundreds and hundreds of pages of perusal, every bit of it, like we said, contained in a more-or-less-life-size friendly-looking head. It will fit on your shelf, it is compatible with most hats, and the stuff inside is wonderful—order yours today!

Featuring new work by Wells Tower, Michael Cera, and Etgar Keret, along with as always a bevy of lesser-known but nonetheless excellent writers investigating everything from mental hospitals to sentient mists, and possibly some kind of poster, Issue 30 warrants every ounce of attention and industry you'll give it, even if you are very important and your time is valuable--even if the fate of nations rests on your weary shoulders. You should still read Issue 30.