The whole effect is tasteful and proper, kind of like the old New Yorker . Eggers has unleashed their hairy imaginations upon the unsuspecting reading public, and the result is an idiosyncratic blend of short stories, essays, reviews, actual and pretend journalism, screenplay fragments, charts and other chronicles of indeterminate nature. The fiction, in particular, is of a sort one rarely finds in literary magazines. In an area where people try so hard for meaning, for profundity and resonance, it's invigorating to read the work of talented writers who revel, cavort and wallow in glorious, flamboyant absurdity. Read it twice.
Eggers gleefully flouts literary convention by refusing to worship at the altar of the muse.
McSweeney's Contributors' Notes, instead of probing the usual baggy suitcases of authorial inspiration, are themselves works of fiction, brief nonsensical paragraphs composed by staffer Adrienne Miller. The journal is not without its flaws. So McSweeney's isn't perfect, but it is sublimely ridiculous, enjoyably subversive and extremely well-written. I'm going to subscribe just as soon as I get paid for this article. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for your beliefs.