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.)