I read the edition of We’re Getting On with a seed paper cover, but also with only a single novella in it rather than a few other related stories included in the longer edition (I think). Rather than dismiss that “gimmick,” though, I think it matters to the text — it’s a story about a narrator determined to undo not only his life, but the history of human progress and civilization as he understands them, including human language. So the book being designed for destruction matters beyond mere gimmickry. In fact, while I suspect I will eventually read the longer edition, I’m hesitant because this one is so conceptually coherent and self-contained, text and context aligned, and I wonder how the story will be altered in that other package.
I’m also hesitant to say too much about the story directly. It’s powerful, largely because the narrator is so absorbed in his own vision, and his own arrogant assumptions about what it means to be “wild” or “human,” and the hypocrisies of his approach. He’s methodical, rigid, and demanding, and yet startlingly self-unaware (or should that be “un-self-aware”? Whichever.) Though he’s roped others into his project, largely through fear, it’s apparent that his real reasons are personal and traumatic rather than philosophical, which may be the case with all would-be cult leaders. So for a story and narrator all about becoming LESS human, and less fragile and frail, in the end it’s an inescapably human story about an inescapably fragile man.