It’s one thing to find yourself in independent bookstores across the nation, but it’s another entirely to be ground up in the crucible of capitalism and placed next to Good Housekeeping.

Junker prides himself on finding previously unpublished writers, and as such the 25th Anniversary issue, just out now, is an overview of writers whose first fiction appeared in ZYZZYVA. This includes actual luminaries like F.X. Toole and Haruki Murakami. It also includes me.

One’s best bet is probably getting an issue directly from ZYZZYVA. You will also find it in better (and not so better) bookstores. But, really, good people everywhere would do right to and subscribe to ZYZZYVA. It’s worth it.

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I happened to be in town for the dramatization by actors of several of the pieces included in the issue. A few days before the event, Howard Junker suggested that I prepare five minutes to read. Somehow these five minutes exploded into a pre-game warm up, reading for thirty mad minutes in the Koret Auditorium at the San Francisco Public Library. Given that the piece is not one which lends itself easily to oratory, and given that I hadn’t looked at the material I was reading, it went about as well as possible. I was thrust into total delirium.

It is a hallucinatory work about our current excellent adventure in Iraq and, more directly, Saddam Hussein’s last day prior to capture. I’ve taken a ninety-five percent true portrait of Saddam– he was a novelist and a poet, he clearly believed that he was the reincarnation of Saladin, he loved Western fantasy art, he was an enormous murderous dick– and expanded it outwards into another thing entirely. There’s also a lot about Walt Whitman in there, plus a diversionary discussion of the Ronald Reagan film Bedtime for Bonzo.

Frankly, I’m amazed that anyone published it. Thanks again to ZYZZYVA, who have been remarkably generous to a young man on the make. Not a word of the piece was changed, money exchanged hands, my name was never once misspelt and they nominated the piece for a Pushcart Prize.

This is called class.

Thus: it is resolved that readers herein should go and subscribe to ZYZZYVA. Here is the website. Those amongst you without good graces or manners can opt for a single copy of the Winter 08 issue. If you fear Internet commerce, independent bookstores are your second most honorable option. For those of you living in the sticks, you should be able to find a copy at Borders– I always see it here in Sunny SoCal, anyway. But really, don’t be a tosser and just give ZYZZYVA your money. Times ain’t that tough.

For further reading, you are directed to the blog of ZYZZYVA‘s editor and founder, Howard Junker. Not naming names, but most things of this sort are dreadfully polite and lifeless affairs– typically, the best that can be expected are rare instances in which an intern or staffer experiments with sass. On the other hand, Howard’s blog is– gasp!– truly interesting, full of San Fran fun and more than occasionally bitchy.

Which is how you like it.

So. Read.

— WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE — HOW IT APPEARS —