Zine: How I Spent Six Years of My Life in the Underground and Finally...Found Myself...I Think - Softcover

Between the ages of 25 and 31, fictioneer Kennedy (Stripping & Other Stories) published her own personal fanzine, Pagan's Head. Why? "[T]o procrastinate, to trick people into liking me, to get dates, to turn myself into a star, and to transform my boring life into an epic story. And the scary thing was, it worked." It even got her this book, which reproduces parts of the not-so-immortal Pagan's Head with the author's interpolative commentary. Pagan's Head suggests a puckish, post-college creativity: the author mixes personal essays, cartoons, photos and advertisements, covering such topics as roommates, books, dating and pop culture. In "The 12 Stations of the Cross My Career," Kennedy amusingly annotates the friezes of the incidents in Christ's Passion. Her report on a noted historian is headlined "Henry Adams: hot, single and dead." But much of the 'zine, however well written, is truly ephemera?unless you're a '70s fanatic who obsesses about The Partridge Family. As a whole, the book serves as a growing-up story; the author reflects that her fanzine voice was "a camped-up version of myself." Later, the 'zine became a refuge from the real-life trauma of her father's illness; and finally, she notes, a more mature, grounded voice has emerged. While this book won't convert those outside the author's demographic, it might go down well, say, during a long lounge at a coffee bar.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.