cover letter

ZYZZYVA

[Author’s note: Throughout this piece I refer to ZYZZYVA founder Howard Junker’s practice of publishing excerpts from cover letters on the back of his journal. Here’s an example of one such tidbit: ”I am in the process of collecting rejection letters. Anything you can do in this line will be greatly appreciated.” (Michael O’Donnell, San Diego.) I’ve also included more than one oblique literary allusion, in a Nabokovian sort of way. See if you can spot them. If you can’t, you’re welcome to send me an e-mail for annotations. Lastly, in addition to Nabokov, and the various writers and artists mentioned in the piece, I owe a debt to Terry Southern and his brilliant article ”Twirling at Ole Miss,” and to my beloved Robert Walser and his piece ”The Job Application.” Oh and by the way, “An Unpublished Story by an Unknown Writer" never appeared in ZYZZYVA. It's still looking for a home. —E.M.]

Howard Junker, Editor
ZYZZYVA
41 Sutter Street, Suite 1400
San Francisco, CA 94104-4903

Dear Mr. Junker,

Perhaps you remember the cover letter I sent you not long ago that ran something like this: ”I’d make this a snappy little cover letter were it not for my fear that you'd print an excerpt from it in your magazine, thus forcing me to write, in subsequent cover letters, ‘My fiction has appeared in the (now unfortunately defunct) San Francisco Review of Books, and an excerpt from one of my cover letters has appeared in ZYZZYVA.’”

I think you might remember it because you wrote a little note about it on top of the form letter you sent me (the form letter that leaves some doubt as to whether you’d remember the prose poem I sent you with the cover letter).

Your note was very kind. And I might add, too, while I’m thinking of it, that your form letter is very kind—the most generous and thoughtful I’ve yet received. In fact, if I ever write a prose poem or story that includes mention of these infamous letters (so well known, alas, to us writers), I’ll most certainly include an excerpt of your letter in my piece.

Perhaps the part that runs, ”(Also, I make mistakes; my taste is erratic, my judgment flawed.)" Refreshingly diplomatic and gracious. Or then again, maybe the closing lines: "Then, too, the ways of the Muse are strange. When she does visit again, I hope you will give her my best regards.” I admire the way these lines qualify, even rescind, the earlier line—the submission in question, and not the editor’s judgment, may in fact be the thing that is flawed—while somehow leaving the ”rejected” writer with a smile on his or her lips, and a warm, conspiratorial feeling toward you (and the muse).

Quite a feat of tonal modulation. One, actually, that prompted me to put quotes around the word ”rejected” just now. Your form letter doesn’t feel like a ”rejection” letter at all. It feels like... what? A genuine apology for the fact that there aren’t more venues for literary writing? For the fact that the world, such as it is, is a cold and unenlightened place? Or does it feel like a playful and encouraging nudge in the ribs? Whichever, it’s a kind letter.

And your response time, too, while I’m thinking of that, is impressive as well. You got back to me in two days. This, I believe, must be a record. And it means either that you are an extremely professional and considerate editor, or that I am an extremely inept and uninteresting prose poet. Whatever the case may be, I do appreciate your swift reply; such things make the writer’s job much easier. But, back to the little note you wrote...

It’s in black ink (I have it before me now), in a sure hand, and it says, ”E— Thanks for your kind words. I would like to see your cover letter some time in the future. Watch for it! Best —H.”

Now, while I was thrilled by your note, I must confess I was also somewhat puzzled. I thought, initially, that you must be saying that you were waiting for this ”snappy” little cover letter I had implied I had the talent to write and would, in fact, write and send to you one day. In this interpretation, your ”Watch for it” would mean ”I’ll watch for it.” Encouraged, then, I began to plan the letter that I would write and send to you.

Taking my cue from Evan Rail’s traducement of Baudelaire in ZYZZYVA 50, I thought I’d use another writer's work as a jumping-off point. In this case, I thought I’d write a letter that would become a story about a cover letter and story, modeled loosely on the work of Julio Cortázar (I believe it was his fine piece ”The Lines of the Hand” that got me going). Perhaps I'd throw in a bit of Borges and Kafka for good measure as well.

In my letter-become-story then, a writer would pen a cover letter and send it off to a literary journal. He’d include a story, of course, which, depending on my presence of mind while writing, might turn out to be the very story that one was reading! That is, the ”story within the story” would turn out to be the story that it was within—a dazzling, M. C. Escher–like moment (the climax, of course) wherein the foreground suddenly becomes the background and vice versa. A figure-ground shift, as they say, a literary Möbius strip: the man visiting the aquarium becomes the newt at which he is looking and stares back through the glass, watching himself walk away, hoping the man he no longer is will someday write a story about newts. To put it differently, the sudden switch at the climax would be not unlike those reversible puppets that metamorphose from a hen, say, into a bucket of fried chicken, much to the delight of their young owners.

The writer, as mentioned, would send his letter and story to some literary magazine or other. The package would, of course, end up taking a very circuitous route to the editor’s desk, crossing the paths of many strange individuals, affecting their destinies (and, as the reader was to eventually discover, also affecting—in surreal and chilling instances of reciprocity—the destiny of the writer and the editor).

I can assure you, the more I thought about it, the more my mind hummed with possibilities.

The writer could have a neighbor, for instance: another writer. Envious. He scowls every time he sees writer #1 walk under his window to the mailbox. For a comic touch, perhaps every time he scowls, he accidentally closes the document he’s working on without saving it, thus losing everything he’s written. He slams down the mouse. His system crashes. I’ve been watching a lot of Chaplin films recently.

As you might well imagine, writer #1’s cover letter and manuscript would get lost in the mail (crossing, as I say, the paths of schizophrenic twins, hunchbacks obsessed with figure skaters, taxidermists who read ”A Rose for Emily” night after night and weep madly into their pillows). They’d get lost in the mail, and then, eventually, they’d get lost on the editor’s desk (no two-day turnaround in this story; that would be unrealistic, destroying the suspension of disbelief). They’d lie beneath something symbolic for a while (a pair of dusty spectacles, maybe, or Benét’s Reader’s Encyclo-
pedia), while writer #1, in the meantime, discouraged at the lack of a response, crushed by this, his most recent—and, he has decided, final—failure, has booked passage to the city of his birth to bring the sad circle of his life to a close.

To make a long nonexistent story into a short one, the editor finally stumbles on the story (of course), is overwhelmed by its genius (naturally), and, with a lump in his throat and a tear in his eye (he wipes his nose for comic effect), he dashes off a note requesting that his humble magazine be afforded the privilege of publishing the masterpiece.

Circuitous-route riff #2: More Siamese quintuplets, three-legged dogs, blind postal carriers. The letter arrives at the writer’s now vacant flat. Sound of metal door on mail slot snapping closed.

The other writer, disturbed at his work by the tapping of a cane, leaps from his desk (causing his system to crash) and sees the postal carrier leaving the letter. Naturally, he goes to investigate. Evil bastard! He not only declines to forward the letter (or even ”return to sender”), he assumes his rival’s identity! As might be expected, he becomes the toast of the town (unbeknownst, of course, to our protagonist).

In the final scene, our protagonist ends it all by leaping from a bridge. But no—irony of ironies—he ends everything but his own story. His evil rival—injustice of injustices—is given that pleasure as well. He’s famous now, you see, and he’s taking a cruise. The ship is just edging under the bridge as our tragic hero snaps his spine on the sun-dappled water of the bay. The evil writer lounges in a deck chair. He opens an advance copy of a new and highly anticipated anthology, The World’s All-Time Greatest Short Masterpieces of All Time Bar None, and turns to ”his” story. He reads the last lines:

”With weakening grip he was still holding on when he spied at the mouth of the bay a cruise ship which would easily cover the noise of his fall, called in a low voice: ‘Dear Literature, I have always loved you, all the same,’ and let himself drop. At this moment an unending stream of traffic was just going over the bridge.”

The evil wordsmith chuckles and tosses the book overboard. With a twinkle in his eye, he reaches for more caviar and another mimosa, the color of the sun.

I was all set to produce this fine piece (with any luck, I would have had the presence of mind to forgo the hen/fried-chicken–style ending), when I reread your note. Peering at the sure and generous handwriting, I realized that the note actually says, ”I would like to use your cover letter some time in the future. Watch for it! Best —H.”

Apparently then (and luckily perhaps), I had already written my snappy little letter and had no need to compose another. I thought for a time that it might be amusing (and perhaps interesting) to write you a cover letter about this misunderstanding. Something like Lydia Davis’s story ”The Letter,” wherein the narrator tries to read between the lines of a postcard a former lover has sent her. In the end, though, I had the presence of mind to drop that idea as well. The ways of the Muse are indeed strange, and sometimes her greatest gift to a writer is that little voice that whispers, ”No, please, don’t do it.”

An interesting thing did happen, though. While I was pondering all of this, another story fell out of me. An excellent story, I think, and one that I hope you’ll read and consider for ZYZZYVA (rest assured, it’s nothing like the one I almost wrote). It’s called ”An Unpublished Story by an Unknown Writer,” and you’ll find it enclosed with this letter.

Thanks again for your note and for the time you spent composing your ”rejection” letter. It really is a nice one, and it really does make a difference. In fact, I look forward to receiving it again sometime.

Best to you!

—Edward

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