Captain Zzyzx

I'm pretty late with this review, since Capt. Zzyzx was published 13 years ago in 1992, but I only just found it in the last two days. I kept Capt. Zzyzx in hand pretty much every minute that I wasn't reading it. I didn't put it down as I broiled the snapper, answered the phone, rode the subway. I read it in bed, I read it over dinner, I even braved carsickness to read it in taxis. Petracca is so smart at word play that he kept making me laugh. The book is bawdy...but in a good Commedia way. The inner contradictions of the main character, Harmon Nails ("warring subpersonalities competing for hegemony," as the book puts it), are so amusingly drawn that I felt the tugs on my leg. But they lit up the recesses of the soul, like a novel is supposed to do. The lame notice in the LA Times said the novel was about "intimacy," which is true enough, but I hate the pomposity of the word. The plot is "Boy meets Girl, Boy meets Another Girl, Boy gets dumped by Girl #1, which hurts his feelings but turns out well." There's a great monologue by the protagonist, a lapsed academic, about how he hates lengthy scene-setting in novels (I always have, too). But anybody who grew up in Southern California like I did will appreciate the book's million amusing references to the locale...including, of course, the Zzyzx exit. Petracca writes wisely about grief in a number of asides. One of the best parts is when Nails reflects on his improbable relationship with Girl #1 and concludes that he was trying to touch what was lost with his mother's death. That insight went straight home. My mom died last year, and reading Capt. Zzyzx was a way for me to recall my now-vanished L.A. family. Another insight, as fleetingly presented as a flash from a passing woman's $50,000 emerald earring, is about how we've all made fools of ourselves by pursuing myths. Oh, have we ever. While the book jacket doesn't say so, Petracca is the son of another writer, Joseph Petracca, author of the wonderful family porrait "Come Back to Sorrento." I understand the Petraccas are descendants of Petrarch. I'm very glad Michael Petracca is carrying on the family tradition. (I can't understand why such a sharp, funny, smart, deep book had such little notice. Maybe it's a case of the author's being on the Wrong Coast.)

I was given this book by a friend. I was already using "Zzyzx" as a nickname for about 7 years when I got this. It's scary how many events in this book also happened to me.Even without the coincidences, this is a very good book. It's too bad it's out of print. It's one of my favorites.

Michael Petracca has made me realize that I'm not alone on this planet. In creating Harmon Nails, he has shown an ambivalent, vulnerable (though he wishes he weren't so) interesting and intelligent character who is all too easy to identify with. Smart move to name the book after one of my favorite places in the country (the exit to Zzyzx Rd) it made me buy the book. Oh, Read Doctor Syntax too if you haven't yet.