Captain Zzyzx [Paperback]

Michael Petracca (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 7, 1992

In Michael Petracca's dangerously antic Doctor Syntax, the wry narrator, Harmon Nails III, tracks a stolen heirloom while questing for sexual and academic fulfillment. Captain Zzyzx reprises Harmon Nails, this time as a rhythm & blues guitarist in search of an even more priceless and elusive quarry -- intimacy. The only things standing in Harmon's way are his own poisonous ambivalence, a sweatsock full of prescription painkillers, a friend's fatal encounter with an out-of-control minivan, a lively but reticent redhead named Tanya Scott, and a lost tortoiseshell flatpick Harmon must find before he can achieve true inner peace.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A gen-u-wine tortoiseshell guitar-pick-cum-Holy-Grail, a fish whose name in longer than it is, two decently (but barely) sequential love affairs, and a plenitude of wry footnotes penned by the self-confessed 'anal-retentive intellectual slime' who protagonizes the story, add up to an unlikely rack of ingredients for a successful novel. But somehow, Michael Petracca's Captain Zzyzx carries it off. This is a loose sequel to Petracca's 1991 Doctor Syntax, but hero Harmon Nails III doesn't here reprise his role as the clued-out detective he then was. This time, he defecting from detecting ...Instead, he's pursuing a musical dream as the flailing lead axeman for local rock band 'Stormy Petrel and the Messengers of Love, featuring Junie Melanchik', which he mercifully renames 'Captain Zzyzx'. It's a picaresque journey, though he never leaves town. Enroute, Harmon loses one liaison and acquires another, discovers the joys and dismays of strolling fish, leaving the cap off the toothpaste, the yogic third eye, and Wild Turkey as a muscle relaxant, finally finding love in the arms of a woman with whom he has in common only that they're "both from two different planets." Nails is an endearing character, riddled as he is with doubts that men and women alike can connect with. Captain Zzyzx is a novel no one outside of California would dream of writing sans hallucinogenic aid. In substance and style it's rollicking, ridiculous and often ribald. Expect a robust flavour of the bizarre, and a willingness to laugh at ANYTHING -- politically correct or not. Fun to read, and funny, to be sure. There is alive here a strong sense of the humour of language (especially the language of academe -- hence the footnotes) as distinct from the humour of situation. On the surface, that humour is postmodernly self-referential and decidedly contemporary. But the comic energy underneath is surprisingly classic: if you're wondering where the mid-century sensibility of Leacock and Benchley vacations in the present-day land of bikini-wax and bitchin' surf, here's where to look. There's more. Amid all the overt surprises this novel offers page by page, there's another that swells gradually -- the recognition that Captain Zzyzx presents a sometimes touching, always human picture of a young man's life and growth. It's upbeat not just because it's funny, but because it's warm and genuine and, in Harmon's affirming discovery of the nature of love, uplifting. -- Edmonton Journal, Peggy Benton Cash

A gen-u-wine tortoiseshell guitar-pick-cum-Holy-Grail, a fish whose name in longer than it is... -- Edmonton Journal, Peggy Benton Cash

A sexy, funny romp! Details on other aspects of Harmon Nails' life supply a good share of the comedy... -- Christine Watson, Santa Cruz Sentinel

Like [the title of Petracca's previous novel,] Doctor Syntax, the bizarre title of Zzyzx (sounds like physics) stems from something real -- an off-ramp sign in the Mojave Desert that reads "Zzyzx Road," a road that shoots off seemingly to nowhere in what becomes a metaphor for [protagonist Harmon] Nails's view of his life's direction. Petracca began writing Zzyzx as a mystery, but the book veered off into an engaging romantic comedy about Nails grappling with his ambivalence over intimacy. -- Los Angeles Times, Irene Lacher

Ondine is a beautiful redhead whom Harmon first encounters asleep next to a fish pond, and then later at the first meeting of a poetry group in his living room. There Ondine, uneducated but truehearted, cuts admirably through the group's pompous interpretations of the translation of a Czech poem about a house cat. ... The charm of [Captain Zzyzx] ... depends completely on one's reaction to Harmon Nails, bright and beloved only child of Jewish and Italian extraction, who expects his reader to share his boyhood traumas and later disappointments and to savor all the digressive wordplay describing them. Personally, I like Harmon, but he may not be for everyone. -- San Francisco Chronicle, Frances Starn

Petracca began writing Zzyzx as a mystery, but the book veered off into an engaging romantic comedy about Nails... -- Los Angeles Times, Irene Lacher

About the Author

Michael Petracca was conceived in Brooklyn but transported in utero to Los Angeles, where he was born. As a youngster Michael enjoyed watching sudsy clothes tumble in the laundry room. This unnatural behavior evolved into a lifelong passion for surfing. After moving to Santa Barbara in pursuit of advanced degrees, Michael became a full-time lecturer in the Writing Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he has taught for the past seventeen years. Michael conducts fiction writing workshops at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and Antioch University as well. His publications include novels, such as Doctor Syntax and Captain Zzyzx, college-level writing texts, such as Common Culture and AC/DC (co authored with Madeleine Sorapure and Bonnie Beedles, respectively), short stories and articles on interpreting the products of popular culture, and a fiction writing text that recently came out with Prentice Hall, titled The Graceful Lie.

Product Details

• Paperback: 191 pages
• Publisher: Writing Program (May 7, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 187774106X
• ISBN-13: 978-1877741067
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,238,943 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I nominate this book for a classic, September 9, 2005

By 

Laurel Kenner (NEW YORK, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Captain Zzyzx (Paperback)

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.)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Michael Petracca needs to write me another novel., May 16, 1998

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[e-mail] (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Captain Zzyzx (Paperback)

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.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Weird Coincidences abound, February 8, 2001

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"[e-mail]" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Captain Zzyzx (Paperback)

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.