I chanced upon the 18th issue of Irving Stettner’s literary journal Stroker. I see that it might fetch me thirty bucks or so on eBay because it’s one of the issues with Henry Miller. I’m more excited, frankly, that it’s got Seymour Krim in it. Krim’s one of my greatest lit heroes, an overlooked member of the Beat elite who’s more controlled, reflective and usefully argumentative than many of his famous writer friends. Krim was unarguably one of the greatest essayists of the 20th century. His contribution here, from Book of Fame, begins:

America is the cradle of modern fame; screw liberty for the moment, let’s concentrate on fame before it became such a popular commodity as it is now—don’t misunderstand, still rare by the percentages but far more of a string of popping firecrackers going up all over the place than it was in the late ‘20s when I was first hearing its majestic sound. America was fame’s babe because the very country was a fable compared to the rest of the toil-stained world. America itself is still the most famous word among the entire human race, everyone who has spent time outside our hectic shores knows the alternately sweet and sour burden of carrying the name American, and it was the the most natural and perhaps finally cursed thing in the world for her children to want some of that fabulous identity for themselves.

Irving Stettner, who was able to build a whole book out of his correspondence with Miller over Stroker and other shared interests, published Stroker from 1974 until his death 30 years later. For all its longevity and variety, the journal nonetheless looks and reads perpetually like a product of 1967. I find myself wrestling with the concept of Krim and Miller even being alive in 1980, though I know they were. The cheap offset printing, straight-from-the-typewriter design, inconsistent quality of photos and illustrations, all reek of when such journals were in their infancy. By ’80, punk zines had sprung up by the dozens and many were slicker than this. But Stroker’s ability to draw (and yet not pay) the likes of Miller, Krim, Georges Simenon, Mohammed Mrabet, Lawrence Durrell, Kazuko Sugisaki, Bertrand Mathieu and Tommy Trantino—all in this very issue—humanizes them, shows their passion to be printed anyhow and anywhere, demonstrates their loyalty and camaraderie. So it is a punkzine of sorts, but more a timeless journal of great writers of the past at sea in the present, contemplating the future.