The Vanity Publisher

My brother and sister went 3,000 miles away from home to college up north.  I went 3,000 miles away to Lynchburg, Virginia.    I was more naïve then they, and less able to make friends quickly.  Though Lynchburg was very different from Redlands, California, the places had in common red clay dirt and friendly people.  Those were the reasons I chose to attend R-MWC, along with the college's fine art collection.

The first winter break I was ready to come home.  I found my friend, Mim Tritt at home soon after arriving.  When we got together, we found that our friendship had survived the time and distance apart.  

We had both read a feature article in the Saturday Review about vanity publishing.  The same issue with the article about vanity publishing held an advertisement from Vantage Press -Your work published! – Submit for a free evaluation! – or words to that effect.  That sounded like vanity publishing to us.  We found irony in the ad and the article appearing in the same copy of Saturday Review.

Mim had a Remington typewriter.  We moved it to her kitchen table and took turns free associating free verse on paper.  I don’t remember her poems but mine included some deathless phrases, e.g., cockroaches turning on toothpick spits; my soul smolders in this dirty ashtray; his entelechy is the thread at the end of his pocket.”  I had just had my first Philosophy semester and wasn’t very sound about entelechys.

We needed a pseudonym.  We came up with Sheldon McCrea Sales after three of our favorite high school English teachers.  We used Mim’s address as a return address.  I had a stamp.  A postbox was close to Mim’s house.  We walked together, laughing, snorting, to post the letter.

Near the end of my winter break Sheldon got a letter from Vantage Press.  The Vantage Press showed great interest in publishing our slim volume.  They passed along the opinion of their reader.  Sheldon had a “fresh, mordant imagination", but his poetry needed a little work.  Our wildest dreams were realized.  We agreed to take turns keeping the letter.  Mim had it first and later passed it on to me.

I do not know, now, where the letter is, nor where Mim is.  I think I sent the letter to her at one time.  We each went to our fates, geographically far apart.  I moved house at least every three years, sometimes every two years in the time since then.  We finally lit in Virginia.  I saw her mother when I was in Redlands; my mother was very sick and my mind was elsewhere.  My mother died.  Not very long after, her mother died. 

I tried to find Mim on the internet, and found a Miriam Tritt in a Midwestern state.  I wrote an awkward letter to the address and heard nothing back.  I remember Mim fondly; I wish I was the sort of friend who kept in touch.