The Hemingway Western Studies Center

The HWSC & Boise State University Student Union has included my little book, Confessions of a Holocaust Revisionist: Excerpts from the Second (Enlarged) Edition, in an exhibition of small magazines in the Student Union Art Gallery. The show will run through 15 November.

The exhibition, organized by Assistant Professor of English Tom Trosky, is entitled “Some Zines: American Alternative & Underground Magazines, Newsletters & APAs (amateur press associations).” I've received a copy of the over-sized, four-color, 60 page catalog, and it's very nicely done.

In his notes to the catalog, Trosky writes that he became interested in alternative publications through Factsheet Five, which in turn was a catalog and review organ for the alternative press that reviewed my book, newsletters, and press releases fairly, even sympathetically.

Trusky's observations on Confessions trash my writing and me together, but let's give him his due. He put me in the exhibition—and that's more than I had reason to expect.

I have since learned that the founder and publisher of Factsheet Five, Mike Gunderloy, is Jewish. A pregnant side note, particularly when we recall that my associate in CODOH and the video project, David Cole, is a Jew as well. I don't want to bore you with this Jewish business, but I believe I should point out that the issue of Confessions that is on view in this exhibition is published by Popular Reality in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The owner is David (Crowbar) Nestle. He and I haven't got around to talking about it, but Nestle is Jewish as well.

Do we see a trend here? Is it pregnant with implications for organizations such as the Anti-Defmation League of B'nai B'rith and the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the rest of the Holocaust Lobby? I think it is. And I suspect it's full of meaning for the rest of us as well.

In her interesting intro, Cari Goldberg Janice writes: “Small Press. Underground press. Alternative press. Fan magazine. Fanzine. Zine. Here we have in no particular order the terms loosely and tightly connected to that mysterious publishing region in the netherland between what's on your newsstand and your secret diary…”

Other titles shown in the exhibition include: The New Moon Directory (published by Eric L. Watts, 346 Carpenter Drive, #51, Atlanta, GA 30328)—a listing of more than 200 APAs world wide.

Twisted Image (published by Ace Backwords, 1630 University Ave., #26, Berkeley, CA 94703)—a comics monthly which has, courageously, been publishing a debate over revisionism for near two years now, including correspondence about Art Spiegelman, the unhappy creator of the artsy/fartsy, world-renowned Maus, the “comic” book about Auschwitz in which Jews are drawn as mice, Germans as dogs and Poles as pigs (sic!).