zine review:
Mrs. Noggle #13 and 14
Perzines are tough. In real life, the chances of you sitting down with a total stranger and listening to them talk about themselves, their insecurities and the origins thereof are pretty slim (unless you’re a professional therapist). Except when it comes to art. As readers and watchers and viewers, we’re asked to do exactly that all the time–to take someone else’s secrets and make connections with our own; to learn things. That’s (theoretically) the payoff, the reason we like memoirs and documentary films and (yep) perzines– you discover your own world through other people.
It’s hard to get there, though. There’s a very delicate balance that has to be upheld in any kind of personal writing. Writers have to be honest enough to engage their audience, but they also have to avoid spilling their guts just for the sake of it. In her Mrs. Noggle zines, Jolie crosses back and forth over this line on every page. Issue #13 is about her body image issues, and #14 is about her struggles with alcohol addiction. At times, both of these zines read like real attempts to connect with and engage her readers, but mostly they just seem like Jo-lie telling stories because she can. Genuine insights sit across the page from rambling rants about her husband’s “stalker” ex-girlfriend and cut-and-paste excerpts from her livejournal. Jolie has an honest voice and she’s on to something, but she needs a merciless editor. Readers are readers, not your therapist, no matter how sympathetic they may be. (Emma Healey)
Perzine, Jolie Nunez-Noggle PO Box 771, Greenville, Ohio 45331, [email protected], $3 or trade