P.N.ZOYTLOW

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Words fail. That’s what we say when we are shocked by events. I was somewhere between confounded and stupefied when I learned of the death of Philip N. Zoytlow just a week before his 75th birthday on June 15, 2025. I had met with him half a year earlier in Mount Airy, North Carolina, a town near the Tennessee border and inspiration for a popular television show some decades earlier. It was his choice to meet there, and I wondered if that once popular show, Mayberry, was part of the reason. It was one of many questions, perhaps dozens more, that had attached themselves to PNZ. He remains, in death, the enigma he was in life. There is no known photograph of him, except for a blurry image taken from behind in a dime art gallery.

The purpose of that meeting had been to conduct an interview and put some closure on his years of itinerant teaching and writing. He was reviewing the transcript, and I expected to hear from him shortly so I could publish it somewhere. Of course, it would appear in his blog P.N. Zoytlow Reports, which, (very) sometimes, has attracted readers.

The terse notification of his death came to be via the Coroner in the California county where he died. In going through his backpack, the officers found my name and address and notified me of the chance that I might be a relative with the authority to dispose of the body.

I know from interviews just last year that Zoytlow was preceded in death by his parents, though nothing is known of his mother except that she left the family after a disagreement over the boy’s name. As a person of Bohemian extraction, she favored Nepomuc as a given name; the father favored Philip. As Philip explained, “That accounts for being a motherless child.” Then he laughed.

Here is the complete [final] interview from early June 2025

Mt Airy, North Carolina, at a Whataburger. It was still morning, and I ordered the breakfast special. PNZ had a glass of orange juice.

DGB: Well, Philip, how long has it been since we talked? I have noted that we last met for an interview in Limon, Colorado, in June 2011.

PNZ: Yes.

DGB: But we had contact in between, especially concerning your novella, A Scrim.

PNZ: [nodded]

DGB: Let’s talk about Scrim. You blame me for its poor reception with critics and sparse sales. Is that true?

PNZ No

DGB Elaborate?

(PNZ raised the orange juice, drank it, checked the paper cup for any lingering drops, and then crushed it in his hand.)

PNZ: There was nothing at fault with your part in the book. Some critics thought your brief comments were more interesting than the book’s main body. That did not bother me. But I have concluded that modesty aside, that slim work is too far ahead of its time and more a part of future literature. It was, and is, a book of cutting-edge brilliance that will be read for generations. But most folks were unprepared for it, and I don’t fault them. I should not have written it the way I did. That is why I am releasing a revised edition, which will be crafted without editorial assistance. And by the way, I might offer a few pages of gratuitous sex because that is what sells.

DGB Oh, my! Are you serious? I understood you were opposed to any cheapening violence or lasciviousness. Was I wrong?

PNZ No. I was pulling your leg just now. Besides, there is no need to describe thrashing about on a bed and yowling. There is enough of that out there; anyway, my type of writing is not fiction. I observe and report, but I don’t make it up. The Ilman manuscript came into my possession honestly after I met Eduardo Ilman in Illinois. I would not betray that by turning a family history into a three-ring orgy. There were affairs during the years I worked at Ballast, but since I didn’t pay attention to the details, how could I discuss it?

[The reference here is to meeting Ilman at Ballast College in Pecatonica Junction, Illinois, in the early 1990s, I believe.]

DGB There were suggestions that you used to hang out with some of the Administrative secretaries…

PNZ: Did you hear that from me?

DGB No, not directly.

PNZ Well, then…..

DGB [Noticeable from the beginning was that Zoytlow seemed restless and was perhaps having a bad day. He did not smile, never seemed to relax, and squirmed in his seat. He did not want to be there.

DGB: Let’s not derail this interview with side shows, so tell me, in your portrayal of the Ilman family, was there a person you admired most?

PNZ Well, as you might suspect, I favored them all. They suffered, and that has to be acknowledged. There was nothing special about them; the world assigns “special” to one person over another.

I do favor, if that is the word, the women. I sympathize with their situation, whether in Transdanubia or at Ballast College in Northern Illinois. Men beset women because men are besotted –that’s what it is.

DGB: Was your mother?

PNZ, I didn’t have a mother. She left when I was born. I explained that earlier, didn’t I?

DGB: Yes, sorry.

PNZ Well, to answer. I admired Mehna.

DGB. How did you get involved with the Ilmans?

PNZ: Ballast College. Eduardo and I connected. He wanted help writing his family history. Let’s pick this up later, say in about two weeks. I’ll be back in California, and you can find me at the Lompoc Public Library. One more thing, and this is the last word I have to say about the Ilmans and A Scrim: these were salt of the earth people, nothing special; they had their quirks, none of them did much serious harm, and if their collective lives did not provide a traditional plot line, that’s what it was—no apologies needed.

DGB: OK, I’ll shut off the tape for now. See you then. Two weeks, Lompoc. And with that, Philip N Zoytlow left. I never saw him again. Our understanding, his and mine, was that if anything were to happen to him, I was to be in charge of his literary estate, meaning the care of the blog P.N. Zoytlow: Field Reports and Other Curiosities. He reminded me of this at our last meeting, and I didn’t think it was ominous or otherwise significant at the time. Now I do.