P.N.ZOYTLOW

P.N. Zoytlow supplies Field Reports to this site. As may be deduced, his interests follow no particular pattern, but seem to be inspired by travel both in the United States and in Other Places. Zoytlow betrays a desire for recognition, a craving for publication, and a hapless use of presumed social science methods. Not all the field reports are coherent when they reach this site for publication on the Internet, so interested readers are asked to be patient while Zoytlow’s opus is assembled during 2009. (As on November, 2010 all Field Reports are accounted for.)

Some years later, P.N. Zoytlow began submitting other pieces on topics that interest him. These are not formal field reports since the former methods of data collection have been scrapped. Also, other means of expression may be present from time to time: photographs, music, short pieces of fiction and poems. 

Zoytlow has offered 24 Field Reports.  One is never sure if there will be another. Beginning with #16 Zoytlow has consented to represent himself as PNZ instead of with the more cumbersome, though scholarly reference of “The Observer” and so on.  And with #17 he uses the first person. Why is this? However, with #19 all of that seems to have been put aside, again. He does not strive for consistency.

The Editor/Compiler of these Field Reports as asked PNZ to provide additional details on his/her identity. He has agreed to reveal: Phillip N. Zoytlow  (b.1950). He likes to style himself as “one born in the middle of the last century.” This suggests a birthday in June?  PNZ serves notice that he will never divulge his middle name.

D.G Berninger serves as agent for these transmissions from the mind of Zoytlow,  Berninger  is working on a critical assessment of Zoytlow’s Field Reports.  He thanks you for your interest, but asks if anyone of Zoytlow’s readers might want to take a turn as agent as the uncertain nature of  the task is wearying.

With the submission of FR #18 on the topic, Sea Cucumbers, Zoytlow reported a “breakthough” but did not specify its nature. He suggested that after a few more FRs he will consent to an interview on this site. Asked what he anticipated for the next Report, he remained silent and reminds the reader that Field Reports come to him; he does not seek them out. What better example of this than the “Sea Cucumber “(#18) though “Codfish” (#17) appears contrived, a comment Zoytlow took umbrage at.  Zoytlow has also bristled at the comment that he “thinks he’s funny” which is not his intent at all.  “Being lumped with all the other sarcasto-cynics [sic] out there hurts and at the same time minimizes my…how you say?…my…commitment, as I see it, to scholarship.”

A note attached to #19 suggests that Zoytlow is pleased to have broken the spell of North Dakota, but the same time he discouraged devoting any time to either an interview or assistance in a critical overview of his labors. It is not clear what he meant by this.

With the submission of #24, it is understood that Zoytlow has completed the Field Reports. He has promised an interview no later than summer of 2011 which will take the place, on these pages, of what would have been Field Report # 25

On 5 June 2011 P.N. Zoytlow  asked his agent/editor to meet with him  four days later at a truck stop on the Interstate highway in Limon, Colorado. Following that meeting, a report on the long-awaited ‘interview” will be posted as Field Report # 25.