Inspired by Suburbia : Literary Magazine With Roots in Simi Valley Is Still Surviving

Jordan Jones’ best friend may well be the U.S. Postal Service.

For nearly five years, Jones, a Simi Valley poet, has labored to produce Bakunin, a literary magazine oozing with confrontational works on topics including racism, homosexuality, religious intolerance and political persecution.

Fueled by Jones’ late-night labor and unflagging determination, the magazine has evolved from a thin manuscript to a glossy-covered, 140-page volume.

But while the twice-yearly publication has received national acclaim, it has gone virtually unnoticed in the town that inspired its creation.

Half of the 1,000-copy printing of each edition is sold through distributors in New York, San Francisco and Austin, Tex. The other half is shipped off as payment to contributors.

“My audience really has not been concentrated in Simi Valley,” said Jones, 30. “Thank God for the Postal Service.”

Indeed, at Book World, Simi Valley’s sole independent bookstore and the only local outlet for the magazine, back issues gather dust.

Marilyn Hocheiser, an editor at Simi Valley’s other literary journal, Verve, said she has heard of Jones but said she was not aware of Bakunin’s existence.

“Is this another local magazine?” she asked. “Is this magazine a college magazine? I was under the impression it was. I guess they’ve branched out.”

Verve, a semi-annual publication, is geared toward a mainstream audience, Hocheiser said.

Jones gets most of his submissions from California and New York, with a smattering from other states and countries as far-flung as Japan, Poland and Panama. For each published submission, Jones pays the contributor with two copies of the magazine, which is named after Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.

Until recently, the lack of local awareness has not bothered Jones, who uses his community as a springboard for ideas for the journal.

“I grew up in this edge city, this suburban enclave, struggling against the majority views--which are at best conservative, at worst reactionary,” Jones explained in a recent issue of the magazine. “I have felt a need to puzzle out the roots of my ambivalence toward my hometown.”

Now, to build awareness in Simi Valley of Bakunin and literature in general, Jones has launched a monthly poetry reading at the Vampyre Lounge coffee shop.

The next reading, scheduled Sept. 12 at 8:30 p.m., features Robert Peters, a UC Irvine professor who will perform from a one-man stage piece entitled “Mengele’s Uterus: A Fairy Tale: The Sex Life of J. Edgar Hoover.”

In October, Amy Uyematsu, the author of “30 Miles From J-Town,” will read from her works about her Japanese heritage and internment camps.

“My idea is to help bring the city to the suburbs,” Jones said. “So often people from the suburbs go to the city. I want to make more connections between the two.”

After the civil unrest in Los Angeles that followed the first Rodney G. King trial, Jones devoted an entire issue to the subject. “As the only progressive publication in the infamous town of Simi Valley,” he wrote, “we feel especially called upon to promote a constructive dialog on the continuing social tragedies that led to the violence.”

Kate Harper, a writer and Bakunin contributor, was teaching a college English class in the Antelope Valley at the time. She had her students read the entire issue.

“They thought Bakunin was very leftist,” Harper said. “They are the young Republicans growing up out there. Some of them thought the Simi Valley trial had gone very well. But I think the magazine gave them a different way of looking at things.”

Writers and artists living in and near Ventura County say the magazine is a welcome reminder that there is more to Simi Valley than freeways and strip malls.

J. T. Ledbetter, an English professor at Cal Lutheran University and a frequent Bakunin contributor, said he is not surprised that a magazine like Bakunin sprung from Simi Valley.

“Creativity is a part of nature and a part of being human,” Ledbetter said. “You can’t stop it, and sometimes it will break out in the darndest places because we need it. Simi Valley may not know it, but Simi Valley needs Bakunin.”

Writer Carolyn See views Bakunin as an outlet for the diversity and creativity in Simi Valley that is often ignored. Her latest novel, “Making History,” features a Simi Valley psychic closely modeled on a person she met in the town.

“I have a theory and that is that these towns on the far side of the San Fernando Valley and up into the desert are really not what they seem,” See said.

“We maybe project upon them the idea that they are full of rednecks or ill-educated or right-wing maniacs or upstart pillars of the church,” she said. “But often when people move out to places like Simi Valley, it’s because they’ve got a secret or their brains aren’t wired the way everyone else’s are.”

Jones agrees. “Despite the demographics that place Simi Valley in a very conservative and right-wing mold, there are plenty of people who think differently.”

Simi Valley photographer Sharon Hardee is one of those people. Hardee was thrilled when a friend told her about Bakunin last year. Four of her computer-manipulated photographs appeared in last winter’s issue.

“I’ve lived here for years and I really didn’t expect to come across anything like this,” she said. “It was really a pleasant surprise.”

But why does Jones remain in Simi Valley instead of seeking the company of other like-minded souls in Los Angeles or New York?

“I am a writer of place and a placed writer,” he said. “Simi Valley is my home. I like the terrain. I like the Santa Susana hills with all the rocks. It’s a very rooted place.

“I like the fact that even though we’re in suburbia, there are still a lot of wild animals around. There have been owls in the tree outside for as long as I can remember.”

Jones lives in the house where he grew up, in one of Simi Valley’s older developments known as the Greek tract.

Legend has it, Jones said, that a Greek farmer who owned the property refused to sell unless the developers agreed to name the streets after his country’s philosophical and mythological heroes.

Hence the cluster of quiet, tree-lined drives with such names as Aristotle, Electra and Apollo, the mythical god of music, poetry, prophecy and medicine.

When asked about the street names and their relation to his work, Jones laughed. “A funny coincidence,” he said.

Jones’ path to the literary world was roundabout. In college, he majored in chemistry, but “had a serious run-in with the brick wall that is calculus,” and switched to the arts.

“High technology is fascinating to me,” he said, “although it’s not as engaging as literature.”

Jones puts his high-tech aptitude to work as a technical writer for Micom Communications Corp., a Simi Valley-based company whose main function, as Jones describes it, is building devices “that allow you to be on the phone and get a fax over the same line at the same time.”

While Jones acknowledged that he would most enjoy focusing on poetry and other creative writing full-time, he said he has gained valuable knowledge on the job that has helped him publish the entire magazine on his personal computer.

“I’ve learned a lot about page composition and layout and how much space to leave and various things,” he said.

The fact that Bakunin has managed to survive nearly five years is remarkable, said Sarah Meyer, managing director of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, a national organization that publishes an annual directory of literary magazines.

Nationwide, as many as 600 literary magazines are active. But nearly 1,000 more fluctuate in and out of publication, Meyer said.

“The odds are very much against long-term survival,” Meyer said. “It takes a lot of determination to keep a magazine alive.”

Quality of content varies widely, Meyer said. And there is no standardized method of comparing magazines.

“In this field, you find everything from people throwing magazines together in their garage to the more well-established, well-regarded journals,” Meyer said. “There really isn’t any widespread mechanism to compare one literary magazine with another. It’s not like movies or live theater, where you have reviews.”

Norman Mallory, a poet and teacher at Ventura College who once taught Jones, has high praise for his former student.

“Jordan is one of the brightest people I’ve ever known. It is really astounding that he was able to put this together and keep it going.

“He wanted to do a journal that would not just be some sort of local little wheel that was spinning here and making smoke. I think he has succeeded.”