One cool way to create a lit zine is to have open submissions and accept only the best ones. Another way, one you might not expect, involves getting big names to promise contributions by promising contributions from other big names. That’s exactly what David Shapiro (Pitchfork Reviews Reviews) did when creating The World’s First Perfect Zine.

It all started when Shapiro got Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber to consider contributing to a zine by proposing that Victor and Heems from Das Racist would contribute too. There was born the concept of a print-only, limited edition zine featuring writers & creatives famous primarily on the Internet. Schreiber didn’t end up contributing, but many people did, from the two members of Das Racist to Tao Lin to Ryan O’Connell to filmmaker Lena Dunham. Even Choire Sicha from the Awl contributed.

I interviewed David in preparation, and then waited a couple months until the zine finally showed up at my door. It was clear this was a cobbled-together object, from the shipping to the binding (staples).

“My plan was to … go to the NYU printing lab … print out 200 copies, staple them, and go to independent book stores and try to sell the zine,” wrote Shapiro in the forward.

While obviously his plan changed, the zine does look like it was literally printed in a school computer lab, but if you get past that, it makes up for it in sincerity.

“If there’s anything that connects what’s in here, it’s that it’s the work of people who are a cultural dream to me,” he continues.

The contributors are impressive, and many of them delivered insightful, colorful stories and essays.

Sicha’s piece about interviews struck a chord with this former journalist, and Joe Coscarelli’s The Bushwick Diaries carried a consistent narrative throughout the whole zine. Paging through it (it takes about an hour to read), you’re reminded how simple good writing is, that it doesn’t need to be an artful bout of prose but just people talking about being people in a way that feels authentic. It makes you want to write.

I didn’t quite understand Tao Lin’s THREE PARTIES, although I’m usually a fan of his. It seemed like a purposefully rambling, structureless tryptic of stories whose only message seemed to be “I don’t think anyone’s really gonna read this.”

Dunham contributed just a photograph – disappointing considering she’s not just a filmmaker but a creative writer as well.

But that’s the nature of a zine – a mixed bag, a chance to be pleased or disappointed by your favorite writers, and an opportunity to discover new favorite writers. Shapiro was brave to venture into print, clearly on a low budget, and I definitely don’t regret the $15 I spent on it at all. My mind is now more open to zine culture, doesn’t hurt if it involves Das Racist.

–Becky Lang