Spy magazine occupies a hallowed space in my memory.

When the first issue rolled off the press, I was a sixteen-year old malcontent. I was bookish, pop-culture obsessed and stuck in a smallish town where snark wasn’t particularly celebrated. Access to the larger world of culture and letters and what I’ll call “Constructive Dickishness” was limited, and you had to work hard for what you got.

I don’t remember how I got my hands on my first issue. It was likely on a trip to Tacoma, which was to sixteen-year-old me some sort of stand-in for a city. It was likely at the Tower Books off 38th street, because they had the largest and best-stocked magazine rack I knew anything about. I made it my business to prowl through that rack whenever I could, seeking as I was some glimpse into the larger world that my geographic and social isolation denied me.

I’m not being dramatic here – my part of town didn’t even have cable TV.

I probably picked it up because of a funny cover. Spy magazine had a lot of funny covers. I’m sure I bought it because the covers promised to mock things I found mockable. I had BK money, so I could buy magazines on spec like that. Like a BOSS.

I was in love before I even got to the main editorial content. Spy was fearless, funny and mean-spirited, full of love and scorn for the popular culture in a way that made me feel somehow more at home in the world. Spy was going to all the parties I wasn’t, and telling me they sucked anyway, like an exceptionally verbose older brother with a drinking problem.

It wasn’t always easy to find, so Spy became the first magazine I ever subscribed to. Towards the end the publishing schedule got unpredictable, and it vanished entirely a few years before the millennium. It was probably past time, given that the internet was wrapping its snarky tentacles around the throat of the entire publishing sphere. A magazine in this new landscape, however scrappy, was bringing a rapier to a gunfight. Further, the team whose manic energy had fueled Spy’s best work was long gone by the end, talent-scouted and absorbed into the bloated institutions they mocked.

I think I read them all. If I missed any, that is an error I will correct now.

If you get nostalgic for all that was stupid and miraculous about the fin de siecle zeitgeist, or you’ve always wanted to read an advice column penned by Camille Paglia, it’s right here on Google Books waiting for you. If it doesn’t make you laugh, may I politely suggest that you get checked for brain tumors.