My latest piece is up at First of the Month.

https://www.firstofthemonth.org/prelude-to-the-bright-and-warm/

I hope you can find it because it is one Of which I am especially proud.

It begins:

A woman, who had been abused by her father, husband and brother-in-law, tries to starve herself to death while confined to a mental hospital. A college instructor, scarred from eye-to-throat and going blind, meets a poet who has lost the ability to speak. Political protesters, who have been arrested, find themselves starved, waterboarded, beaten with rifle butts, hung from ceilings, left for ants to nibble on their genitals, reduced to pus, piss, saliva, blood, snot, shit, “lumps of rotten meat,” and rendered unable to be touched or feel affection or achieve intimacy.

Sold two “Pirates and the Mouse,” which was pleasing, but the logistics proved a bit daunting.
I had received a call from a fellow I knew 15 years ago when we both were lawyers. He had found a copy, which he’d bought but never read, on his shelf and enjoyed it so much he wanted to give copies to friends. But his daily radiation treatments for prostate cancer ruled out coffee or lunch, which is usually how I do business. He invited Adele and I for dinner, but that ran afoul of us not having had dinner at another couple’s home in about two decades, as well as Adele’s disinclination to socialize in any form.
When he realized Memorial Day meant he would not have treatment, he invited me to his house for lunch. Only he gave me incorrect directions which, combined with my notoriously bad sense of direction, had me zipping off and on Rte 13 and making u-turns on narrow winding roads in the Oakland hills, so that it took me twice as long to arrive as Google had estimated.
Lunch itself was nice. Law “war stories” were exchanged. Books were signed and compensation had. But I was so wiped when I got home, it underscored for me how uncomfortable I am outside my home-cafe-home bubble.
So I e-mailed the Alameda County jury commissioner I would not be showing up for duty as I had been summoned to do.

I also had a couple in-café conversations of note.
One was with the retired public defender to whom I had given a “Schiz.” He confessed he had to quit reading it. “Too much like the cases I handled, and I’m trying to forget all that.”
I appreciated the response. Honest – and surprising, as anyone who’s read the back cover blurbs would know.

The second was from a grey-haired woman in black-and-white sun dress and matching sun hat. She said she had lived nearby for 40 years and was walking around the neighborhood, reacquainting herself with it before moving to Atlanta to live with her son. She declined to buy a book as a souvenir because everything she was taking with her had to fit in a dufflebag.
“Is Atlanta permanent” I said.
“It depends,” she said. “My son teaches Latin, and whenever his school drops Latin, he has to move somewhere else.”

In other news…
1.) I’ve been asked to profile a one-armed homeless cartoonist. I imagine the editor screaming, “One-armed, homeless cartoonist! This sounds like a job for Bob Levin!” But several things stand in the way. Not the least being my thinking it was time I settled into staring out the cafe window, working on my inner peace.
2.) Advance copies (two) of “Messiah” were expected at my publisher’s this weekend. This would mean the shipment would dock in NYC in mid-July, but due to the publisher’s schedule, the book would not be available until September. I do not mind the delay now that light brightens the tunnel’s end. All the more to time to obsess over invitations to the launch party and to add and drop names from the freebie list.

In order of completion:

1. Muriel Spark. “Loitering With Intent.” Recommended by a clerk at Moe’s when I brought two other Spark books to the counter. This trod familiar ground others of hers did better and concludes my Spark reading for a while.

2. Leonardo Sciascio. “The Moro Affair.” Had seen a TV show about the kidnap/murder of Aldo Moro and had hoped a book would tell me more. This one didn’t. But it came with a separate piece, “The Mystery of Majorana,” about the disappearance of an Italian pre-WW II physicist which I found interesting.

3. Kuzhali Manickavel. “Things We Found During the Autopsy.” Swapped me for a “Schiz” by a fellow in the café who publishes books in English by writers from India. A collection of short stories by a young woman with a punk sensibility which, since I am neither young nor punk, failed to move me.

4. Janet Malcolm. “The Silent Woman.” This is at least the third time I’ve read this. Once when it appeared in “The New Yorker” and once before in book form anyway. It was recently mentioned as Malcolm’s best work, and since I am a great fan of her work, I decided to read it again. It has a lof of good stuff to say about biographies but her “best”…? No way.

5. Han Kang. “We Do Not Part.” When Benj DeMott, the editor at FOM suggested I write about Kang, this novel had recently been published in English. Usually I wait for books to show up “pre-owned” on-line, but a café buddy who works in a bookstore offered me his employees discount. What I think about this and Kang will be available at www.firstofthemonth.org on or about June 1.

6. William Melvin Kelley. “A Drop of Patience.” A gift from a friend who had been a friend of Kelley’s. A disappointing novel about a blind jazz musician. I have read much better things about blindness by sighted people, but I was hoping for an enriching jazz immersion, but jazz was barely touched upon, while many unsatisfactory relationships with women were discussed, a subject many men were writing about in more depth than Kelley managed.

7. Bora Chung. “Cursed Bunny.” When the publisher of books from India (See: #3 above) learned I was reading Han (See: #5 above), he suggested I read this collection of stories by a younger South Korean woman. Some were quite good, if not my usual thing.

8-9. George W. S. Trow. “In the Context of No Context” and “The Harvard Black Rock Forest.”
When I ordered “Context,” it was so I could read Trow’s profile of Ahmet Ertegon, which I thought was included, but it turned out I was getting a later edition which, while not containing the profile, included an introduction which was about as long as “Context” itself. So then I ordered the earlier edition which had the profile, now called “Within That Context, One Style,” which I have now finished (Hence the “½” above). When I mentioned to Benj DeMott I was reading Trow, he said I had to read “Forest.” Trow is an excellent writer and intriguing thinker who manages to convince you he has important things to say while expressing them in a style that is often impenetrable.

10. Kate Atkinson. “Murder at the Sign of the Rook.” Atkinson’s “Jackson Brodie” series is the only crime fiction I read, so it’s nice to have him back. The book is amusing and entertaining, though Brodie only appears on about half its pages. He should be met, I believe, in sequential order, beginning with “Case Histories.”

Gave away a “Cheesesteak.” A friend at the café wanted me to meet a master wood craftsman (and repairer of musical instruments), who, he said, was from Philadelphia. The craftsman turned out to be from Far Rockaway, but he had lived in Philly for 10 or 20 years, some at 48th & Baltimore, which is near where I grew up, so I gave it to him anyway.
Then I shamed an ex-bookstore clerk/current graphite artist into buying an “Outlaws, Rebels…” We had been discussing Crumb and Wilson, both of whose work he admires, and I said, “Everything I’ve been telling you is in my book. You ought to read that.”

In other news…
1.) None on “Messiahs…”
2.) The envisioned documentary film on Dan O’Neill and the Air Pirates, about whom I and my book are source material, has reached the gofundme stage. I have done my part by requesting contributions from (a) 50 selected friends and acquaintances; (b) 30-plus people in my high school graduation class; and © a bunch of guys I played pick-up basketball with. So far, four or five people from group (a) said they’d contribute; one woman in group (b) said she “got” my request and one fellow, with mild dementia, thought the email came was from our alumni class representative and thanked her for her years of service; and one fellow in group © said he’d never been a fan of the counterculture and was less of one now.
3.) My article on Victor Cayro, which I wrote last year, has appeared in the latest issue of the print “Comics Journal.” It’s a good article, but since the issue costs about $20, I can’t say I expect anyone I know to read it. (I wrote more about this experience and my reaction thereto in my last blog, which I FB-linked and to which I refer the curious.)
4.) Some instructive, recently culled statistics: (a) in these days of self-publishing, only 20% of all books sell more than 100 copies and only 6% sell a thousand; (b) it is exceedingly rare for a serious literary graphic novel (or art book) to sell more than two or three thousand copies.
A hellova way to make a living.

My article on Victor Cayro is in the newly released “Comics Journal,” #311 (Winter-Spring 2025) $22.99.

I couldn’t help noting that my Contributers bio was the bulkiest, as well as the only one to give a DOB, sufficient to make me feel the esteemed, ancient relic I appear to be. Accept and appreciate, I tell myself.

Here is a sample:
“You might like Victor Cayro,” the editor said.
Another cartoonist I had never heard of. I might be into my second generation of them. Or third.
But I was always up for something new. Well, at 83, not always. My next heart surgery, for instance.
It was hard to find Cayro or his work. He did not have a website. I found a t-shirt he had done about mustard but it was sold out.
“Try Instagram,” someone said.
Cayro responded in a friendlier manner than I expected of a guy who did not have a website. He did not sound like he dwelt in a cave, keeping company with bats. He seemed to like the idea of being written about, even. “I am 43,” he volunteered. “In the last 10 years, it’s been mostly pin-ups for other people’s books, spot illos for stories, shirts, some album cover work, small gallery showings, drawing and painting.”
Cayro sent me a zip file containing three stories and a link to a fourth, which “Vice” had published. He said he’d had a long story in “Kramer’s Ergot” 6, so I bought that. I found two anthologies which had stories by him at Bookfinders, one of which I could pick up cheap on eBay, so I bought both. The editor, once I was on the job, sent me more stories. No on-line site had Cayro’s only stand-alone comic in stock, but one had it available to view.
“If you are going to sue, warn me,” I e-mailed Cayro, “so I have time to read it.”
“I am surprised someone liked it enough to print it,” he said.

A cartoonist in the Balkans, about whom I have written, proposed a swap of an electronically transmitted copy of his new comic, “The Nineties,” for an electronically transmitted “Bob on Bob.” Once this miracle had occurred, he e-mailed: “Long live technology!”
After initiating a conversation with a fellow in the café who seemed to be writing dialogue on his computer, I learned he had been a “career” public defender, who now wrote fiction based on his experiences. I also learned he was a director of a theater group where ex-prison inmates perform their own work. I gave him a copy of “The Schiz,” my “lawyer” novel, and he invited me to a performance – but did not comp me. (We wouldn’t’ve gone anyway. It’s at night and we’re not big theater fans. “Too theatrical,” I like to say.)
I’d been prepared to give an IWKYA to a woman I’ve known for about 40 years who irregularly stops by the café. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been upset because her heart was misbehaving, and she was looking at a pacemaker. I hoped the book might re-assure her, and I was giving, not selling, it because I had previously sent it, personally inscribed, to a fellow I’ve known for over 70 years. But he has dementia and, for reasons known only to him, had sent it back leaving me with a book whose dedication suited no one else. But she hasn’t been back.
A couple other transactions didn’t achieve completion. One involved the father of a little girl in the ballet class which meets every Saturday across the street. He looked at my books, took my card, and said he would be back. Then two fellows from my old pick-up basketball game, which held a reunion at the café, both said they wanted a “Bob” and asked when I would be there next. (One even said he got a kick out of reading about the people who say they will buy a book and are never heard from again.) None of these people have been seen or heard from again.

In other news…
1.) No new word about “Messiahs…” I will give it a couple weeks.
2.) Finished a piece about the novels of Han Kang. When the FOM editor suggested the topic, I thought it well beyond me. But I have written something whole and true, which no one else could have, which is what I aim for. Once Adele finishes her twice-over, I will submit it.

Yesterday, for reasons I needn’t go into here, I developed a yearning for a book of newspaper front pages from World War II, which I recall looking at, crayoning in, and reading from about 1946-50. (My big take away, as I recall, was learning of the bombing of St. Lo, which I knew as the home of the Cardinals and Browns, and wondering why news of that hadn’t reached me before.)

Anyway, I googled and there it was. One copy available at eBay for $25. I scooped it up. It is being packaged as we speak.

The Internet is amazing!

https://www.firstofthemonth.org/fore/

Above is a link to my latest article.

It begins like this:

Golf had been his father’s game, so Goshkin never played it. Adolescent rebellion, he supposed. In 1950s Philadelphia, football, baseball, basketball were the only honorable sports.
In recent years, though – 70-some and 3000 miles later – he had come to enjoy golf on TV, while his interest had faded from football, baseball, everything athletic in fact, except the Warriors, who continued to drive his blood pressure up 20-points, and the exercise he deemed necessary to keep his own surgically-enhanced heart pumping.
“What do you think your dad would say,” asked Ruth, his wife, a former therapist, “about your seeing the light?”
Goshkin snorted. Not his story. Left behind with the Liberty Bell.

I graduated a coed Quaker high school outside Philadelphia in 1960. We had 60 – 70 students a class. Twice a year we receive an alumni magazine in which I turn immediately in search of names I recognize among the dead or those contributing to the class-by-class news. The former grows while the latter slides.
The latest issue reported the passing of seven people with whom I was acquainted. (More than one-third of my class is deceased.) Of those who bothered to bring the rest of us up to date on their activities, one has moved into a retirement community near Philly and five have retired to Florida. One woman has returned, after 13 years off, to school administrative work and one fellow “still buys and sells antiques here in the north.” One, me, has a new book “Messiahs, Meshugganahs, Misanthropes & Mysteries,” coming out from FU Press.
What a peculiar thing to be doing? I thought.

No sales but…
One morning, S. came up to me. He had his usual stuffed shopping bags, two in each hand. He had been a fine tenor player. He has an MA in Theology. But all the time I’ve known him, he has slept on the grounds of a church whose minister slips him a few dollars each week that allows him to call himself a security guard.
The reason for this visit was that he had come across a copy of “Best Ride” with the first few pages torn out but my cover photo intact. The content had thrown him. “Crazy stuff,” he said. “I thought, I know that guy, but he never talks like that. Where did that voice come from?”
I asked if he’d like an in-tact copy.
He shook his head. “If only you’d written about handball.”

Another morning a woman with long brown hair said, on her way out “Your sitting here working is an inspiration.”
“Wanna buy a book?” I said.
She threw me a thumbs-up sign.

Another morning still, a grizzled fellow in his early 70’s sat down across from me. He said he liked the table because you could see all the good-looking women. “I wonder the origin of the word ‘muse.’” His voice was Spanish-accented.
“I’ll look it up,” I said. After I had Googled, I asked where he was from.
“I’m a ‘tourist,’” he said, “native-born.” He had lived in Brazil and in Portland but, for seven months, had been in a Berkeley shelter waiting on a list for low-income housing. “Have you heard of Walt Lucas, the unofficial Poet Laureate of Portland? He was a friend of mine.”
I hadn’t heard of Walt Lucas.
“You can look him up too.”
There he was. He even had a Wikipedia page. “I’ll buy one of his books. Can I give you one of mine?”
He ran a skeptical eye over my display. “I like Bukowski.”
“I’ll have to give that some thought,” I said, “and get back to you.”
Now I’m thinking “Most Outrageous.”

Later that very same morning, a Chinese man came over. He had close-cropped grey hair and wore grey sweats. He asked in heavily accented English if I was a writer. When he said he was too, I suggested a swap. He looked at “The Schiz” but detoured to “I Will Keep You Alive.” I don’t know why. And all I can tell you about his book is that it has 54 chapters, is 215 pages long, and comes from the Dixie W Publishing Corporation of Montgomery, Alabama. Everything else is in Chinese. I don’t even know anyone who reads Chinese.
During subsequent conversation, he showed me his proposal in English for a 450,000 word book about dictatorship and individuals, lessons from China for the US.
Seems timely.

In other news…
My publisher says the fact that we haven’t heard further from China may mean my book is printing. Whether my changes were accepted won’t be known until the advance copies arrive in about a month.
And the tariffs don’t seem to apply to printed material.