No sales.
No conversations.
No remarks.
In other news…
1.) Word has reached me that a review of “The Schiz” – its first – is in the works. The prospective reviewer, an on-line pal since glory days of the nail-the-butchered-corpse-to-the-wall
TCJ Message Board, knows large chunks of my oeuvre, so his take should be fun. He promises a “Levin-style… digressing all over the maps (and sometimes uncharted waters)…” Stay tuned.
2.) The second monthly reading at the café suffered a 40% drop in attendance (25 to 15), but a good time was had by all. (Our audiences still seem composed of friends of the readers, and these two shared an overlapping pool.) The average age of the assembled was about 75 and the average complexion white. Gender was split.
One woman read from novels she’d written based on time spent living in England and on time spent sailing the South Pacific. The other read about the two years she spent living and working in a Kentucky mining town, with dialogue rendered in dialect and snatches of Appalachian folk songs a capella.
The generally expressed feeling was “What a good idea!” One veteran of the ‘60s Village Folk scene thanked me for restoring a sense of “Bohemia” to the place – a term I hadn’t heard in conversation in a while.
My main thought was, There sure are a lot of deep and interesting people at this little cafe.