Sold a “Lollipop” and a “Pirates & Mouse.”
The former went to my café friend who’d bought a “Cheesesteak” for her mother, an ex-Philadelphia. She won’t find this as funny, I’m afraid, except in a darker sought of way.
The other went to a Chinese-American public health researcher in he late 30s or 40s. Usually when I ask to whom I should inscribe a book, it is to the buyer or the buyer and a partner or the person to whom the buyer intends to give it as a gift. But this woman asked that I inscribe it to her entire family which is how I learned she had three children. I did not wonder until later if I should have warned her this is not the Disney to which they are accustomed.
In other news…
1.) The BerkeleySide article which reported on “Messiahs” has come and gone. Thirteen people reacted to my FB link to it, which is about double the number of people who usually take note of me, but only one person known to me read down far enough in the article to note my book’s presence. No doubt there were more, but, as yet, none of my success-related fantasies have fleshed.
2.) Faithful readers will recall the visit from the childhood friend whose apparent lack of interest in my writing I had noted last Adventure. As far as I knew, he had never read any of my books or Adventures, but I was wrong, at least to the latter. For not only had he read my last one but he felt so disrespected by it he did not wish to speak to me again. I felt badly, but since we had last spoken in about 1967, I did not foresee a great gap in my social calendar yawning
His position was that when he asked “Still writing?” and I answered only “Yes,” I did not wish to say more, so he had moved the conversation elsewhere. My position was that I had answered the question asked and was awaiting the next one. This, I explained, was not because I was acting on the instruction of counsel, but because I think most people aren’t terribly interested in my writing. I am in awe of those who feel their opinions on Ukraine, Gaza, cryptocurrency, antitrust, antisemitism, antivivisection, AI, DEI, Trump, Biden, Elon Musk, and Top 10 Movies and Point Guards demand sharing with others. (I suspect they had different experiences around the family dinner table than I.) Such confidence is as far from me as a capacity for unassisted flight. Even close friends go entire lunches without asking about my writing. They buy my books but do not read them. They read parts and are at a loss for what to say.
I was also aware that among Philadelphians, where both my friend and I had learned social etiquette, the greeting “Howydoin?” does not imply the least interest in being told, whereas “Whereyizfrom?”, depending on circumstances, might merit a naming of neighborhood or street intersection or high school, if, for instance, you were hopeful of initiating a relationship at a record hop. I was unsure where “Still writing?” fit along this continuum. It seemed most equivalent to “Still playing?”, which someone you had lined up against for a center jump might ask 20 or 30 years after last socking you with an elbow, in which case “Yes” or “No” worked fine. You need not go into the frequency or nature of the competition or the knee surgery which had forced you into pickleball.
“But I love talking about my writing,” I concluded. “What would you like to know?”
No question followed.
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.