Adventures in Marketing: Weeks 521 – 530
It’s been a long time.
I thought I’d have something to report when Giselle, a friend from Philadelphia in the wild-and-wooly ‘60s, who’d turned-on, tuned-in and dropped-out to Jamaica, said a friend of hers, who’d recently moved from Philly to Oakland, would be shipping her a package and could include a copy of “Messiahs,” which I’d promised Giselle as a gift, if she’d pay postage. The friend and I had arranged to meet at the café, but she cancelled at the last minute. “Car trouble.” It’s been two weeks. That car must be a mess.
But waiting for her to reschedule led me to pick up a call with a Philadelphia area code that I didn’t recognize. The caller was Mickey Kipper. Our friendship began in kindergarten and faded during high school, when he decided I wasn’t socially slick enough for him and I decided he didn’t have enough renegade edge for me. After I’d moved west, we’d exchanged occasional birthday cards and, 15 or 20 years ago, when Adele and I were visiting family, he took us on a tour of the old neighborhood, keeping us off streets it was unsafe to walk. Mickey was a retired junior high teacher and president of the local NRA chapter, and we didn’t have much in common.
Now he was calling from a rehab facility where he’d been since December, having fallen, shattering the bones in one leg and, it seemed to me, sustaining cognitive damage. Mickey’s news came shortly after that from another elementary school friend who was facing a second carotid artery surgery. A café pal with OHS in his past is due for a pacemaker and I’m up for an intervention to correct a leaky valve and a fellow I know from Mended Hearts with a history more extensive than my own, is looking at his own re-opening. (“We are all just walking each other home, brother” he tells me.)
I offered Mickey what support I could. I was touched he had called. But I wondered why he’d reached out to me.
“He’s been flat on his back for three months,” Xavier said. “You’re probably the last name in his address book.”
Then, “Bob on Bob” and “Lollipop” were picked up from my web site by a 48-year-old fellow who works for Fantagraphics, my sometime publisher. He said my book on the Air Pirates had made him “a reader of yours for life.” He’d already done “Best Ride” and “Fully Armed” and these were next.
Hence, this report.
In other news:
1.) The time to file for a share of the Anthropic settlement has passed. I don’t know if my original application for inclusion made it where it was supposed to, but it may not matter. The last time I looked, it didn’t seem any of my books were among those appropriated. How is AI to learn about S. Clay Wilson without me?
2.) On a more positive note, my pal Glory reports her Alzheimer-afflicted mother continues to re-read the “Puddles” chapter of “Cheesesteak” and is delighted every time. “He is so funny,” she tells Glory.
ALL OF BOB’S BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT www.theboblevin.com.
blog
Most Outrageous: The Sequel
https://www.firstofthemonth.org/most-outrageous-the-sequel/
My latest has gone up here — and where else but FOM are you going to find Chester the Molester rubbing elbows with Jesse Jackson, Willie Colon, Wemby, and Meyer Schapiro? (In fact, in this Epstein-inundated time, where are you going to find Chester rubbing anything with anyone?)
My latest has gone up here — and where else but FOM are you going to find Chester the Molester rubbing elbows with Jesse Jackson, Willie Colon, Wemby, and Meyer Schapiro? (In fact, in this Epstein-inundated time, where are you going to find Chester rubbing anything with anyone?)
Last Ten Books Read — xxxiv
In order of completion:
1. “Safe Area Gorazde.” Joe Sacco. A graphic journalistic account of Sacco’s experiences during the Bosnian war. I came upon it while writing about Sacco’s more recent book “Once and Future Riot” (See tcj.com. 1/27/26). It is compelling, if limited, view of a complexity.
2. “Jesus Son.” Denis Johnson. Had read it during the ‘90s. Was led to revisit it after (a) watching “Train Dreams” and (b) reading Johnson’s obit. He was a hellova writer and his life a hellova train wreck.
3. “The Last Samurai.” Helen DeWitt. Probably an excellent novel but seemed to require more time and attention than I was willing to commit to it.
4. “Secondhand Time.” Svetlana Alexievich. Superb. Shattering. Had been left on a free shelf in the café, which demonstrates the class and sensibilities of the clientel.
5. “West Philadelphia: From University City to 52nd Street.” Robert Morris Skaler. My neighborhood. Given to me by someone from there and I gave it to someone who lives there now. Mainly it’s building photos from the early part of the last century. I recognized a few and, architercturally, hardly cared for any
6. “Correction.” Thomas Bernhard. Bernhard’s novels are so obsessively similar, they can be differentiated only in the smallest ways. A middle-aged Austrian first-person narrator, who hates Austria and all things Austrian, goes on for a couple hundred pages without dialogue or chapters. If you develop a taste for them, they can be pleasurably addictive.
7. “Desperadoes.” Ron Hansen. Had read it before but could remember nothing about it. Hansen is a fine – and underappreciated – novelist. I’ve read a number of is books and this one – about the Dalton Brothers – and based on true, sometimes unbelievable events was super.
8. “Vernon Sublutex.” Virgenie Despantes. A friend recommended a novel by Despantes but when I looked her up, this, the first in a trilogy, seemed to be her most highly regarded. It’s set in a world of drugged out, burnt out, sexed out middle-aged French artists, musicians, and film makers, which is so unrelated to my own past or present, it was hard to be any more than curious. Still, I’ll see where vol. 2 goes.
9. “At Wit’s End.” St. Claire McKelway. A re-read of a collection of pieces by “The New Yorker” writer of the ‘40s and ‘50s. He specialized in affectionate profiles of colorful NYC characters – a counterfeiter, an imposter – but his lengthiest recounted of his own nervous breakdowns. In one, while working in the Pacific Theater during WW II, he fingered Admiral Nimitz for being in league with the Japanese. In another, while vacationing in Scotland, he came to believe he had become drawn into a plot to kidnap Eisenhower or Khruschev or both. “Humor,” McKelway wrote, “illuminates the truth.”
10. “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.” George Saunders. Recommended by another friend. Saunders uses seven 19th century Russian short stories to reflect upon writing and reading. (I got a lot more out of the stories than I did when I read them in college, At this point, I wasn’t going to learn much to benefit my own writing but it was rewarding to see how I’d worked things out and to reflect upon Saunders putting into words thoughts I may never have expressed. “Go forth and do what you please,” was his summative position. Find what it is you do; do it; and accept what it brings you.
1. “Safe Area Gorazde.” Joe Sacco. A graphic journalistic account of Sacco’s experiences during the Bosnian war. I came upon it while writing about Sacco’s more recent book “Once and Future Riot” (See tcj.com. 1/27/26). It is compelling, if limited, view of a complexity.
2. “Jesus Son.” Denis Johnson. Had read it during the ‘90s. Was led to revisit it after (a) watching “Train Dreams” and (b) reading Johnson’s obit. He was a hellova writer and his life a hellova train wreck.
3. “The Last Samurai.” Helen DeWitt. Probably an excellent novel but seemed to require more time and attention than I was willing to commit to it.
4. “Secondhand Time.” Svetlana Alexievich. Superb. Shattering. Had been left on a free shelf in the café, which demonstrates the class and sensibilities of the clientel.
5. “West Philadelphia: From University City to 52nd Street.” Robert Morris Skaler. My neighborhood. Given to me by someone from there and I gave it to someone who lives there now. Mainly it’s building photos from the early part of the last century. I recognized a few and, architercturally, hardly cared for any
6. “Correction.” Thomas Bernhard. Bernhard’s novels are so obsessively similar, they can be differentiated only in the smallest ways. A middle-aged Austrian first-person narrator, who hates Austria and all things Austrian, goes on for a couple hundred pages without dialogue or chapters. If you develop a taste for them, they can be pleasurably addictive.
7. “Desperadoes.” Ron Hansen. Had read it before but could remember nothing about it. Hansen is a fine – and underappreciated – novelist. I’ve read a number of is books and this one – about the Dalton Brothers – and based on true, sometimes unbelievable events was super.
8. “Vernon Sublutex.” Virgenie Despantes. A friend recommended a novel by Despantes but when I looked her up, this, the first in a trilogy, seemed to be her most highly regarded. It’s set in a world of drugged out, burnt out, sexed out middle-aged French artists, musicians, and film makers, which is so unrelated to my own past or present, it was hard to be any more than curious. Still, I’ll see where vol. 2 goes.
9. “At Wit’s End.” St. Claire McKelway. A re-read of a collection of pieces by “The New Yorker” writer of the ‘40s and ‘50s. He specialized in affectionate profiles of colorful NYC characters – a counterfeiter, an imposter – but his lengthiest recounted of his own nervous breakdowns. In one, while working in the Pacific Theater during WW II, he fingered Admiral Nimitz for being in league with the Japanese. In another, while vacationing in Scotland, he came to believe he had become drawn into a plot to kidnap Eisenhower or Khruschev or both. “Humor,” McKelway wrote, “illuminates the truth.”
10. “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.” George Saunders. Recommended by another friend. Saunders uses seven 19th century Russian short stories to reflect upon writing and reading. (I got a lot more out of the stories than I did when I read them in college, At this point, I wasn’t going to learn much to benefit my own writing but it was rewarding to see how I’d worked things out and to reflect upon Saunders putting into words thoughts I may never have expressed. “Go forth and do what you please,” was his summative position. Find what it is you do; do it; and accept what it brings you.
A Scream Into the Void
My take on Joe Sacco’s “The Once and Future Riot” is now up at “The Comics Journal.”
https://www.tcj.com/a-scream-into-the-void/
It begins:
It was one war, one battle, one conflict after another, a state – Valuska gazed at the crushed terrain in front of him – where each event was self-evident, and it wasn’t as if there was anything surprising about this…
Laszlo Kraszynahockai. The Melancholy of Resistance
“I know you want peace on Earth,” Dave Edmunds sings. “But we got to kill the monster first.” Only later do you learn the monster is doctors and nurses and babies and little girls with flowers on their skirt, all of them, “underneath the rubble… crying for the dead.” For more than three decades, Joe Sacco has been writing and drawing about monsters. They have been killed by defenders of land they believed God gave them 4000 years ago, or to make up for what they believed the Turks cost them in 1390, or, in his most recent book about Hindus and Muslims in India, in defense of cows. To be fair, no one was actually killed in The Once and Future Riot (2025) for eating a Jumbo Mac, but, by book’s end, some states had made it illegal to possess one and, in a few, slaughtering Elsie could mean life behind bars.
https://www.tcj.com/a-scream-into-the-void/
It begins:
It was one war, one battle, one conflict after another, a state – Valuska gazed at the crushed terrain in front of him – where each event was self-evident, and it wasn’t as if there was anything surprising about this…
Laszlo Kraszynahockai. The Melancholy of Resistance
“I know you want peace on Earth,” Dave Edmunds sings. “But we got to kill the monster first.” Only later do you learn the monster is doctors and nurses and babies and little girls with flowers on their skirt, all of them, “underneath the rubble… crying for the dead.” For more than three decades, Joe Sacco has been writing and drawing about monsters. They have been killed by defenders of land they believed God gave them 4000 years ago, or to make up for what they believed the Turks cost them in 1390, or, in his most recent book about Hindus and Muslims in India, in defense of cows. To be fair, no one was actually killed in The Once and Future Riot (2025) for eating a Jumbo Mac, but, by book’s end, some states had made it illegal to possess one and, in a few, slaughtering Elsie could mean life behind bars.
Adventures in Marketing — Week 521
Sold a MESSIAHS and a CHEESESTEAK. The buyer was a 30/40-ish-year-old attorney, who had been in the tech-financial field and was now waiting to see where life would take him. (He got a t-shirt for his wife.)
In other news…. (Which is where most of the action was.)
1.) My café pal Glory reports her mother hasn’t started LOLLIPOP yet because she has a stack of NYTs to get through. She has, however, read the “Puddles” chapter in CHEESESTEAK four times. “She thinks you are so funny.” Glory knows I went to a Quaker school and was herself in a Quaker mental hospital. Why are the Quakers so into education, she wonders, and “How did they get into oats?”
2.) Felice, an e-mail friend and author of true-crime paperbacks, wrote that she had tried to put a review of MOST OUTRAGEOUS on Amazon but was denied permission because she hadn’t bought it there. Since she wrote that my book was for “anyone interested in true crime, gender relations, comics, the First Amendment, sex crime victims, (and) really most anyone who can read,” I tried to help her. In the course of this effort, I learned that MO had been acquired by sixty-some libraries, including half-a-dozen law libraries (Yale and Penn included. I was frankly flabbergasted. I also found a 10-year-old review at GoodReads, from someone named “Andrew,” which was better and more flattering than anything I could have written. He called me “scrupulous,” “brave” and “wise” and says the book is clearly written, intellectually honest, and has moments where the prose “sings.”
I have to admit MO is the book I fewl most sheepish about. It is the one I least frequently lay out on my café table. But now I thought I might write about its writing, including a never-written story that stemmed from it. So I took another look and – BOY! – is it good!
3.) Coincidentally, just yesterday I received an email from a cousin who usually limits herself to hoping Adele and I are well. I do not know if she has read my most recent book or listened to the “Amusing Jews” podcast, but she wondered “what drew (me) to twisted, violent, misogynistic, sadistic comic artists in the first place.” Outwardly, I seem “calm… but inside must be a seething cauldron.”
I’ll work this into my new piece too.
In other news…. (Which is where most of the action was.)
1.) My café pal Glory reports her mother hasn’t started LOLLIPOP yet because she has a stack of NYTs to get through. She has, however, read the “Puddles” chapter in CHEESESTEAK four times. “She thinks you are so funny.” Glory knows I went to a Quaker school and was herself in a Quaker mental hospital. Why are the Quakers so into education, she wonders, and “How did they get into oats?”
2.) Felice, an e-mail friend and author of true-crime paperbacks, wrote that she had tried to put a review of MOST OUTRAGEOUS on Amazon but was denied permission because she hadn’t bought it there. Since she wrote that my book was for “anyone interested in true crime, gender relations, comics, the First Amendment, sex crime victims, (and) really most anyone who can read,” I tried to help her. In the course of this effort, I learned that MO had been acquired by sixty-some libraries, including half-a-dozen law libraries (Yale and Penn included. I was frankly flabbergasted. I also found a 10-year-old review at GoodReads, from someone named “Andrew,” which was better and more flattering than anything I could have written. He called me “scrupulous,” “brave” and “wise” and says the book is clearly written, intellectually honest, and has moments where the prose “sings.”
I have to admit MO is the book I fewl most sheepish about. It is the one I least frequently lay out on my café table. But now I thought I might write about its writing, including a never-written story that stemmed from it. So I took another look and – BOY! – is it good!
3.) Coincidentally, just yesterday I received an email from a cousin who usually limits herself to hoping Adele and I are well. I do not know if she has read my most recent book or listened to the “Amusing Jews” podcast, but she wondered “what drew (me) to twisted, violent, misogynistic, sadistic comic artists in the first place.” Outwardly, I seem “calm… but inside must be a seething cauldron.”
I’ll work this into my new piece too.
Adventures in Marketing — Weeks 517 – 520
Businesss had been so slow I’d shut this operation down at the 10-year mark. My only sale had been a t-shirt to my SSI-dependant café friend after I had given her $20 for Xmas and she gave $5 back to me. She was planning to send it to her mother but then decided to wear it as a nightshirt herself.
Then, Jan. 1, PayPal notified me I had received near $200 from a fellow who wanted 10 of my books. (He missed two, so I included them in the package and said he could repay me at cost). Naturally, I was curious. Was this some comic-crazed madman? Was it an academic who had decided it was time my work receive a monograph? But, no, he was a young man in Chicago who had heard good things about “Lollipop.” He had visited my web site to order it and been intrigued by everything else. More startlingly, he was studying to be a hospital chaplain, which did not exactly fit my sense of my demographics. Anyway, I figured if things kept up at this rate, I would gross $7 million this year.
It also reminded me – in an Adventures Greatest Hits sort-of way – of a couple other big sales. One was the woman who swept into the café and gave everyone a Meyer lemon from her tree. She bought the books I had on display – and then went to the Free Books shelf and took several of them. The following day, someone who knew her from a group he attended told me she was bi-polar. (I never saw or heard from her again.) Another was the hippy era artist from Santa Cruz who never showed or sold his work but stored it all in a garage. He sent me a check from a woman friend for several books. (I never heard from him again either.)
Then, Jan. 1, PayPal notified me I had received near $200 from a fellow who wanted 10 of my books. (He missed two, so I included them in the package and said he could repay me at cost). Naturally, I was curious. Was this some comic-crazed madman? Was it an academic who had decided it was time my work receive a monograph? But, no, he was a young man in Chicago who had heard good things about “Lollipop.” He had visited my web site to order it and been intrigued by everything else. More startlingly, he was studying to be a hospital chaplain, which did not exactly fit my sense of my demographics. Anyway, I figured if things kept up at this rate, I would gross $7 million this year.
It also reminded me – in an Adventures Greatest Hits sort-of way – of a couple other big sales. One was the woman who swept into the café and gave everyone a Meyer lemon from her tree. She bought the books I had on display – and then went to the Free Books shelf and took several of them. The following day, someone who knew her from a group he attended told me she was bi-polar. (I never saw or heard from her again.) Another was the hippy era artist from Santa Cruz who never showed or sold his work but stored it all in a garage. He sent me a check from a woman friend for several books. (I never heard from him again either.)
Still Writing
My latest piece is available at https://www.firstofthemonth.org/still-writing/
Faithful readers will recall from my Adventures from whence this came, It begins like this:
Harold and I used to play nickle, dime, quarter in junior high school. Now he was in town for a Texas Hold ‘Em tournament. We met for lunch. His beard looked like a tamarin monkey had been grafted on his chin. “Still writing,?” he said. “Yup,” I said. And that was that. I asked him about poker. I asked about grandchildren. We ran through the Eagles and the Warriors. Stories about his GM dealership and repossessions dropped like stones on my toes. “Are you all right?” he asked at one lull. “Meditating,” I said. When he came back from the john, he asked what I wrote about. He thought underground comics did stand-up.
Faithful readers will recall from my Adventures from whence this came, It begins like this:
Harold and I used to play nickle, dime, quarter in junior high school. Now he was in town for a Texas Hold ‘Em tournament. We met for lunch. His beard looked like a tamarin monkey had been grafted on his chin. “Still writing,?” he said. “Yup,” I said. And that was that. I asked him about poker. I asked about grandchildren. We ran through the Eagles and the Warriors. Stories about his GM dealership and repossessions dropped like stones on my toes. “Are you all right?” he asked at one lull. “Meditating,” I said. When he came back from the john, he asked what I wrote about. He thought underground comics did stand-up.
Last 10 Books Read (xxxiii)
In Order of Completion
1. Thomas Bernhardt. GATHERING EVIDENCE. Bernhardt was recommended by my café pal Fran. These autobiographical pieces, written separately but now arranged chronologically, proved a good place to start. It runs through Burhard’s adolescence and is blisteringly dark and scathingly funny. It lacks chapters and dialogue, as do all his books.
2. Yvonne Martinez. SCABMUGGERS. Yvonne, an ex-labor organizer, is another café friend. This recounts her experiences at a Harvard program for organizers from around the world. (She has adapted it into a play which will premiere in Berkeley shortly.) It is stark, serious, issue-oriented and contains my favorite opening line in recent American letters: “I was raised by felons…”
3, Michael McMillan. TERMINAL EXPOSURE. A collection of art, cartoons and comix by a (once underground) octogenarian previously unknown to me. It came recommended by two people whose opinions I hold in high regard, but was too out-there for me. I needed to be led by the hand and guided to its worth.
4. Kerin Boye. KALLOCAINE. I met Boye in the Peter Weiss book (See below), where she is as a character. A Swedish lesbian poet, she committed suicide in 1941, at age 41, shortly after finishing this dystopian view of a 1984-like society written before Orwell’s book gave that view its name. Credit is due for her foresight that but I didn’t care for it much for the book itself.
5. Peter Weiss. AESTHETICS OF RESISTANCE, vol iii. The final book to the trilogy and the one most easily grasped. Reading them all, even over months, was a powerful, unique, informative experience. No dialogue; no chapters; not for the faint of heart.
6. Clare Kahane. NINE LIVES. A good friend of a good friend. We have known her since she was working on a PhD in English. Turns out she had quite a life before that. Tours with Greenwich Village folkies, SF Beats, Berkeley hippy revolutionaries, , and on the road, motorcycling thru the US and Europe. Want to know what a nice Jewish girl from the Bronx was doing in places like that?
7. Thomas Bernhardt. WITTGENSTEIN’S NEPHEW. The funny plays a larger role in this one. My laughter convinced Adele to try it – and she finished!
8. Lazlo Krasnznahorkai. THE MELANCHOLY OF RESISTANCE. The most recent Noble Prize winner. Again, no dialogue or chapters. Comic, I think, and not for me. So over-laden I missed the death of a principal character for the first time since THE RECOGNITIONS.
9. Sean Howe. AGENTS OF CHAOS. A biography of Tom Forcade, head of the Underground Press Syndicate, Yippie, Zippie, publisher of “High Times,” and major drug smuggler – and abuser. What a lot of craziness was going on at the time. What did these people imagine they were achieving? I was around, but I missed it.
10. Thomas Bernhardt. THE LOSER. Another striking book. I felt Burkhard lost his way toward the end – if he can be said to have a way. The relationship between an unnamed narrator, who is a piano virtuoso, the title character, who is another, and Glen Gould are at its center. Other musicians and artists to consider what Burkhardt has to say.
1. Thomas Bernhardt. GATHERING EVIDENCE. Bernhardt was recommended by my café pal Fran. These autobiographical pieces, written separately but now arranged chronologically, proved a good place to start. It runs through Burhard’s adolescence and is blisteringly dark and scathingly funny. It lacks chapters and dialogue, as do all his books.
2. Yvonne Martinez. SCABMUGGERS. Yvonne, an ex-labor organizer, is another café friend. This recounts her experiences at a Harvard program for organizers from around the world. (She has adapted it into a play which will premiere in Berkeley shortly.) It is stark, serious, issue-oriented and contains my favorite opening line in recent American letters: “I was raised by felons…”
3, Michael McMillan. TERMINAL EXPOSURE. A collection of art, cartoons and comix by a (once underground) octogenarian previously unknown to me. It came recommended by two people whose opinions I hold in high regard, but was too out-there for me. I needed to be led by the hand and guided to its worth.
4. Kerin Boye. KALLOCAINE. I met Boye in the Peter Weiss book (See below), where she is as a character. A Swedish lesbian poet, she committed suicide in 1941, at age 41, shortly after finishing this dystopian view of a 1984-like society written before Orwell’s book gave that view its name. Credit is due for her foresight that but I didn’t care for it much for the book itself.
5. Peter Weiss. AESTHETICS OF RESISTANCE, vol iii. The final book to the trilogy and the one most easily grasped. Reading them all, even over months, was a powerful, unique, informative experience. No dialogue; no chapters; not for the faint of heart.
6. Clare Kahane. NINE LIVES. A good friend of a good friend. We have known her since she was working on a PhD in English. Turns out she had quite a life before that. Tours with Greenwich Village folkies, SF Beats, Berkeley hippy revolutionaries, , and on the road, motorcycling thru the US and Europe. Want to know what a nice Jewish girl from the Bronx was doing in places like that?
7. Thomas Bernhardt. WITTGENSTEIN’S NEPHEW. The funny plays a larger role in this one. My laughter convinced Adele to try it – and she finished!
8. Lazlo Krasnznahorkai. THE MELANCHOLY OF RESISTANCE. The most recent Noble Prize winner. Again, no dialogue or chapters. Comic, I think, and not for me. So over-laden I missed the death of a principal character for the first time since THE RECOGNITIONS.
9. Sean Howe. AGENTS OF CHAOS. A biography of Tom Forcade, head of the Underground Press Syndicate, Yippie, Zippie, publisher of “High Times,” and major drug smuggler – and abuser. What a lot of craziness was going on at the time. What did these people imagine they were achieving? I was around, but I missed it.
10. Thomas Bernhardt. THE LOSER. Another striking book. I felt Burkhard lost his way toward the end – if he can be said to have a way. The relationship between an unnamed narrator, who is a piano virtuoso, the title character, who is another, and Glen Gould are at its center. Other musicians and artists to consider what Burkhardt has to say.
Adventures in Marketing — Week 516
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.
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.
Adventures in Marketing — Week 515
Sold a MESSIAHS. The buyer was the fellow who is at work on a documentary about the Air Pirates. (See: Levin. PIRATES AND THE MOUSE.) He has raised sufficient funds to begin shooting. Then he hopes his footage will help secure more funding. (His most recent film, concerning a Marine in Afghanistan, will be shown on PBS on Jan. 12.)
And swapped a MESSIAHS (and t-shirt) to our IT guy for services rendered. He got the mike on my lap top working so I was fully Zoom-ready. (See below.)
In other news:
a.) The Zoom, which was with the co-hosts of “Amusing Jews,” was great fun. They had sent me sample questions, almost all of which I’d answered before orally or in writing – or many times in my head, so I was well-prepared to be informative – and amusing. Both hosts were in their late 30s or early 40s, so, especially when I was talking about the 1950s, I felt like a visitor from another planet. (The show will be available for listening/viewing in a few weeks. I’ll let you know.)
b.) My café friend, to whom I gave CHEESESTEAK to send her 90-year-old mother in Portland, who is from Philadelphia, says she found it “hysterical” and wants to read more by me.
LOLLIPOP is under consideration.
c.) Another café friend is going to Amsterdam for eight days and the only book she is taking is MESSIAHS. So as far as I know, that will be its cross-Atlantic debut. All foreign language rights remain available.
d.) Finally, a couple things that burn my ass:
i) I am sick and tired of people who all they can think to say in response to something of mine they’ve read is “You’re really a good writer.” As I said to one of these the other day, “I know I’m a good writer. I’ve been a good writer since 6th grade.” I am appreciative that they’ve read me at all. I know I’m not for everyone. In fact, I count on it. But there’s worse. Like, for instance…
ii.) A guy with whom I had been friends in elementary school was in town with his wife for a bridge tournament. We met for lunch. He said, “Still writing, Bob?” “Yup,” I said. And that was that. I asked him about bridge. I asked about grandchildren. We ran through the Eagles and the Warriors. I heard many stories about his law practice and years as a trial judge. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Just meditating,” I said.
When he went to the bathroom, his wife asked what I wrote about. She had no idea what an underground comic was.
And swapped a MESSIAHS (and t-shirt) to our IT guy for services rendered. He got the mike on my lap top working so I was fully Zoom-ready. (See below.)
In other news:
a.) The Zoom, which was with the co-hosts of “Amusing Jews,” was great fun. They had sent me sample questions, almost all of which I’d answered before orally or in writing – or many times in my head, so I was well-prepared to be informative – and amusing. Both hosts were in their late 30s or early 40s, so, especially when I was talking about the 1950s, I felt like a visitor from another planet. (The show will be available for listening/viewing in a few weeks. I’ll let you know.)
b.) My café friend, to whom I gave CHEESESTEAK to send her 90-year-old mother in Portland, who is from Philadelphia, says she found it “hysterical” and wants to read more by me.
LOLLIPOP is under consideration.
c.) Another café friend is going to Amsterdam for eight days and the only book she is taking is MESSIAHS. So as far as I know, that will be its cross-Atlantic debut. All foreign language rights remain available.
d.) Finally, a couple things that burn my ass:
i) I am sick and tired of people who all they can think to say in response to something of mine they’ve read is “You’re really a good writer.” As I said to one of these the other day, “I know I’m a good writer. I’ve been a good writer since 6th grade.” I am appreciative that they’ve read me at all. I know I’m not for everyone. In fact, I count on it. But there’s worse. Like, for instance…
ii.) A guy with whom I had been friends in elementary school was in town with his wife for a bridge tournament. We met for lunch. He said, “Still writing, Bob?” “Yup,” I said. And that was that. I asked him about bridge. I asked about grandchildren. We ran through the Eagles and the Warriors. I heard many stories about his law practice and years as a trial judge. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Just meditating,” I said.
When he went to the bathroom, his wife asked what I wrote about. She had no idea what an underground comic was.