“Guess who I sold a book to? Adele said, when she woke up.
“The Queen of England?” I said.
“Nope.”
“Living American female?”
“Nope.”
“Fictional Swedish Female?” We were into Season 3 of “Broen/Bron.”
“No.”
“I give up.”
“Bob Dylan. Want to know how?”
“Sure.”
I had to use all my charms. We were in this hotel gym, and he was checking out all the women. ‘How did you get to be you?’ he said. ‘In fact, how did all these people become who they are?’”
“‘I can’t speak for them,’ I said. ‘But if you want to know about me, you can buy this book my husband and I wrote.’”
“‘NYNGHUH,’ he said, making this Bob Dylan sound and face.
“‘Can I take that as a ‘”Yes”?’ I said.
“‘What does that mean?’
“‘It’s lawyer talk,’ his friend said. ‘You just bought a book.’
“‘I have to get it from my room,’” I said.”

No sales.
Gave away one “Cheesesteak.”
The recipient was “Edward,” the aspiring jazz pianist I had met during high school and from whom I had cribbed the title of the concluding chapter, (His out-of-the-blue phone call five decades later – “Is this Spruce Hill Bob?” – had also provided the name for my press.) I had intended to send him a copy, but, by the time of publication, I had no way to reach him. Now, he had found an old address book and called again – which touched me deeply. [Let me add he appears under his actual name in the Teddy Prendergrass documentary I’d posted about earlier this week and to which he’d alerted me.]

My most notable (non-sale) conversation was with a young fellow wearing a straw cap, bill-to-rear, whom the sign on my table at the café attracted.
He was one class from graduation at the Jazz School, played guitar and drums, lived in an Econoline, and repaired wind instruments to make a buck. “It’s pretty chill,” he said.
When he told me his name, I said, “Bet you’re named for the singer, not the poet.”
“What poet?” he said.
“The one Bob named himself after.”
“Guess I’ll have to check him out.”
What are they teaching kids in school these days?

In other news…
1.) The publicist Adele and I hired for “I Will Keep You Alive” explained that the reason her efforts had ended in zilch was that people found it “too personal.”
Well, it was that. But it’s not like a lot of people are going to escape our situation.
Or as Adele’s sister – admittedly not an unbiased reader said – “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. What could be more universal?”; and…
2.) Coincidentally, our book’s review in “Women’s Studies” reached us the next day. “It is an understatement,” it concludes, “to say how fortunate we are to have two such superb writers invite us to share vicariously in an experience that teaches… US [emp.supp.] so much.”

Swapped an “I Will Keep You Alive” to a college classmate, “The Poet Laureate of Martha’s Vinyard,” for a collection of his recent work.
And sent one as a 66th birthday present to Jimmy, whose last name will immediately come to mind for readers of my second book.
Then there was a “Cheesesteak” sale.

Fellow comes up to my table. Fortyish. Shaved head. Glasses. Orange hoodie. Accent. (Moscow, it turns out.)
“I am asking people’s philosophy of life. May I interview you for yours?”
What was he going to do with them? He didn’t know. I was his second, and the first, he admitted, had not gone well.
I had been waiting decades to be interviewed. I would have preferred the NY Times or even the Chronicle, but he would do. At the same time, it brought to mind the time, senior year, Tank Nuncio, who had a goatee and beret and roly-poley aspect of Friar Tuck, came out of the Oxford Grill and a young woman asked if she could photograph him for a “Best Beards” spread in the Globe. It never appeared and Tank was sure he was memorialized on some Cliffie’s bulletin board: “Biggest Assholes of Harvard Square.”
Still, my stories were ready. I ran him through Adele, comics, finding bliss after surgery, the non-existence of time, Earth being doomed.
“Perhaps another Black Death is coming,” he said. “Perhaps nature defend herself again. Leave not enough of us to do damage.”
We both savored that idea. “What do you do?” I said.
“Complicated. I’d say ‘economics,’ if I had to.”
Between him and his wife and previous relationships, there were five kids and a house in the hills, so it must have worked out.
When he’d learned I’d gone to law school at Penn, he was dumbfounded I’d never been inside its library. “One of the great buildings of the world,” he called it. I had not felt so inadequate since I’d told a great admirer of Abraham Maslow I’d gone to Brandx and never taken his course.
Anyway, Penn… Philadelphia… He knew my neighborhood. That was enough to sell a book.

This time I thought I’d rank them, bottom to top, based on a jambalaya of how well written they were, how interesting, how informative, how challenging, how enjoyable, all percolating in my brain, some predominating in one judgment, some in another, topped off with brief comments ranging from the judicious to the block-headed.
10. Alexander McCall Smith’s “44 Scotland Street.” Recommended by a guy at the health club. He has sound politics but his literary taste I will never seek again. As for the book, what can you expect from an author whose goal is to recreate “Tales of the City” in Edinburgh?
9. Mark Herron’s “Slow Horses.” Recommended by a friend whose politics are suspect but who otherwise has good cred. He compared Herron to Le Carre. But I’d given up Carre after “Drummer Girl.”
8. Ben Schwartz’s “The Truth of Their Life.” I’d known Ben casually (perhaps an overstatement) since the early ‘70s but never knew he wrote. This is his first book, a novella/ short story collection. He sure has mastered what it takes to write fiction – a lot more than I have – and his the longest is better than that.
7. Patti Smith’a “Year of the Monkey.” I much preferred “Just Kids” and “M Train.” Her poetry and imagination are here, but I would have liked more reality. Would probably benefit from a rereading but I won’t bother.
6. Kate Atkinson’s “Big Sky.” Atkinson’s my favorite crime writer – the only one I read now that Elmore Leonard’s gone – and I’d been rereading her Jackson Brodie books in order. This struck me as the weakest but is still darn good.
5. William Vollman’s “Ice Shirt.” Had to work too hard to get stuff out of it. Still, Vollman is always worth chewing on.
4. Kathleen Thanos’s “The Truth of This Life.” Its co-editor swapped it to me at the café for a “Cheeseste4ak.” It is always good to filter the day through a little Buddhism.
3. Anne Tyler’s “A Patchwork Planet.” I used to read every Tyler. Then I stopped. This is the second I’ve picked up off the café’s “Free” shelves, and both have been delightful.
2. Larissa Macfarquahar’s “Strangers Drowning.” I recalled portions from “The New Yorker” and wanted to see what the whole book was like. An intriguing, head-shake inducing look at the quest for living a moral life.
1. Vollman’s “Fathers and Crows.” This completed my reading of his series of novels about the coming of Europeans to North America. This one covers the French, the Jesuits, and the eradication of the Hurons. A clash between madnesses, it seemed. My second favorite in the group, behind “The Dying Grass.”

No sales.
i.
A fellow with a white beard, knit cap, wire-rimmed glasses, work boots looks me over.
“Wanna buy a book?” I say.
“Just spent all my money on coffee and a roll.”
“Maybe next time.”
“I like your titles though. You do all right here?”
“If I sell one book a week, I’m doing good.”
“That’s more’n me.”
“You write?”
“No. That’s why.”
We both laugh.
ii.
Michael and Audrey stop by. They say they are on their way to an OLLI course. “You know OLLI?” Michael says.
“Float like a butterfly; sting like a bee?” I say.
“Different Ali. So what’s your best seller here?”
“I sold a ‘Cheesesteak’ last week, so I guess…”
“You think of collecting your ‘Adventures’ into a book? I know, ‘performance art,’ blah-blah, but you ought to.”
“I’m not sure I’ve got the market. Like, my cousin’s photos of her rattlesnake beans with sundried tomatoes and broccoli got seven times the ‘Like’s as my last one.”
. “It’s hard to beat photogenic rattlesnake beans. But think about it.”
“I’ll run it up the so-to-speak flag poll.
Here goes.
iii.
Actually word of one sale reached us.
The wife in the family next door, with whom we are friendly but not so’s any of us would say we are actually “friends,” e-mailed that she had read “I Will Keep You Alive.” “I couldn’t put it down. I read it in one sitting. The story is my dad’s story, my mom’s story, it’s our story, it’s a life story. The emotions that you shared relate to everyone’s life.”
We thought that was pretty nice.

Sold a “Cheesesteak.”
The buyer was the abstract expressionist painter I mentioned an “Adventure” or two ago. When he’d come into the café, I’d offered condolences on the passing of Jolly, his activist/artist woman of 30-years, and he’d sat down with me. He showed me some of her photographs and poems and said he had so many stories he ought to write a book. I showed him how I’d gone about turning stories into a book, and he said, “How much?” Since Jolly’d lived in Powelton Village several years before I got there, it seemed fitting.
And I – indirectly – gave away a “Best Ride.” I’d picked “Franny & Zooey” off the “take-one; leave-one” “Free Book” shelves, figuring, “Hey, it’s been over 50-years, why not?”; and even though I had credits-to-burn, the “Ride” on my table had a torn cover, and I thought it might be a loss-leader, stuck in a card, and left it. Next time I came back, it was gone. I have so many, I may keep this up. Johnny Appleseed, me.

In other news…
My copy of “Happiness is Luxury,” the New Zealand journal whose editor’d asked me to contribute, arrived. It had been so long, except for the subject, I’d forgotten what I’d sent him and was delighted to see it contained an early Goshkin. (For those of you who actually read me, this must have been his second or third manifestation.) It’s a handsome volume, with classy fold-out art, some contributors I’ve even heard of (Max Clotfelter, Dame Darcy, Clay Geerdes, Paul Krassner, Willie Mendes) and others whose names alone make me want to make their acquaintance (Ducklingmonster, Sarah Fisthole, Biljo White, Zigendemonic). If you want more information: https://independentwomanrecords.bandcamp.com/merch/happiness-is-luxury-2
So, New Zealand, Croatia…
I guess it’s fair to refer to me as “the internationally renowned…”

The first two-week stretch in which I did not sell a book.
Not even a conversation of note. One street person stopped by my table. (Later he came back because he had found a book by someone named “Levin” on the “Free” shelf and wondered if we were related.) So did the most soft-spoken person I have ever met in my life. If I leaned forward and said “What?” I could barely hear him. He was a “programmer,” tall, thin, bald but bushy bearded. He said – I think – he would return after he settled his cappuccino and pastry but he did not. He sat two tables away and acted like he never saw me before in his life.
Maybe it is because UC is on vacation.
Maybe I have saturated the market.
Maybe I need another new sign.
Maybe it is the nature of the business. This week someone posted at the Authors’ Guild Message Board that Lightening Source has 18,000,000 different POD books available, and Ingram another 750,000 titles in its warehouse. This is not surprising. Two years ago, the median income from writing for a Guild member was $6000, down 42% from 2009. (Income from book sales was $3100, down 50%.) “Full-time” authors’s median income was $20,000. I do better on Social Security – and I took my money early.]
The only response to this post was from a fellow urging members not to give up. All you had to do, he counseled, was publish four novels a year and, in your spare time I suppose, promote them relentlessly.

In other news…
“I Will Keep You Alive” garnered Adele and me a rave e-mail from musician/author (“Rock Folk,” “Ray Charles: Man and Music”), and – in interest of full disclosure – friend of over 40-years Michael Lydon. “So good… so funny… a truly great accomplishment… Super, super, super… Amazing.”
From his lips to the Editor of the NYT Book Review’s ears.

Sold two copies of “Cheesesteak.”
The buyer was that folk musician from Detroit who hangs at the cafe to whom I’d given one last week. The first was for a fellow who runs a recording studio in Philly. The second for a guy who lives here and whom I know because his father was our family doctor back in the days of house calls and because I waited on his bunk’s table at Camp Tacoma. (See p. 45.) He was a sweet 10-year-old then who came to Berkeley around when I did and, now with a pig-tail down his back, sold pretzels from a food cart near Saither Gait before becoming a major hippie entrepreneur. His guitar shop (new and used), still psychedelic painted, is known world-wide.
And gave an “I Will Keep You Alive” to the fellow who’d helped Adele and meI move stuff from my office after I retired. (See p. 113 of that one). Then he’d sold “Street Spirit,” a newspaper for and about the homeless, outside the café because he’d been laid off from Chevron.
Now he was doing it again, laid off due to ill health (CHF) and trying to get back on his feet. Even though it had been eight years, he recognized me.
Also got an inquiry – but no purchase – about “Schiz” from an unshaven, skinny fellow in a raincoat and camo cap. “Wanna buy a book?” I said. “Can’t afford it,” he said. His name was “Solanoo.” “I made it up. It means ‘New Sun.’”

In other news, it’s been a good period for words-of-mouth.
1.) Leif, the mathematician, came out of the corner table where he usually sits bent over his papers to say he wanted to tell me how much he’d liked IWKYA. “Terrifying,” he said.
2.) Then Joseph (or whatever I called him before), the retired assistant library clerk, e-mailed augmentation of his earlier praise by comparing it to an operatic aria between a man and woman, with “the sweeping emotions” of my and Adele’s alternating voices overwhelming him.
3.) Finally, Jean-Paul, the founder of Berkeley’s first co-operatively owned record store and the most knowledgeable person about pop music I know, read my seminal article “Dylan: The Man, the Moment, the Italian Meats Sandwich.” I have always considered it the best thing ever written about Bob, a view not widely shared, and it was nice to hear him call it “Evocative, hilarious and profound. PHENOMENAL!”

Reports of two sales (one actual, one contemplated).
That one, of “Outlaws, Rebels…,” would be of its e-book version, if that even exists, since its buyer would be to an artist/cartoonist in Serbia, who contacted me via Facebook, because she is a friend of another artist/cartoonist in Serbia, who recommended it, and the cost of postage makes a direct purchase from me unappetizing.
The other sale (“Most Outrageous”) went to a woman in Virginia who, having learned her reputed father died more than 10 months before her birth, has come to believe, for reasons unexplained, that her true dad, if not the subject of my book, is likely to have been his brother – or their father. She e-mailed me a request for any photos in my possession obtained during my research which might aid in her Visual Recognition study.
That both these events occurred the same week that a jackass I’d known in Powelton Village showed up, fictionalized, in a “New Yorker” story, and, after I’d mentioned to a fellow I had just met who had graduated Haverford College in 1964, the only two classmates of his I’d known, and he turned out to have roomed with one and baby sat for child of the other after he’d returned to school following an expulsion for heroin use, led me to ponder the mysteries of connection that string the web or our lives.
I may have also said, “It’s a small world.”

I also gave away two books.
An “I Will Keep You Alive” went to my optometrist, who was retiring after 40 years in practice. She is devoted enough to Ram Dass, whose favorable quote adorns our front cover, to have sat at his feet in Hawaii within the last year. She also knocked to cover price of books her patients gave her off their bill. Alas, this deal seems to have ended since my last book landed.
And a “Cheesesteak” went to a fellow drawn to my table by me new (See previous “Adventure”) “Meet the Author” sign. A leading member of the café’s acoustic music gang and a veteran of the Village and Bay Area folk scenes, I’d gone up in his estimation, once he’d learned I’d actually written the books I was peddling. He wa from Detroit and a couple years older than me, but by the time we’d connected around comics and early rock’n’roll, I knew he’d be a perfect reader. We’d gotten around to basketball – and his playing against Dave DeBuscherre and Togo Pallazzi – when I had to leave.