I just finished…

…”Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker,” by Renata Adler. I have been going through a period of intense interest in and admiration of Adler when, in reading a career-spanning collection of selections of her non-fiction, I came across a piece she’d written in response to criticism of “Gone” and realized I hadn’t read it. So I stopped reading the collection and bought “Gone.”

“Gone” is not great Adler. It is about the firing of “The New Yorker”‘s long-time editor, William Shawn, whom Adler, within limits, supported. While her book is critical of the firing, it is also critical of two books by other supporters of Shawn, Ved Mehta and Lillian Ross. With this out of the way, it settles down to a more generalized, undocumented and unauthenticated who-did-and-said-what score-settling. It is replete with, to my mind, unsubstantiated but perhaps correct judgments about “The New Yorker”‘s decline.

And, boy, does she dislike Adam Gopnik.

First “Cheesesteak” review

Bob Ingram, a writer I like, has reviewed “Cheesesteak” at “The Broad Street Review.”
http://bit.ly/28vmc8s
Since that is where most of the contents originally appeared, I may have had a home court advantage, but once he assured the editor he’d “never met the dude,” she ran it.
Now we’ll see if anyone can figure out where to buy it, should they be so inclined.

Marketing: Week 3

Sales steady at three. One to a basketball pal. One to a woman at the French, on whom I’d been counting since we often discuss books and despite her shying away from old white male American authors. One to a woman on my Notice-Sent-To list. I’d considered her no more than 50:50 but she even included a sweet note.

Responses continue to interest and gratify. Readers have reacted to my mentions of Eddie Waitkus, Ma & Pa Kettle, and Richard Alpert. (And where else, I wonder, were you likely to find this trifecta?) The last of the trio led an 85-year-old woman to recount a date with him that involved psilocybin and a flight in his private plane.

One French acquaintance praised my recreating the “spirit of Philadelphia,” where, it turned out, he’d never been. A second felt I’d perfectly captured his adolescence, though he was 15-years my junior and Berkeley born and bred. A college roommate appreciated the “waves of nostalgia” unleashed. A current pal said, “All your voices evoke/resonate/reconnect the lost/smothered/disconnected/hidden voices carried in me.”

Still, I considered how to broaden my reach. I e-mailed the alumni associations of two West Philadelphia high schools, offering to contribute $2 for each copy sold to their members to their libraries. Neither replied. An on-line site offered to promote me to book bloggers. I requested contact information on two of its satisfied customers. It did not reply. Another self-publisher suggested we do a joint reading at a Jewish community center. “Deal,” I said. “You set it up.” A locker aisle friend, continually launching ventures designed to elevate h8mself into state or national prominence, counseled that I needed, “A SWOT Analysis. Look into the mirror. What do you see? What are your Strengths? Weaknesses? Opportunities? Threats?”

I looked into his locker instead and saw the unopened envelope of the “Cheesesteak” I’d delivered to him ten days before.

Marketing (5.): Some Moral Implications (a.)

My admission that I judge people be whether they buy “Cheesesteak” and, if they do, by how they respond to it has troubled my friend Robert, a visual artist and man of unimpeachable ethical standards, who is not undelighted by jerks of my chain.

First, he suggests, a certain hypocrisy may lie. “Would you buy a book from someone you saw selling it in a café?” he probingly inquires.

That exact situation has never presented itself, but I once bought a book from a wandering troubadour-like North African fellow perched on the sidewalk outside Vine Street Peet’s. I have bought volumes of poetry from Julia Vinograd as she roamed around Telley, and I’ve bought homemade CDs from aspiring Rap artists outside Downtown Berkeley BART. Support the arts, is my motto.

So, yeah, pure as driven snow, I am, here.

But Robert’s second area of concern, that my actions with my book represented a moral defect, which had been recognized as long ago as Richardson’s novel “Clarissa, struck a sore spot. For Clarissa said she would be displeased with herself “if I should judge the merits of others as they were kind to me…. For is this not to suppose myself ever in the right and all those who do not as I would have them act, perpetually in the wrong.”

Okay, I am going to have to work on that one.

(To be continued…)

Flight

After sitting on it for a year or two, “First of the Month” has just put up on line my piece “Flight From the Everybodies,” re-entitled “Flight of the Somebodies.” This is cool, but since this is the concluding chapter of my recently published “Cheesesteak: The West Philadelphia Years: A Rememboir,” available from the very web site, I will not, as is my usual custom, supply a link. Why compete with myself, I figure. Plus why spoil the frigging ending?

Marketing (4)

I sold five books. One at the café to someone with whom I chat. Two to people to whom I’d sent notices (one lawyer, one basketball pal). Two as gifts to former Philadelphians from a college buddy.

I have heard from slightly more than half the people I sent copies and slightly more than one-fifth the people I sent notices (and half these bought copies). I sent additional group e-mails to high school classmates and lawyers at a chat room who had neither received previous copies or notices, for a total of zero responses.

Readers have responded with “amusing,” “enjoyable,” an easy read,” “moving.” One thanked me for “capturing… the essence of adolescent experience” and another its “issues, fears and hopes.” One reader commented on my sister’s death and one on my mention of Little Walter. People who have observed me at a café have nodded, smiled, asked if I was “selling something” and if it was my “office.” One woman said, “Very cool.”

Another self-publishing author suggested we share a table at a local book festival — but all tables were already gone. Another person suggested I sell at the local farmers market — but book sellers are not allowed there. On the plus side, after several attempts, I managed to install an app on my Iphone so I can take credit cards.

The fellow in Philly who promised to send me his book did. It’s a coffee table-sized volume, richly illustrated, from Temple University Press, so I can out way ahead there. And I’ve entered into correspondence with the owner of Jim’s Steaks, on South Street, which, I’ve learned, has different ownership than the Jim’s on 62nd, or the Jim’s in the Northeast, or the one in Springfield.

The Message

Some months ago, readers will recall, I decided to solve the mystery of a half-century old domestic political murder. My approach was to take the arguments in two books which believed this murder resulted from a vast conspiracy and compare them with the arguments in two books which believed one crazed individual responsible. In my research I came across an argument put forth by a member of the first school, whom, for purposes of this discussion, I will call A. One part of A’s argument stood on a “message,” reported by a man I shall call B in a book of B’s authorship. This message, A concluded, came as a “direct” order from C and constituted “conclusive evidence” of the greater proposition in which A believed.
I did not believe this proposition. And while much else argued against this leg of A’s argument, I could not directly kick it from beneath him since my local library lacked B’s book. Then recently I came across a copy at Alibris, thought to myself, What the hell, and plunked down 99-cents, (plus $3 postage). It seemed a sign that I should once again re-engage with this twisted bowel of American political thought.

There turned out to be no “message,” as A described it. He had clearly considered it a single communication. (“(T)his message,” “this same message,” “this announcement,” “the… message,” and “that message” is how he referred to it.) It is also clear that he believed this message contained two factual assertion. The first of these, which we’ll call “a,” asserted something’s existence; and the second, which we’ll call “b,” asserted the non-existence of something else.
In point of fact, B’s book reported a series of communications – not one – and they, neither singly nor in any combination, recreated what A said. There was, to be specific, an “a”; but there was no “b.” Viewing his thinking most favorably, A seems to have reasoned that since none of the communications discussed “b”’s existence or non-existence at all, they were denying it. Of course, by this measure, these communications could also be said to be denying the existence of chicken noodle soup.
Furthermore, none of these communications were attributed to C; nor was he referred to in any of them. A seems to have divined C’s responsibility for the messages from the fact of their existence, coupled with C’s alleged authority over the location from which some of them issued. It should be noted in this regard that A’s overall thesis is otherwise replete with people acting counter to what their superiors would have expected, C among them. Why those ostensibly under C’s command might not have acted similarly is not apparent; but, irregardless, C-directed or not, since there was no“b,”this portion of A’s argument collapses.

It is hard for me to believe that someone could read as carelessly or report as inaccurately or reason as shoddily as A had. (His greater argument, by the way, did not even require the existence of this “message.”) It is, of course, possible that A was not inaccurate or careless or shoddy but that he was deliberately duplicitous. I am, however, too positively disposed toward my fellow man to believe this. I prefer to think his ardent belief in the importance of the truth he had to deliver to the rest of us led him to overlook the troublesome aspects of the product he was selling. Sort of like Mormon missionaries and the Angel Moroni.
Besides, this inability to read, this indifference to facts, this insult to reason, this presumption that your assertions will not be checked is not the point. Who these people whom I have alphabetized are and what was and was not said in this “message” is of secondary concern. What is significant to me at this moment in history is what that which I have described says about the difficulties involved in determining what – and whom – to believe. Every day, from any number of sources, we receive an uncountable number of assertions which we are asked to accept as true. But we rarely have – or take – the time to check the ins and outs or twists and turns of these assertions.
It may be that the public has been so discouraged by discourse of the caliber of A’s that it has given up hope of discovering truth. It may be, before you can turn around, the Republican Party will have nominated for president a bozo whose lies are larger than his ego, which is vast, more numerous than his slanders, which are plentiful, and more repellant than his comb-over, which is stomach-turning.

I just finished…

…”A Brief History of Seven Killings,” Marlon James’s Booker Prize winning novel about Jamaica, which comes down to drugs, murderous gangs, murderous politicians, murderous CIA agents, murderous Columbians, and murderous Cubans, which results in a unified if possibly reductive world view. The novel jumps sequentially across several decades and is presented in alternating first-person accounts by, oh, a dozen different narrators. There is little exposition to fill in background for uninformed readers and no glossary to define terms of the language of the Jamaican underclass from which most of these narrators come for those unfamiliar with it.

I am among the uninformed and unfamiliar, and my normal mode of reading — about ten pages per night in each of the four or five books I have going simultaneously — did not suit this one well. I also thought that James did not render well the speaking voices of white Americans, a language with which I am acquainted, though the speaking voices of his Jamaicans, which I must take on faith, seemed terrific.

It’s a good book — but bone up on the last fifty years of Jamaican history before jumping in.

Marketing (4.)

Another week has passed. According to the postal clerk, all copies of “Cheesesteak” should have been delivered. About half of the people who received free copies have acknowledged them. (Only one has bought a copy for someone else.) Less than one-quarter sent notice of the book but not copies have acknowledged them and only one-twentieth have bought a copy. I have sold two copies to strangers, one in a café and one on line. To expand my market I have offered two purveyors of cheesesteaks, one in Philly and one in Del Ray Beach to sell copies on consignment. Neither has replied.

Almost all responses have been positive. A few have been deeply gratifying. These responses have ranged from calling “Cheesesteak” “hilarious” to praising its “feeling for loss, beauty… and, of course, sadness.” None have been negative, but a couple readers have taken the occasion, not to respond to anything I have written, but to display their own cleverness. These are not among the reactions I cherish.

One person reads it bit-by-bit before sleep. One read it straight through and then started again. One will read it as soon as she finishes her laundry and errands. A noted celebrator of West Philadelphia did not offer to plug me, as I’d hoped, but said he would send me a copy of his memoir.

One probable alcoholic in a café where I peddle my wares disparaged my “Buy Bob’s Books!” sign. “Too busy,” he said. He found the command “Buy” offensive. He suggested a simple “For Sale” sign with a pointing arrow. I offered to trade him a book for such a sign. He said he would discuss it with an artist friend.

There the matter stands.

Mood

I was just looking through one of my folders when I found this. I am sure it was never published, and I don’t think I ever blogged it. Anyway, here it is:

MOOD
The other night, in the midst of a period of discussions of L’Affaire Polanski, where I am of the leave-the-old-scoundrel-alone persuasion, we caught, via On-Demand, the semi-charming 1987 release, “In the Mood” (Patrick Dempsey, Talia Balsam, Beverly D’Angelo), based on true events.
It seems that, in 1944, Elaine Monfredi (Balsam), a twenty-one-year-old, unmarried mother of two in Compton, California, ran off it to Arizona with her fourteen-year-old neighbor, Ellsworth “Sonny” Wisecarver (Dempsey), and married him. The honeymooners were arrested, returned to their home state, and, though Monfredi celebrated Wisecarver as “an ideal husband… (who) is kind, considerate and doesn’t believe in hitting women,” had their marriage annulled. Felony charges against Monfredi were dropped and she was placed on probation, with a condition being that she attend church once a month. Wisecarver’s parents sent him to live with a strict uncle.
In 1945, Eleanor Delaney (D’Angelo), the twenty-five-year-old wife of a Marine stationed in Japan, ran off with Wisecarver. The couple was tracked down, arrested, and after Delaney, who had boosted Wisecarver as “more of a man at sixteen than a lot of men are at thirty-five,” reconciled with her Leatherneck, all charges against her were dropped. Wisecarver, however, whom the press — having by now taken as much interest in him as if he had been riding shotgun beside Tiger Woods in his MVA, had dubbed “The Woo Woo Kid” and “The Compton Casanova,” was sentenced to the California Youth Authority until he turned twenty-one. A year later, he escaped and fled to Las Vegas, where he married a seventeen-year-old Mormon. No effort seems to have been made to extradite him.
Legal moralists argue that, in addition to rehabilitation, which has pretty much dropped from the picture due to budgetary considerations, and deterrence, whose efficacy has always proved a wobbly in the documentation department, a proper function of the criminal law is the gratification of society’s desire for revenge upon those whose conduct is so offensive it threatens to rend the basic fabric of the community. A problem for me with this approach is that what offends whom seems to vary widely from place to place and, indeed, decade to decade. In fact, with all due respect to cultural diversity, when you get down to certain orthodoxies – and here I nod both toward Mecca and Jerusalem, not to mention the Vatican – many deemed offenses seem to stem from collective societal psychoses that exposure to the light and air that frequent rendings would bring about would do a world of good.
But to return to late-1940s Compton, it is true that Wisecarver, unlike other persons of more recent interest, never claimed to have been forced or drugged into submitting to anyone’s advances. But he was, at all times, the minor victim in the picture, and if there was abuse, it was – by statutory definition – perpetrated upon him by the predatory cravings of his adult partners. Yet, as Wisecarver could not help noticing, the only one who went to jail was he. It could be that the judge thought he was not punishing Wisecarver but acting in his best interest by removing him as an object of temptation for other lustful creatures. But it may also be – as I suspect is often the case when the law is called in to regulate sexual matters – that the judge was acting out the people’s wish to slap down those it suspects of having more fun than the rest of us.