Adventures in Marketing: Week 31

Sold two “Cheesesteak”‘s. One to a guy in my locker room aisle. One to the wife of an ex-officemate at the café. My “Buy Bob’s Books” display also attracted a tall, thin, angular thirty-something woman, in striking lime green tights, black hoodie and black baseball cap, who was further off her rocker than she had initially appeared.

Previously, Renee Blitz, the octogenarian writer of idiosyncratic, profane, semi-punctationless feuilletons, of which Adele and I are great fans but at which most others, including her daughters, roll their eyes, proposed she and I read jointly at the Jewish Seniors Center.

“I don’t think I’m Jewish enough,” I said.

“You’re Jewish enough,” she said.

“if you arrange it,” I said.

This week Renee reported, “They don’t want us.”

“Why not?” I said.

“She didn’t give a reason. She just said, ‘No.'”

“That’s it,” I said. “Tell her I’m converting to Roman Catholicism.”

Kafka in the Hot Tub

My latest is up at http://broadstreetreview.com/books-movies/renee-blitzs-poet-of-transparency

I thought Renee was trying to drive me crazy with her quotation marks. Sometimes she didn’t use them. Okay, William Gaddis didn’t either. But sometimes they were in the same story that they were not. And sometimes there was a “ but no ”. And sometimes, springing up unexpected, like a toadstool on a sidewalk, was a ” when there was no “, unless you counted the last unanswered “ several pages before; but that could not be because she had several paired “ ”s between.