No sales.
One notable almost-transaction though.
I’ve seen Jules around for years. Sometimes he is in one café, sometimes another. Sometimes he’s in the copy shop, sometimes the laundromat. Usually he is thickly bearded, black with grey. Sometimes he is shaved. He always has bags and backpacks and blankets and sleeping bag with him which he piles next to where he is sitting and that, after a time, cause the manager of his place of choice to ask him to transfer his allegiance. Usually, he sleeps in a shed on the grounds of a synagogue where he views himself as providing “security.” A few months ago, he was granted SSI and now sometimes sleeps at the Y.
Nick knows a lot about jazz. The other day I learned he’d been a fine tenor player. When I mentioned this, he said, “Average. But I could fake it.” This led to a discussion – well, monologue – about his playing in clubs in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Dexter Gordon was mentioned. Sonny Simmons. A group of Jewish, Ivy League – he was specific about this – Yale, Brown, Princeton – reed players of New Music, with whom he’d gigged in Berkeley in the ‘80s. Then there was a beating he’d received when his horn was stolen, and, after which, he never played again.
He asked which was my newest book.
I pointed to “Bob on Bob.”
He said he had read parts of “Best Ride.” “But something was wrong with how it was printed.”
I had never heard that complaint before.
“Where was your head at when you wrote it?”
I had never been asked that either.
I told him the genre in which I’d seen myself working. I mentioned the stylists by whom I’d felt influenced. This led no further into matters of literature so I offered him “Bob” as a gift.
He insisted on paying.
“$10,then. Or $5. $2. Whatever you can afford. I also take trade.” He’d mentioned tapes of his playing.
“A poem?”
“I’ve done poetry.”
He spoke four words, two rhyming.
“I wasn’t thinking oral. But okay.”
Now Nick had reconsidered. He proposed we meet at an outdoor café he had discovered in which the owner was friendly to him. I accepted – but he could not remember the street it was on and didn’t have a phone on which I could call him when he found out. We agreed that he would come by my café and we would walk down together.
In other news…
“Messiahs,” my publisher advises, will be released in June. Because it’s a limited edition, promotion will be slim. Distribution will be taken care of. Amazon, book databases, and social media. If I want a reading, it will see what it can do.
I’m not big on readings, but I’d probably okay any invitation that comes my way. My main event will be the launch party I am planning for the café. Meanwhile, copies can be ordered by sending $30, (plus $5 for mailing if you don’t plan to pick it up in person) to POB 9492, Berkeley 94709. The book will also be available at my web site (www.theboblevin.com), but it’s not there yet.
Remember, “limited” edition. Act quick and don’t get left out.
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.