I sold one book and one I… We’ll get to that.
The sale, “Outlaws, Rebels…,” was to a 70-something therapist at the café. She wanted it for a “young cartoonist” of her acquaintance. “How young?” I asked. “Ninth grade,” she said. I was not sure ninth graders were ready for S. Clay Wilson, Dori Seda, Rory Hayes. I had barely managed “Man With the Golden Arm” myself. “I’ll look forward to hearing what he thinks,” I said.
As for the other…
Attentive readers will recall the artist/electrician who bought an “Outlaws…” last week. (Incidentally, the recent run on this title has caused me to go on-line to replenish my stock. Only three are currently available.) He loved it and read it straight through. He most admired my participation in the pieces. (“Autocritography,” an academic friend once termed what I was doing.) He wondered if I had anything else like it. I said “Goshkin” was the closest thing, and I would bring a copy the next day.
Then we started talking novels. Twice in my life, six years and 3000 miles apart, the hippest person at the party told me his favorite book was William Gaddis’s “The Recognitions.” After the second time, I read it – and did again a decade later. Not only had the electrician read “The Recognitions,” he had read everything Gaddis had ever written. (He had also read Flann O’Brien, Italo Calvino, Raymond Queneau, Gilbert Sorrentino, and several French Surrealists I had never heard of.) He had another Gaddis I had to read (“A Frolic of His Own”), which he would lend me.
The next day he didn’t come. He did the day after that – but had forgotten the Gaddis. He said he would go home to get it. I said it wasn’t necessary but he said, “It will help me be a conscious person.” When he returned, he said the book was a gift, so I made a gift of “Goshkin.”
Oh yeah…
Readers will also recall the landlord to whom I gave an “Outlaws…” to deliver to his tenant for which he was to return $15, which he had failed to do. After a couple reminders, the landlord honorably gave me the cash and said he would take over the risk of collection himself.
In other news…
1.) No word has reached me as to (a) if or when my next article will be up at TCJ or (b) how the formatting of my Dylan book is progressing. Not have I received any newly proofread chapters of my next comix collection. However, an additional proofreader may be stepping in to help. It is a question of the number of pages to be checked and the time within which to do it fit her own schedule.
2.) A fellow who is writing a book about a cartoonist I wrote about over 30 years ago has contacted me for I am apparently the greatest living expert on her life. At least I mention things about her in my article no one else does has mentioned anywhere. He wondered about my sources. However, some years ago, I told him, I had concluded that no university would be requesting my papers and, feeling embittered toward scholars, had cleared my files of drafts and notes. He said that was likely a mistake. “Academics have become increasingly interested in the study of comics (and…) some young upstarts (may want) to do an in-depth history of comics criticism.”
I did find a cassette tape of an interview with the cartoonist’s boyfriend but (a) the last time I listened to one of these tapes, time’s degradations had made the voice unrecognizable; (b) I no longer had a working device on which to listen to this one; and © the odds are I was interviewing the boy friend about something else entirely. I offered the fellow the tape and the chance to have his own Geraldo-Opens-Al-Capone’s-Vault moment.
Stay tuned.
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.