Sold one “I Will Keep You Alive.”
The buyer was a fellow Mended Hearts Visitor. (MH, as some of you may know, is an organization for people who’ve had heart surgery, and Visitors are members who see post-surgery patients in hospitals to answer their questions or address their concerns as someone who’s been through it.) Since doctors have recommended that visiting be suspended for a while, this fellow, a 60-something financial adviser, has free time he can spend reading.
My doctor has also recommended I stop hanging out in cafes, so my reports of adventures may be suspended for a while as well. My friend Budd, a noted public health expert, has opined my shift in habits may allow me access to new and enriching experiences; but, so far that has been limited to catching up on the dozen recorded-but-unwatched episodes of “Better Call Saul” I have at my disposal.

In other news…
1.) I have learned of four indie cartoonist/self-publishers who’ve also been duped by “Bernie.” (See last week’s Adventure.) If anyone knows an investigative reporter looking for a story and an anonymous source…
2.) I repeat myself perhaps, but University of Kentucky Press has published J.T. Dockery’s graphic adaptation of Ed McClanahan’s “Juanita & the Frog Prince,” to which I have contributed a 3500-word introduction. If you don’t want to spring for the $25 cover price, ask your library to order it. “Looks great – and smells great,” Adele says.
3.) Among my FB birthday wishes came praise for IWKYA from (1) a noted East Bay lefty journalist (and basketball buddy) “Extraordinary”; and (2) a celebrated Big Apple musician/ composer “LOVED IT!!! LOVED IT!!!” (All exclamation points in the original.)

Sold an “I Will Keep You Alive” to an 80-ish poet at the health club, we have known for a couple decades. She had read “Cheesesteak,” and, I guess, wanted to catch up on Bob and Adele: The Golden Years.
Anyway, with her $15 in my pocket, the coronavirus has not impacted negatively upon my economy yet.

In other news…
1.) Faithful readers will recall that Spruce Hill Press (me) had the benefit of a distribution deal with Ingram/Consortium through a Bay Area guy (Let’s call him “Bernie” – as in “Madoff,” not “Sanders”) who bundled together several small, indie publishers to make a package big ernough for I/C to handle. This went well for a minute. Then Bernie stopped sending checks. His excuses had not quite reached “The dog ate my homework,” when he announced he was broke and Ingram was dropping him. So now I’m trying to figure out (a) how much Spruce Hill has been shorted; (b) how to keep Ingram from sending more of my money to Bernie; and( c) how to get my books still in the a=warehouse returned to me, not him.
2.) Remember how last week I got the nicest fan letter I ever received? Well this week I received the nastiest. (The first was about a collection of essays about transgressive cartoonists I’d published in 2005. The second was about an article about Frank Frazetta in 2011.)
“Bizarre,” she called it. “Disjointed,” “incohesive (sic),” “nearly unreadable,” “distorted,” “unskilled,” absurd,” the product of “a bad batch of peyote” or “LSD addled.” “It is readily apparent,” she concluded, “you have always been considered a bad joke, poor critic, and a lousy writer.”
It felt like the universe had felt the need to restore some balance. Did I hear someone say “yin” and “yang”?

No sales.
But some experiences.

1.) Publisher reports sale of French rights to an interview I conducted with underground cartoonist legend Clay Wilson (“The Comics Journal” No. 293). True, the interest is in Wilson, one of the great interviewees of my lifetime, not my prose, but it means it will now be available in its third language (following English and Italian); and 68.01 euros (my cut) ain’t chopped liver. I mean, pate fois de gras.
2.) An underground comix scholar who says we met, oh, what-must-have-been 15-years ago, asked if I had any information about “Junk Comics,” by a cartoonist whose name he believed to be Kevin Barthelme. I found my presumed expertise flattering, but I didn’t have a clue, and Don Donohue, my go-to-guy for info on the UGs, had passed in 2010.
I looked up the book in one of Don’s old catalogues. No issue number, so that must have been the only one. No information but the price: $3.50.
The value of, perhaps, the artistic output of a lifetime.
3.) A middle-aged (I think) artist from Chester County (I think), Pennsylvania, found a copy of “Outlaws, Rebels…” (Fanta. 2005) in an art book store in Harrisburg. She was only up to “‘Yes, Yes,’ She Panted,” when my “vigorous and unapologetic defense” of transgressive art, of which she herself is a creator, spoke to her so personally and affirmatively that she felt moved to write. “I have never read anything quite like what you have done…,” she said.
Sometimes, when I have written something good, I sit back and think, Wow! I have never read anything like that.
To hear someone else say it…

No sales.
But…
I.
Over a year ago, the café installed two shelves, each about seven-feet above floor level, which display books written by its customers. At the beginning of the week, Annie, one of the afternoon crowd, asked what mine – “something about NY” – was about. She was considering taking it down and reading it.
It had never occurred to me that people would think these books could be taken home and read over bean sprouts and lentils. Plus Annie was of a height where she would have to stand on a table to reach it. Plus of an age where standing on a table would not be recommended.
“It’s an existential sports novel,” I said. “For $5, you can have your very own, personally inscribed, first edition. ‘Superbly written’” said the “Times.”
“Oops,” she said. “I don’t read about sports.”
“Oops, yourself,” I said. “Would you believe it’s about life and death?”
No answer.
II.
The other morning, I caught a cute blonde eying my display.
“Wanna buy a book?” I said.
“I haf many book,” she said. “And only hef way through “Infinite Jest.”
“I can’t compete with David Foster Wallace,” I said. “You have excellent taste. Are you from Russia?”
“Ungary,” she said. “I am ungarian.”
Just like Zoltan Karpathy, I thought. “Every time I turn around/There he was that hairy hound. From Budapest./Never have I met a ruder pest.”
“I lif Oakland and fur now drife Ooober.”
I gave her my card.
She thanked me. And said he had great respect for authors.
III.
To keep from blending in with the decor, I alternate my J. T. Dockery sign with my S. Clay Wilson. I had that one up when a 60-something guy recognized The Checkered Demon.
“Not too many people remember Checks,” I said. “You a cartoonist?”
“Sometimes. I’m in construction.” He explained how, before sprayers came along, you applied something by hand – plaster maybe – and each guy had his own stroke, so you could walk onto a job and recognize who had done it. “That’s when I knew I was making art.”
“That’s what Duchamp said,” I said. “Anything is art if an artist says it is.”
“I like that,” he said. “Mainly I’m a plumber.”
“We can always use a plumber,” I said. “You got a card?”
He laughed. “On a construction site, you take out a card, somebody’ll say, ‘I’ll show you a card’ and grab a hunk of cardboard and write his name on it.”
I gave him mine. “Vista Print,” I said. “700 for $9.95.”
He took a 5″ X 8″ cards from me. And a pen.
When he came back, the card was folded in two. On the front was a guy in a baseball cap who looked like he might have been a pal of Tubby’s. Inside, it said, “Mr. Bob: Appreciate the Company. Edward S.”

Sold three (“Count ‘em! THREE!”) books.
First, a “Cheesesteak” went to a baseball-capped fellow (“You from Philadelphia?”), from West Chester State, out of Scranton, in town to visit a brother living in Petaluma. “I’ll read it on the plane back,” he said.
Then their Dad, who substitute school teaches, stopped by the table. One of his students self-published, so he was intrigued by my DIY approach. He went for the more age-appropriate “I Will Keep You Alive.”
A couple days later, a woman in her late 60s came over. She’d seen me before, and, it seemed, curiosity had got the better of her. She was a poet, lived in Benicia, an arty town to the north, and went for an IWKYA, less the cover price of her chap book she swapped me.
Then there was “Teddy,” who didn’t buy but was noteworthy. She had a half-inch-high brown Mohawk strip down the center of shaved head, adorned by various tattoos. I could not tell if her speech was garbled or nonsensical or French. When I complimented the flowing black garment, a purple Rorsharch Test-like design on the back, which she wore like a poncho, she told me she had found it. She was most interested in “The Schiz” but had no money.
“Maybe next time,” I said.

In other news…
1.) An editor has raised objection of my description of an Hispanic woman in a piece I submitted as objectionable “racial stereotyping.” This seems to be under negotiation.
2,) Another editor has explained he has maintained silence over for a year or two since itrs submission as having been occasioned by managerial upheaval and budgetary but assures me he loves the piece and hopes to run it.
3.) There has been less success with my “distribution” connection. Instead of responding to my inquiries with excuses, evasions, blame-shifting,pleas for understanding and patience, and – I hate to admit it – lies, he has withdrawn into a veritable Cone of Silence. The next step is on me.
Fuck.

“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.”