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I just finished…

…”Can’t and Won’t,” a collection of short stories by Lydia Davis.

I had previously read Davis’s “Complete Stories,” which this subsequent volume has rendered in need of a retitling. I’d also read of hers given me by a woman to whom I’d recommended Davis and who’d rushed off to buy everything she could find by her at Amazon — and hated it.

I generally don’t read short stories. I don’t find you can do as much with them as with a book. But a collection works better for me. And Davis is a lot of fun. She is non-traditional, to say the least. A “story,” for her, may be a dozen words long. It may be dreams, either hers or someone else’s. It may be edited passages from Flaubert’s letters. But one is “Can’t,” “Seals” seems to me, by any standard, to be a masterpiece. (Among her less-traditionals, I liked “Cows” a lot.)

Davis raises the question “What is a story?” Her answer seems to be “Anything a story-writer says it is,” which is itself only a narrowing of Duchamp’s axiom that “Art is anything an artist says it is.”

That can be a good thing to keep in mind as you go about within the world.

Adventures in Marketing: Week 38

No café sales.

A lawyer I knew when I was in practice asked how my writing was going. But…

A woman said, “I have a library with 3000 books, and if I bring one more home, my children will kill me.”

A thirtyish fellow, longish black hair, thickish black-framed glasses, lots of black clothes, asked if the books on display were mine.

I assured him they were.

He examined each, front cover and back. He riffled through some, lingering the most at the cartoons in “most Outrageous.” Which was understandable.

He assured me I was a credit to Berkeley.

B.
Sold a “Schiz” to the sole law school classmate with whom I have even semi-regular contact. He e-mailed he’d enjoyed “Cheesesteak,” which I’d comp’d him. He’d known some of the characters and locales (pp. 78-87) and asked about them, which was cool. He also wanted a “Best Ride” and a “Pirates/Mouse” to give an Overbrook High School classmate of his, now “living as a mountain man in West Virginia.”

That sounds like a story-and-a-half.

[All books available from www.theboblevin.com]

Lunch

Every Tuesday we share a club sandwich — no mayo, no fries, extra salad — at a restaurant owned by Iranian emigres, usually staffed by Latin Americans, occasionally an Asian or Eritrean. When we sat down, “Stay” was on the sound system, followed by “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Speedo.” “We may be the only people in here who were alive when these songs were popular.” I scanned the customers more carefully. “In fact, we may be the only ones alive within 30 years of that.”

“Bye Bye Love” was playing when a grey haired woman using a walker entered. “She should be up and dancing in a minute,” I said.

“Probably she heard it a block away,” Adele said, “and the music drew her.”

Our server said she had chosen the station. My question surprised her. “It’s very popular?” she said. “People in Columbia love it.”

“This was the music of our teenage years,” Adele said.

“Would you like a mimosa?” the server said.

Wait till they hear the Beatles, I thought.

Adventures in Marketing: Week 37

Sold copies of “The Schiz” to two alte cockers at the health club, both veteran readers of my stuff. (One hasn’t paid yet, but, a retired lawyer/professor, he’s good for it.) Since I’m not discounting this item, even for pals, each got a complimentary “Huge.” Swapped a “Cheesesteak” to a Penn man for an UG-friendly zine he edit/publishes.

Speaking of Penn, my café friend Hap, another alum, I send a “C.steak” to the “Gazette,” its all-university mag for its Class Notes (“Bob Levin L.’67…). Figuring it would draw more eyes than the law school’s equivalent, I did, but since I usually toss the Gazette when it arrives, I didn’t know the notice’d run till Hap gave me his copy.

If any sales result, I shall let you know.

[Bob Levin’s books are available from this very web site.]

Leather Tales (con.)

For those of you who have been wondering about my new pants.

They are fine.

The second best thing about them is the front pockets. You can stick an entire hand in. (What you do with it then is your business.)

The major drawback is that if you are a 33, you can snap open the waist button by bending over. (Or maybe that is not a problem.) But if you are a 34, I would buy a 36.

The best thing is that they — buffalo hide, grey, pebble-grained — don’t look like leather pants. They don’t have the glitz. They look like faded/distressed black jeans. In fact, I wore mine for a day without Adele noticing.

Of course, as my brother said, “What’s the point of wearing leather pants, if no one knows they’re leather. You might as well wear corduroy.”

I am mulling this over.

Adventures in Marketing: Week 36

Sold a “Schiz” to an editor/publisher of indie books to one of which I had contributed. Swapped a copy of “Outlaws, Rebels…” to a Serbian cartoonist/filmmaker for a pdf of a graphic novel of his. Gave a copy of “Cheesesteak” to an eminent octogenarian conspiracy theorist in Philadelphia, turning the other cheek to his judgment that my own views on his primary area of expertise were “preposterous and indefensible.” Gave another to a fellow in the health club locker room whose inquiry about the reliability of its scale led me to inquire, “You from Philadelphia?” (He was astounded to learn he had an accent.) Overbrook Park. Central High School ’67. Out here visiting a sob.

So much good will established, but with the postage to Serbia, finished in the red.

My Head and Lydia Davis (con.)

Here is a Lydia Davis story:

HER BIRTHDAY
105 years old
she wouldn’t be alive today
even if she hadn’t died
…
why is this a story you may very well ask
why isn’t this another one

I just finished…

…”Marine Layer” (BlazeVOX Books. 2015) by Kit Robinson.

We’d met playing pick-up basketball at Live Oak Park. (He was better.) He knew I’d written “Best Ride,” which warmed my heart, and we had a mutual friend — whom neither of us see any longer. Kit left our game, but when he joined my health club, I introduced him to the other poet I knew there as “a language poet.” (I must have read that somewhere for I did not know a “language poet” from a Baltimore oriole.) “Oh, is that what I am?” Kit said. When I said I was having difficulty with his poems’ meaning, he said, “What does ‘meaning’ mean?” Which was helpful.

Kit has published 20 books. In this one, the poems run a page or two. They are composed of simple, declarative lines, one lain atop another like bricks, but with no periods to hold them. Each word seems carefully chosen, but links between lines are not always apparent. They seem ordered more by internal, improvisatory associations than more customary and comforting principles.

The poems address time/moments. Memory. Appearance/disappearance. Fate/destiny. “(T)he conditional nature of existence.” There is frequent “mist” or “fog.” The poems can be funny too. Word play is often at work. “Workers of the word, unite,” Kit writes. “Home is where the harp is.” “Shine on Harley-Davidson.” Knowing of — and sharing — Kit’s interest in bball and Bob Dylan, it was fun to see Purvis Short and Crazy Chester on his pages. “I couldn’t shoot for shit” and “While fishermen hold flowers.” But here he is at his more gnarly:

No likelihood of neighborhood
Blue bottle fly by night stocking
Sovereignty is bat shit
The star inside the rock.

Or, how about:

A movie theater is a restaurant
A cigarette is a glass of milk.

Does it help that “A pronoun is a glass of milk” too?

I suggest rereadings. I suggest thinking. Some fog lifts. Some fog clears.

Adventures in Marketing: Week 35

Sold one “Cheesesteak.” Its cover caught the eye of a fellow at the café, an ex-Berkeley High teacher, who was from Conshohocken and graduated Temple, ’62. He balked at the price, but I threw in a “Huge,” and we were cool.

In other news, a) it looks like we’re a “Go” with Milo’s distributor pal. “The Schiz” will be in his company’s fall catalog — and maybe “Cheesesteak” too. So coming soon to a store near you… (But to avoid the rush, you may order both — and other of Bob’s books now — from this very web site.)

And b) the ten lucky winners of the “Cheesesteak” lottery at Goodreads have been announced. (There were 690 entries, and the over/under — well, there is no “under” — on how many heartbroken losers will now order a copy they must pay for is Zero.) Statistical analysis shows one was male and nine were female. They reside in nine states. (Texas had two.) Mostly they came from cities I had not heard of. (The biggest were Talahassee, Corpus Christi, and Columbus, OH.) Mostly they read, like, James Patterson and Steven King. The youngest was 20 and he oldest not within a decade of me.(The over/under on how many of my previous books the winners had read is Zero too.)

I inscribed each copy “Thanks for the interest. Enjoy.” I included my card/e-mail address in each. I look forward to any responses.

Life in the 21st Century (con.)

The Vietnam vet who had installed the garage door had disappeared. Miguel, who had fixed the door the last time, had quit the business. The woman at the 877 number took the information and said someone would call him within the hour and the job would be done within four. When he called back two hours late, the woman said she would put him through to the dispatcher. The dispatcher wanted to confirm he was Levy Robin. Robin Levy said that was not so. The dispatcher wanted to confirm he lived in Kipplefinger, California. Robin Levy said that was not so. The dispatcher said he would put him through to his supervisor. The phone rang 15 times before an electronic voice said there was no room for additional messages. When he called back, the woman said she would have someone call him immediately. An hour later, when he and his wife walked past the answering machine they saw that someone had called on the number he had told them not to call and that because of emergencies, no one could come until tomorrow.

[Bob Levin’s books are available from this very web site.]