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Reflections on a Trip to SFMOMA

1.) Walking from Powell Street BART, none of the first 10 snatches of conversation I overheard were in English. Could the alt-right have a point? (I do not count the unintelligible madman screaming in the open space at 3d & Mission.)

2.) A good place to begin is the Rest Rooms on the entry floor. You will not be disappointed.

3.) Bruce Conner is a lot of fun. I hope he had a happy life.

4.) For $15, the salad with sliced chicken breast delivers a lot of lettuce.

5.) Seeing art “live” makes you realize why people want to own it.

6.) Can someone explain to me why what Chuck Close does is more significant than building a ship out of toothpicks inside a bottle? (Of course if Damian Hirst built a big one inside a big bottle it would probably go for millions.) After looking at several Chuck Close portraits, I began looking at other people in the gallery. As works of art, they were much more impressive.

7.) Am I the only person to note the similarities between Bruce Conner’s Dark Sculptures and Mike Diana’s “Boiled Angel”?

8. It was maybe our best museum visit ever. Adele said, “I was not bored, and I am always bored at museums.”

9. Along the way, I had picked up a laminated sheet of paper listing Bruce Conner’s drawings from a wooden box attached to that gallery’s wall. No one else took one, but no one stopped me either. I foresaw it being added to the other items Adele and I had brought into our hope during the last 40-odd years. But before we left, I precisely positioned in on a bench in another gallery on another floor. I saw it as a Bruce Conner-inspired act of art. Plus it was a statement about acquisition.

Adventures in Marketing: Week 32

Sold three copies of Aaron Lange’s “HUGE,” afterword by me, but sold none of my books; but I swapped a copy of “HUGE,” plus a copy of “Cheesesteak” to a museum-worthy photographer at the health club for the coffee-table sized artbook of his from the last exhibition of his work. Advantage Levin, though I have to admit he mainly wanted the comic.

However my on-line “publicist”‘s efforts have produced a second request for a review copy of “Cheesesteak.” The good news was this came from a blogger in Philadelphia. (Hey, I thought, that’s my market.) The bad news was this was “a lifestyle blog for young women dining, shopping, playing, and living” in Philadelphia. So I wrote the blogger that while I was not now and never had bee n a young woman dining, shopping, etc. in Philadelphia, some of my readership once had been and that if she and her readers didn’t find my book of relevance, her and their parents might. She replied, good naturedly, that she was looking forward to reading it.

In other news, I phone-interviewed Mike Diana for my essay-in-progress about him and his work (transcribing half done), and received an inquiry from an artist in Croatia if I would be receptive to looking at her new comic. (She thought to ask me because I had written previously about the Serbian artist Danilo Wostock.) Sure! I said — and thought, What’s next? Bosnia? Montenegro? Albania? (The first term paper I ever wrote — 4th grade — was about Albania. Everyone in the class was assigned a country. Mine was not a plum one.)

But I digress. These requests are a source of pride and pleasure and wonder to me. How did I become this guy whose attention is sought by extreme artists on two continents? (How, in fact did I come to comfortably, consistently find extreme art fine and worthy and exciting?)

“Your father would be proud,” my friend Budd said.

“Not if he saw the pictures,” I said.

“At your stature,” he said.

Readers Respond

This week, unsurprisingly, Aaron Lange’s collection of X-rated, anti-Trump illustrations, to which I contributed an Afterword, has been drawing most of the attention. Here is a sampling:

1. The small businessman (approvingly): “Pure filth.”

2. The mathematician: “How much?”
“$5.”
“Oh my God.”

3. Then there was the former high school teacher to whom I’d given a copy. (I did this because he had once given me a copy of a book by his brother, whose conferences attended in Belgrade and lectures delivered on cruise ships he never fails to keep me apprised of, and because I did not want to give him a copy of one of my own books. He could buy them.) Anyway, his reaction was to gratefully accept it and to immediately begin talking about Dr. Strange.
“That has nothing to do with this,” I said.
He apologized and began telling me about an anti-Trump cartoon his brother had sent him.
“These are better,” I said, and left.

A failed attempt at a Lydia Davis story

I am, like, ‘Change a lightbulb?’ ‘Where’s the Owner’s Manual?’ said the man. Everyone says their wife does everything. But my wife does everything. Saturday, I was playing with the kids, badminton, and they hit the, uh, bird on the roof and Timmy said, ‘Oh, now we have to wait for Mommy to come home.’ It wasn’t that he knew I wouldn’t climb on the roof but that asking was not even a consideration.

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.”

Readers Respond

“I finished ‘The Schiz.’ I hope the characters weren’t based on real people.”
A fellow at the café.
“Terrific. I think it would make a great graphic novel.”
My good friend Budd.

I tend to evaluate how people respond to my writings. I know this is not fair. I understand it’s hard to come up with responses that satisfy creators. I fuss and fret over responses myself. (Still I noted the café fellow said absolutely nothing which revealed what he thought of my book, and graded him downward accordingly.)

Budd’s response recalled to me that decades earlier, to perhaps the first draft of “The Schiz,” Max Garden, (See “Cheesesteak” p. 14 et seq.) said it reminded him of a comic book. He meant this as a compliment, but I felt my seriousness of purpose and complexity of thought dissed. So while I reacted more dispassionately to Budd’s assessment which, after all had praised the book directly, I noted his implication that it would be better as something else.

Then, later that day, Adele’s brother Gordie called. “The macabre and grotesque scenes and characters,” he said, “reminded me of those EC comics you showed Ken and Joey (His children) the first time we visited. It was like you’d created comic art in words.” Though Gordie, like Max and Budd, had connected “The Schiz” to comics, his comment alone unqualifiedly warmed me.

First was his utilization of the words “grotesque” and “macabre.” Though at first glance denoting less stars than “great” or “terrific,” he had individualized his response, narrowed it and sharpened it in a way to fit my book specifically and, at the same time, linked it to a recognized literary tradition. Flannery O’Connor, Mary Shelley, Poe. (In fact, Wikipedia says, no less than Thomas Mann called the grotesque the “genuine antibourgeoise style.”

Plus, Gordie was saying “The Schiz” satisfied as itself. It was not the equivalent of a comic. It need not become one. It had only incorporated elements of comics, as artists incorporate elements of whatever they come across and are nourished by. And I and loved the idea of having EC as one of my literary influences. At various times, I had heard — and welcomed — “Ernest Hemingway” and “Raymond Chandler” and “Nathanel West”; but EC, which had fallen upon me years before any of these eminent others, had never been cited to or accepted by me, and it suddenly seemed right and simply nice to welcome it aboard and not standing on the pier as I sailed away.

A Poem

You can find my latest piece here: http://www.firstofthemonth.org/huge/

You better be over 18, though, or we all could be in trouble.

It begins:

The shame.
The fear.
The rage.
The provocative fat.
The odious orange.
The quicksand-suck of utter revulsion.

I just finished…

…”The Rest is Noise,” a history of 20th century (mostly) “classical” music by Alex Ross.

I never listen to classical music. I especially never listen to 20th century classical music. In Music 1, I could never identify and keep my ear on a theme. I can never follow a jazz improvisation (and I listen to a lot of jazz). I do not know what it means to “improvise on a chord,” let alone “octonic scale” or “natural harmonic series” or “twelve tone rows” or other terms which pop up regularly in Ross’s prose like stones in my soup. But I regularly read his reviews in “The New Yorker,” because I like his style and mind, so when I saw his book on the remainder table, I thought I might learn something.

It proved a worthwhile purchase. If I couldn’t comprehend Ross’s analysis of the music, I benefited from the history and portraits of composers he put forth. If someone engaged me, I created a “station” on Spotify and listened. Schoenberg got me some woman screaming at me in German, who I wasn’t crazy about, but Morton Feldman was calming and Bang the Can great fun

Adventures in Marketing: Week 30

Sold one “Cheesesteak.” To a checker at the supermarket. Andronico’s.

My on-line publicist has generated no additional requests for review copies, but Goodreads notified me that my application to offer 10 copies for free in a lottery has been accepted. Like being able to give them away is something to be complimented.

Undaunted, I e-mailed 11 independent bookstores in-and-around Philadelphia inquiring if they would handle “Cheesesteak” on consignment. The only reply was a form e-mail containing tips for selling rare books and first editions. While all “Cheesesteak”s are first editions and, in a market-penetration sense “rare, this was not my intended plan, so I trashed this response.

I guess the week’s highlight was the young woman, short hair, body piercings, who, noting the book’s title, asked if I was from Philadelphia. (She even knew the “Spruce Hill” in Spruce Hill Press.) A Drexel graduate, computer science, she was visiting, investigating whether to move here. We had a pleasant chat but no sales resulted.

Adventures in Marketing: Week 29

Sold two copies of “The Schiz,” one to a friend who’d missed the launch party and one to an attorney from my law practice past who lives down the peninsula. Sold a “Cheesesteak” to a fellow who sought my counsel on his nanny’s brother’s workers’ comp case.

The (presumably) mass e-mailing from my on-line publicist to reviewers hither and yon has resulted in a single request for “Cheesesteak.” (Actually a request for TWO copies.) This is not encouraging. On the other hand, it means I will be giving away fewer freebies. Is this it? I asked the publicist. Or should I expect more requests to trickle in? This question has not been answered.

However, my publicist has also recommended I give 10 copies away at Goodreads in a “lottery.” This, she says, will draw attention to my work and increase my name recognition. I was willing, but it required several tips from her before I could convince Goodreads “Cheesesteak” even existed.

In semi-related news, I have submitted my Introduction (or Afterword) to “Cumming,” Aaron Lange’s forthcoming collection of scurrilous anti-Trump illustrations. They are a hoot and getting my own rocks off was such a blast that I look forward to displaying the comic besides my own books in the café.

I have even offered to take on local distribution, as a sideline to my publishing empire. I mean if this won’t sell in Berkeley…