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Marketing: Week 16

Sold two “Cheesesteak”s. One went to a previous purchaser, a friend of friends (see: Week 14), who bought one for a friend of his who’d never left Philly, like we did. The other went to a lawyer who’d had an office in my former building. I ran into him in from of the BofA on Shattuck. “Still writing?” he said.

But before that I’d been scoreless for 12 days, so I’d decided to expand my marketing. I tried to get my book listed at Amazon, but that proved too daunting. I’d thought it would order copies to sell from its warehouse, but it seemed to want me to pay it as a platform to sell from. (Can this be right?) I must investigate further.

Meanwhile I put myself on Facebook. This wasn’t easy either. Adele had joined so we could see some wedding pictures and never used it again, but since we share an e-mail address, I couldn’t register too. I changed her name to “Levin Adele Bob” and began recruiting Friends. Then the invaluable Milo advised I could register “Bob Levin” under this separate Gmail address I had for some reason, so I did that. Only I can’t get all my previously signed up Friends to switch over, plus I can’t give Adele her name back for a couple months, so some kinks remain.

I recently read…

…Julian Barnes’s Booker Prize-winning “The Sense of an Ending.” It’s a slim (55,000 word) first person narrative, told in two parts, by Anthony (“Tony”) Webster, retired, divorced, a grandfather. “How often do we tell our life story?” he asks us. “How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life.” Well, that was right up my alley!

The first part of Tony’s life story involve his relationship with three friends in adolescence and his relationship in college with Veronica, his first girl friend. In the second part, set in Tony’s present, an unexpected event leads him to investigate and reconsider the experiences he had previously described, which leads to a surprise revelation and an even more surprising ending.

I did not quite understand the ending. Rather than look back through the book, I sought clarification on-line. “The ending of The Sense of an Ending,” I Googled. It turned out I was not alone. I found a couple well-reasoned, thoughtful pieces where reviewers explained what had happened. I found many well-reasoned thoughtful comments posted by readers in response to these explanations. I found three of four equally convincing, contradictory explanations of which characters had done what and why.

This made me think. Actually these characters DID nothing. They DO NOT exist. Their ACTIONS occur only to the extent Barnes puts words on a page. I believe it is true that an author may not know the full meaning of what he has written. But I am not sure characters of his creation can do things he did not enable them to do. Is this discussion, I wondered, a gimmick Barnes has pulled off, or is it a significant revelation about the relationship between writers and readers?

When you’ve finished the book, we can discuss it further. (And just as an aside, let me say that Adele, who is reading the book now, has discovered she read it a couple years ago and can’t remember a thing about it. Neither can the friend who leant it to her. What the hell does that say?)

Marketing: Week 15

Sold one “Cheesesteak” to a fellow at the health club who’d gone to high school with a guy in my college class. We were in the steam room, when he began asking me about Brandx. Well since you asked, I said.

I also gave a copy to a lawyer who once gave me a copy of his self-published book of his. And my friend Bud (not to be confused with my friend Budd) said, “Chris Matthews is a Philly guy. Maybe you should send him a copy.” So I did. (I’ll let you know how that works out.) And I asked Amazon again about stocking it.

In other-but-related news: 1) I finished the line edits of “The Schiz” and re-wrote the “Author’s Afterword.” A couple tweaks by Milo and it’s off to the printer. 2) Came to the end of my list of agents for “Heart” without one nibble. Now I’ve turned to publishers who accept unsolicited manuscripts. Most seem to want proposals, which I find writing a drag. (This could turn into a job.)

Finally, I received an e-mail from a woman at something called Open Road Media who, based on my review of “The Burglary” at BSR, thought me a good choice to review (even on my blog) an E-book re-issue of the true-life cold was spy story “The Falcon and the Snowman,” which I could get a free copy of, provided I signed up with something called Net Gallery.

I was flattered — and eager to expand my recognized areas of expertise beyond transgressive cartoonists, plus, as Adele said, this might draw traffic to my web site, which, God knows, could use it. I was also impressed this woman had found me, since the casting of my “Burglary” review had otherwise rippled few ponds.

Maybe Open Roads Media can help me, I thought. Now I am not so sure. It seems to cost several hundred bucks to be marketed by it. Plus Net Gallery may be mainly a place where amateurs — librarians, bloggers, self-published authors — review to semi-silence books by other self-published authors signed up at the same place.

I may have to check this further.

I recently read…

…”A Spool of Blue Thread” by Anne Tyler. (Disclosure: Back in the 1970’s Tyler gave a short story of mine an Honorable Mention in a contest she was judging and, 20 years later, when I gave a reading of “Fully Armed” at Barnes & Noble it gave me a tote bag with her picture on it, in which I carry my work out clothes still.)

Anyway, way back when, I read and enjoyed several of Tyler’s novels. (“Celestial Navigations” was, I think, my favorite, but that may have been because I read it first and they all had a certain similarity.) But for reasons I don’t recall, I stopped reading her, and Adele, who continued on after I stopped, soon stopped reading her too. But Tyler kept writing, adding another dozen or so novels to her credit.

I came across “Spool” on the free shelf at Berkeley Espresso (and left Michael Chabon’s “Telegraph Avenue,” a pick-up of Adele’s, in exchange). We both enjoyed it. Tyler is still in Baltimore and still writing about families, but no character is as whacky as the ones I recall her featuring in the past. These all seem normalish folks with normalish problems tripping them up. It is funny and serious and becomes inventive toward the end. It’s a fine way to pass several hours.

Marketing: Week 14

“My wife liked it,” my health club friend (Penn ’65) said, “and she didn’t know anything you were talking about.” “What about you?” I said. “I liked it. Good title,” he said. Well, that won’t make my list of quotable reviews. I thought.

Sold two “Cheesesteaks.” One to a fellow from the Philly suburbs (high school classmate of one friend/med school classmate of another). One to strangers. Regular customers at the French they had eyed my book once, then broke down and bought it. No responses as yet.

In other news, I received a pdf of the fully laid-out “Schiz” from Milo. For the first time I saw the illustrations in place I laughed out loud at three of the first four. The text impressed me too. I think we have a hit, I told him, and opted for the higher of the optional print runs we’d discussed. On the downside, my line editing has caught some troubles. The big one is that between conversions from Word Perfect to Word and formattings and divine intervention portions of multiple, multi-party conversations have been lumped into single paragraphs rather than standing apart speaker-by-speaker. Who-said-what is clear, but you must pay attention.

Clarity suffers. Readers are inconvenienced. On the other hand…

If I had been concerned about “inconvenienced” readers, I wouldn’t have written this book. Plus, Cormac McCarthy left out quotation marks entirely, and William Gaddis went with –s, so I can be said to be striking my own blow for avant guarde individualization. Plus it adds an improvisatory jazz feel, altering the reader’s rhythm. Plus it’s like a tip-of-the-hat to John Cage’s openness to randomness. Plus Milo says he found it Altmanesq.

That’s quite a pedigree, but I’m waiting to hear from Adele.

Marketing: Week 13

Sold a “Cheesesteak” to a woman at the health club who lived in Philadelphia in the late ’50s, early ’60s as a teenager. (Having come from California, she found it racist and uptight.) Sold a “Cheesesteak” and a “Pirates and Mouse” to a friend who is giving both as gifts. Sold a “Cheesesteak” to a woman at the French (from Ambler) who is giving it as a gift to a friend whose father was a chef at Bookbinder’s. (She says she will give more as gifts for Xmas — WHICH IS A REMINDER TO THE REST OF YOU.)

I am also taking note of the expanded world into which my writer persona has led me. This week I received an e-mail from the Serbian artist, who’d learned from his publisher I was writing about him, offering to provide any background information I needed. And a woman in Atlanta, who’d sought me out after reading my BSR piece about Peggy Manley of whom she was a fan, sent me a link to the Christian Domestic Discipline novel she’d written. And I’m nearly finished the senior citizen-porn novel by the retired architect whom I met at Berkeley Espresso.

Plus just the other day, this fellow wandered into the French, wearing an Eat Fruits and Vegetables baseball cap, and, attracted by my sign and display, announced he was assembling an anthology of writing by students of all ages from local school district, “Pieces for Peace.” I waited for his pitch, weighing what I would give him; but the bite never came. All he asked was for me to read and judge submissions. “Sure,” I said.

We exchanged cards.

I just finished…

…”White Noise” by Don DeLillo, the third novel of his I’ve read, follo wing “Libra,” which I didn’t care for, (or may not have been ready for) and “Underwater,” which I thought was terrific. (I must have gotten smarter by then.) “White Noise” is not as rrific — it’s central character is an academic for one thing, and I’m ill-disposed tempermentally toward novels set among academics — but it is very good. (It’s also funny.)

DeLillo is a major novelist. No question about it. He deals with the largest of matters in original and engrossing fashion. (This one’s about Death, for one thing. Also lesser stuff of consequence.) I let it wash over me without being able to claim I absorbed more than the slightest weight of DeLillo’s thinking. (My Viking paperback — acquired at Moe’s — came appended, as if in documentation of DeLillo’s major-ness, with interview snippets, reviews, and articles from classy quarterlies. I skipped them all. I didn’t want a seminar. I took what I had and moved on to the next book on my stack. One has, speaking of large matters, only so much time.)

The Writing on the Wall

My latest is up at http://www.broadstreetreview.com/film-tv/showtimes-ray-donovan-packs-an-unexpected-punch.

It begins: So I’ve been watching “Ray Donovan,” this Showtime series which sets a lot of scenes inside a family-owned boxing gym in Los Angeles. (It’s been running four years, but I’m on Season Two.) It’s a good show, but not so good it keeps my attention from the fight posters on the gym’s walls. The posters look real. They are the right size, the right red and black print, the right yellow (seemingly) heavy cardboard, fit for tacking to telephone polls or standing in store windows to promote the card, solid but tacky, like boxing itself.

Marketing: Week 12

Sold a “Most Outrageous” to a fellow at the health club, who is now one shy of a complete collection of my work and says he will bind them in leather. Sold a “Cheesesteak” to a fellow at the café I’d about given up on, even though I’d given him a “New Yorker,” which I’d thought would’ve cemented our relationship. (He claimed he gets so into his iPad each morning, he’d never noticed my sign.)

In the Notable Reaction Department, there were: the café acquaintance who said he only read books about Buddhism but would offer me “spiritual support.” (Fuck you,” I’d thought. Which suggested I could use some.); the voc. rehab. counselor, and ex-Philly gal, to whom I’d thrown plenty of business when I was in practice, who said she still had my notice of “Chessesteak” on her desk and was planning to buy one. (Hasn’t happened yet); a lovely note from a defense attorney relating how much she’d enjoyed having her own recollections jolted. When she’d been at Barnard, she reported, attending an Odetta concert was tantamount to declaring yourself a Communist. And she had a friend who broke off her affair with Jim Kweskin (the second of those reported) after her mother “swooped down from Greenwich CT, draped in her minks and trailing the scent of Chanel #5” and threatened her.

IN OTHER NEWS
The front and back covers of “The Schiz” are done. Our focus group has responded “WOW!” and “WOW! WOW! WOW! WOW!” A final line editing from Milo (I will keep my hands off it, so I don’t rewrite anything), and it’s off to the printer.

Oh yeah, we’ve raised the price a nickel.

As for “Heart,” having finally overcome the trauma from the rejections and silence when I sought an agent some months ago, I am trying again. First query has gone out; others to follow.

The Morning After

The morning after Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech, I was having my post-exercise, semi-meditative sit beside the health club pool when this little girl toddled by. Wow! I thought. You can be president. Then I looked at the wading pool. There was little black girl and this little brown girl and this little white girl. Wow! I thought. You can all be president.

It was an amazing feeling.

(Did you know that New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote, in 1893? They could not vote in France until 1944, Italy until 1946, Switzerland until 1971 (national elections only), and not until 1991 in local elections.)

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The next morning I was at the café when Liz introduced me to her 9-year-old granddaughter, the charming — and, it turned out, tri-lingual — Lydia. “Congratulations,” I said, “on being able to become president.”

“Lydia lives in Vienna,” Liz said.

“Well, then,” I said, “you can’t become president after all.”

Then to recover any ground I had lost, I whipped out my iPhone and found Groucho Marx performing “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” on YouTube.

“I bet you never heard ‘Lydia’ rhymed with ‘encyclopedia’ before,” I said.

I’ll have to check with Liz to see what sort of impression I made.