Swapped a “Best Ride” to a poet at the café for a copy of his new collection. Heard from a semi-“cousin” in NYC he was ordering a “Cheesesteak” from Amazon. And a woman looked at all four books I had on display and walked away with nothing.
She said she used to work in publishing. She had shoulder-length brown hair, a flower-patterned skirt, a black “Los Angeles” sweatshirt.
“Those two are novels,” I said. “That’s a true-crime story. That’s a memoir about growing up in Philadelphia. Five-to-fifteen dollars.”
“Oh,” she said, “I’m broke.”
I guess, I thought, that’s what a career in publishing will get you.

The swap, I would note, which had begun with a feeling of unifying camaraderie and esprit de corps, quickly tumbled into a humbling reminder of my place in the literary firmament when, later that same day, the poet announced on FB that he had given his book away in a café – but it was another café, and the recipient was another writer, whom he named with pride, while cloaking our transaction in silence. Sure, the other guy once won a Pulitzer, but he didn’t even give him a signed napkin.

In other news, it turns out the owner of the café knows of our reading series. In fact, he has been so pleased by our effect on business he is considering adding a karaoke night. It is the poster announcing the readings which must be kept from him. It must throw off the feng shui or something.

Sold one “Schiz.”
The buyer had been brought to my table at the café by P_____, a mutual friend. He was a tall fellow, dressed all in black, with a full black beard and black horn-rimmed glasses. He had been injured while working on a party boat, received an award or settlement, and had run into trouble between SSI and a Special Needs trust. Or rather he’d had trouble when P_____ told him about me, but by the time she introduced us, things seemed to have straightened out. I said if he had questions in the future, I’d be happy to chat and/or steer him to a lawyer, and he bought the book.
Things should have flowed so smoothly when I was in practice

In other news…
The monthly reading series at the café has been rolling merrily along. (We are now booked into February.) The other morning, I ran into a former regular, whom I hadn’t seen since it reopened.
I told her about the readings.
She asked when they were.
I pointed over my shoulder, behind me, toward the poster.
The poster was gone.
When I asked the manager, he said the owner was coming in that day. “You know how he is,” he said, “He likes things a certain way. I’ll put it back when he’s gone.”
Hosting a series of underground readings has a certain cachet, don’t you think?

“Don’t let anybody tell you there’s no money in crime. There’s plenty money in crime.” The philosopher had a stained green bag over one shoulder. He carried a blue plastic sack in one hand and a walking stick in the other. He wore a soiled baseball cap and Cal t-shirts.
“Any bargains?” he said.
“I can give you a deal.”
He picked up a “Best Ride.”
“$5,” I said.
He looked at my photo on the back cover. “What happened?” he said.
“I still have the same sweater and jacket,” I said.
“Are you from New York?” he said.
“Philadelphia. I came out here in ‘68.”
“I just graduating high school. San Leandro. I’m fifth generation Californian. My mother’s a Daughter of the Golden West.”
He handed me a crumpled bill. I signed his book.
“To Monroe,” he siad. “Like the movie star. My grandfather’s company copper plated the Catholic church. They blessed each piece because we were Protestant.”
On the way out, he dropped the book.
But he picked it up and kept going.

In Other News…
Adele stopped by the café on her way to a doctor’s appointment. This was a different morning. She had forgotten to bring something for while she waited. She chose “Best Ride” too – a loaner.
She hadn’t read it in 40 years. Me either. She hasn’t been able to get over how good it is. She asks me where its depth came from. I say, I haven’t a clue.

Sold one “Schiz.”
The buyer was a tall fellow, balding, glasses, black t-shirt, blue shorts. He had been, I learned, a successful TV writer, then a teacher, now a mail carrier. Sort of a reverse career arc, but he liked the outdoors, the freedom of no-one-looking-over-his-shoulder, the nothing-following-him-home-to-interfere-with-his-writing. And fortunately, he volunteered, his husband’s job paid well.

I also gave away a “Cheesesteak.”
This deserves some historical background. My father’s grandfather was among a group of poor Russian Jews brought to America by a wealthy German Jew who planned to settle them in socialist-style farming communities (despite their having been forbidden to own land by the tsar) in either New Jersey or Oregon. Since all the poor Jews knew about Oregon was that it was populated by Indians and had eagles that swooped down and carried off your babies, they opted for Jersey.
My father’s father ran away from home as a teenager and ended up in South Philly, but his two brothers remained. (He later demonstrated his feelings for the community ethos by naming his first born, my dad, “Herbert Spencer…”) We visited their farms occasionally, and in the 1950s, a Cousins’ Club formed among my father’s generation. I last saw any of the New Jersey clan at a picnic in 1960. Then a couple weeks ago, I hooked up with one through FB. She is a poet, a gardener, a maker of one-of-a-kind clothes, and since the ‘70s, “a back-to-the-land hippie” in Arkansas.
She is swapping me a CD of her reading her work.

Sold one “Cheesesteak”; gave one “Cheesesteak” away; had two inquiries of note.
The buyer was a previously resistant café regular, a bright guy, an attorney who’d quit to teach high school (now retired). The tipping point seemed to have been an explanation I was giving involving the book’s cover, its portrait-of-the-author, and the t-shirt I was wearing, establishing the circularity of all things.
The gift was to an editor at a university press. He’d e-mailed me praise for “Palestra,” a piece which I’d written for BSR nine years ago. A few years my junior, he’d gone to West Catholic, LaSalle, and worked on the Temple University Press’s history of Big Five basketball, which I keep within arm’s reach of my bed. With that background – and the thoughtfulness demonstrated by writing me – how could I keep the book, of which “Palestyra” formed a part, from him?

One inquiree was a 30-ish fellow, who worked on international development projects for a non-profit – and also wrote/drew/played music. He was attracted to my table by my sign – but had not heard of S. Clay Wilson, who had drawn it. I said one book was a black comedy and one a memoir about growing up in West Philadelphis in the 1950s and he said “That must have been intense,” and I said, “Intense? The 1950s?” He said he would be back when he had cash on him.
The other, toting a backpack and pushing a roller suitcase, told me, in an affected brogue, that he was 85% Irish from Connaught, which he pronounced for me twice. He said he had written two books, one on agriculture and one on secret government agencies, neither of which had been published, so, for one of mine, he would trade me the Lou Reed bio (marked $3.98) a woman had given him as soon as he finished it. After he left, he spent some time inspecting, as if for treasure, the squares of dirt around the newly planted trees in front of the office building across the street.

“Are you the Bob Levin who’s married to Adele Levin?”
“I am,” I said.
Mendel (as I shall call him) had been a boyfriend of Adele’s friend Rhonda (as I shall call her) before I’d arrived in Berkeley in 1968. A free-spirit, he had supplanted the income from a family trust by driving a cab then and, as the trust income had not increased along with inflation, by driving for Uber now. The age of the women with whom he had become involved with had not changed much either. The last one, 50-years his junior, had given him a son before returning to Thailand.
His rumpled khaki suit would have fit one of Graham Greene’s displaced. His eyes still twinkled – but behind glasses that slid halfway down his nose. His still curly hair needed a trim. “Isn’t Adele your cousin as well as your wife?”
“She is not,” I said.
Of the books before me on my table, he picked up “Most Outrageous.” This was the choice least commonly made. He looked at the photo of the smiling teenage girl with her arms around the smiling bearded man.
“The two principal characters,” I said. “A true crime story.”
He gathered his thoughts.
“$15,” I said.
“I look forward to discussing this with you, but now I’m late for shul.” He put down the book. “You know, I was once at a seder with Adele and Rhonda and Baba Ram Dass.”
I knew that Adele, when she had been a teenager and Ram Dass had still been Richard Alpert, had been at a seder together, but I had never heard of one that included Mendel or Rhonda. When I got home. I asked her.
“Never happened,” she said. “Mendel must have heard my story from Rhonda and decided he deserved to be a part of it.”
I wondered how many people in Berkeley Mendel had told of his seder with Ram Dass.
Then I wondered how many people he had told that Adele had married her cousin.
Now I wonder how many people I will tell about Mendel.
As I have called him.

1.
“Which is your best?” She was a café semi-regular, Two days a week. Hispanic, UCB grad, a couple kids, manages a bike shop. Sometimes I gave her my entertainment section with the crossword.
“They’re all good,” I said.
She considered her choice. “Learning about the author seems a good place to start.”
She handed me two fives and put “Cheesesteak” in a clear plastic envelope. Growing up in the Valley, she explained, she had been too poor to afford books, so she had great respect for them.
I was touched.
2.
“Is this you?”
The fellow had close cropped hair under a Red Sox cap. He wore a tight-fitting black mesh t-shirt, cut-off blue jeans, flip flops. I did not rule out that his curiosity had been drawn, not by my books, but the black leather motorcycle cap, which had led the joker in the locker room to ask if I was auditioning for a Village People’s tribute band.
“Are you from Boston,” I said, prepared to advance consumer connection with the banter that my wife was.
“Oh no, not at all. My past, in fact, is quite fragmented. It was a gift from a friend. It’s a good conversation starter.”
“I know just what you mean.”
No sale, there.
3.
In other news, after reading the latest article by the always interesting Austin English at tcj.com, I scrolled down through the comments and, lo-and-behold, found myself quoted. True, it wasn’t so much me being quoted as it was the cartoonist about whom I had written in 2004, but the idea that something I had put in print that long ago had registered with someone sufficiently to be held onto and brought forth now was encouraging in a sort-of you-never-know-what-ripples-so-keep-tossing-pebbles kind of way.

To recap for new “friends,” ever since I started self-publishing, my primary marketing strategy has been sitting in a café with a “Buy Bob’s Books” sign on my table and two-to-five of my books beside it. This is not only a mercantile endeavor but an example of performance art, and each week I report on what has transpired, with occasional asides about other aspects of my literary career.
All books mentioned are available from www.theboblevin.com.

Sold a “Best Ride.”
I’d overheard a young man in the café saying into his iPhone that he was writing a book, which, upon inquiry, turned out to stem from his mother’s death from cancer, and since The-Book-Formerly-Known-As-Heart stemmed from my own non-death from cardiovascular disease, one thing led to another, and one of these “others” was my learning he was from Guam and had played basketball in leagues across the Far East and his learning BR concerned a basketball player in western Pennsylvania… I look forward to talking to him again.
Another fellow picked up both “Cheesesteak” and “The Schiz.” He was interested in self-publishing an anti-Trump coloring book “for children of all ages, 4-to-94.” He was rushing off to meet a friend, but looked forward to speaking with me again. Him, I was not so sure about.
I ought to get over judging people by whether or not they buy a book.

In other news, TBFKAH is now entitled “I Will Keep You Alive: A Cardiovascular Romance.” This was the result of much good-natured e-mail banter involving me, Adele, Milo, Marc, and Mary, with Francois, the cover designer, awaiting our decision so he could go ahead. Then there was further banter about whether to further describe the book on the front cover, aside from the already agreed to “celebrity” endorsement (There won’t) and even further about the nature of the design itself.
The original idea was to capture an image described within the book. But despite Francois’ noble efforts – and half-dozen proffered sketches – no consensus was reached. Consensus was almost reached on one sketch, but Adele strongly objected, and since Adele is co-author of IWKYA (and sleeping with the publisher), this objection carried weight. Francois then reversed course 180 degrees and came up with a design which swept away all opposition and wow-ed a hastily assembled focus group of family and friends [“Cool!,” “Perfect,” “A grabber,” “Startling (in a good way)”].
If I wasn’t a technological imbecile, I’d show it to you now.

Sold one “Cheesesteak.” The buyer – as twice promised – was the adult son of that West Catholic grad. (See previous “Adventures.”) A man of his word.
Another copy did not fare as well. It was picked up by a woman who has newly become a morning regular at the café, 25-years in the States, from Germany, a “healer” by profession, I believe. “May I look at this?” she said.
“Of course,” I said.
Back she went to her own table. She paged through my book while she had her pastry and her coffee. “Interesting,” she said, when she returned it.
You think I’m a fucking library, I did not say.
“To live it – and to write it,” I said.

In other news, “Heart” now has a publicist. Adele and I are excited. She seems a good fit with us. She is a professional with Bay Area contacts. She has life experiences that interesect with ours, and our story, she said, “touched” her. The emphasis will be on revierws, radio interviews, and, intriguingly, hospital grand rounds.
I was also on a phone conference with the distributor’s sales team. This was also exciting and fun – and the big takeaway was they hated our title. (People looking for the book on Amazon will be confused by similar-sounding titles, the team says.) The publicist says sales people like it if you take their suggestions, so I lay awake jotting potential titles on a notepad beside the bed. The next morning one or two didn’t seem that bad.