One (reported) sale.
A college friend (and retired assistant D.A.) in upstate New York advised in a note with his Xmas (Take that, Donald Trump) card that he’d (a) had prostate cancer (Prognosis: “Excellent”) and (b) purchased “The Schiz.” (He made no mention of having read any, but that would have placed him among a rarer breed.)

In other news, I see two pieces I wrote for “The Comic Journal” made its Best of 2017 list. That was nice, (but I can’t truthfully say they were ones – even among mine – I would have picked).
Also I received an e-mail from an attorney with a Northern California law firm asking if I would be interested in testifying as an “expert” in a copyright case involving comic books. “Let’s talk,” said I.
I have been tagged as both a comics “critic” and a comics “historian,” both of which put a twinkle in my eye – and neither of which are how I see myself (though I understand how others might drape those robes upon me); but being an actual judicially-certified “expert”… Now that would be a step up in weight class. (Not to mention billing-by-the-hour out-performing peddling my wares in cafes. And think of the employment opportunities. I could advertise in the classified pages of the Bar journal, along with the PhDs in structural engineering and chemistry and neuro-biology.)
So while the inquiring attorney and I have been playing “phone tag” (A phrase I haven’t encountered since I was in practice – and hated then), I’ve been mentally bolstering my credentials – and imagining the witty repartee by which I’ll dazzle the opposition when cross-examined.
Of course, I don’t yet know the issue, let alone which side I’ll be on.
No matter. Paladin is I. Have Gun Will Travel.

Sold no books.
But gave away a “Cheesesteak.”
A guy in the café, looking over my books, asked if I was from the East Coast. He turned out to be from South Philly (Southern ‘60), where he played in a combo with Ernest Evans (“Chubby Checker”). After graduation, he split for NYC, where he lived the life of a dancer/actor/artist/carpenter/handyman – and lived in the same apartment building as Sam Melville when he was making his bombs. He came here in ‘84, attracted by the “light” (a very “artist” thing to say) – and driven from the Apple one winter when pipes were freezing and madmen were screaming in the street.
Anyway, he made no move to purchase, so…

In other news…
Okay, it’s not the same as an editor at a notable NY publisher saying she’d read your short story, do you have a novel she can look at, but, as things stand, pen-and-paper ledger-wise, having a publicist at a notable NY publisher ask if you would review a book about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, recently translated from the German, is a kick. When you stand this far from the literary red hot center, any approving nod is a ticker tape parade.
How did you get to me, I asked. Usually it is some off-the-wall, transgressive, outlaw cartoonist, thinking, well he liked _____. Maybe he’ll like me. (Which I also, let me quickly add, welcome.)
It turned out to be my otherwise-ignored panning of “The Boys in the Boat” as manipulative, manufactured hogwash in the not-widely-read broadstreetreview.com a year-and-a-half ago. She hadn’t read the book but my review “fascinating and the criticism valid.”
So I checked “Olympia” out of the public library for Deep Background.
Toss stones into ponds and you know where the ripples lead – even if sometimes it’s only a free book.

Sold one Schiz and one Cheesesteak. Both went to a stocky, balding middle-aged fellow, whose hair was slicked back like Jimmy Hoffa’s. He turned out to be an ex-Alameda County employee, who had worked with the homeless, schizophrenics, and the abused, and was now in in a doctoral program on social change, believing the best way to improve people’s lives was to improve their environment.
A few days before, my Checkered Demon “Buy Bob’s Books!” sign had caught the eye of a 30-something woman and her older male partner-of-10-years. Her parents had fled Peru when she was 13 to avoid the violence of the Shining Path. He was from Colombia but had been sent to Valley Forge Military Academy by his parents (who later moved to Miami) to avoid the violence of the drug cartels. She was an abstract artist, with an upcoming show in Richmond, and he ran a start-up working toward “clean” electricity. We discussed “Narcos,” the Free Speech Movement, my 45-year marriage, whether he should move his company to Mexico or Florida, his hyper-tension, my heart attacks. (I know we didn’t discuss the Warriors and I am pretty sure no one mentioned Trump, both of which were a relief.)
The conversation was fun and engaging and so warming in its humans-can-be-good-folks connectivity, not slaughtering anyone, not kicking others further down the economic ladder, it barely occurred to me to note that they hadn’t bought a book.

In other news, I have been notified that the distributor has only two copies of The Schiz in its warehouse. Who, I thought immediately, bought them?
Well, one person I now know of. A cartoonist in Toronto, about whom I have written, said he purchased a copy at The Beguiling (but had not yet read it). Only 6-700 more for which to find homes.
My contact/guide says we should await post-holiday returns before ordering a second printing. But what about an e- or audio book. (He has the equipment.) I liked the later idea particularly. I am to be the reader. Can Adele do Tisa? I ask. Or must I do all the voices? Do I differentiate between speakers by lapsing into (probably offensive) dialect?
I was a great reader aloud in elementary school.
Sounds like fun.

No sales.
No reviews.
But my college roommate e-mailed he “loved The Schiz.”
Your college roommate, you may say.
But his taste does not run to mashed potatoes. The last novel he recommended to me was by David Mitchell. And I bet he was the only athletic director in America with a collection of first edition Nabokovs in his office.
True, it was a Div III university, but still…

In other news, a friend in Manhattan has offered to copyedit Cheesesteak before its second edition for a less-than-nominal fee. She has professional credits in this field and, as befits a credited copyeditor, is a tad obsessive, as witnessed by its taking about 40 e-mails and two days to get past p. 1.
But now we are cooking, and have reached 12.

Finally, O, the artist who had been impressed enough by my promotional activities in the café to ask me for tips, invited me to the opening of his show. He gave the address and date.
“What time?” I said.
“9:30,” he said.
“Can’t make it. Too late”
“Don’t you go out at night?”
“We go to Bob Dylan concerts.”
He nodded. He could see that.
“Sometimes we go to house concerts at a friend’s, but we leave by 9:00, after the first set.”
“What time do you go to bed?”
“8:00. Get up at 5:00.”
“Even if I offer inducements. There will be cookies.”
I imagined how that would play with Adele. My expression must not have been encouraging.
“I guess it won’t work. But can you be there in spirit?”
“I can be there in spirit. Sure.”
“That is the important thing.”
I had the date. I had the address. If I woke up around 9:30 to urinate, which was not out of the question, I would give my spirit directions.

My writer-friend Z came into the café. He had bought a “Schiz” two weeks ago. “You’re an excellent writer,” he said. “Those caterpillars. I couldn’t have written that.”
I felt honored by the compliment. Z thrives on literary feuds and back-stabbings. He has been none for not talking to people for months over slights others might have countered with a “Glorioski!”
But not so honored to not say, “That’s on page two.”
“I’ve been skipping around,” he said.
“It’s intricately plotted,” I said.
“Seriously?”
“Sort of. Yeah.”

Awhile later, Y, my former secretary, came in. She bought a “Cheesesteak” and a “Schiz.” She had been a hold-out for months, but I gave her a deal.
I also gave her too much change for her fifty.
When I called her, she said, “Should I bring it back?”
“No,” I said. She was going to Kenya for a month. “It’s a sign from God. Buy me a bracelet. I have a seven-inch wrist.”

No sales in the café, again.
But two of my high school classmates, one of whom lives in North Carolina and one in France, let me know they had taken advantage of The Schiz’s wider availability to order copies – and the Tar Heel had his snatched away by a friend as soon as it arrived.
Word has also reached me that only 29 copies remain in my distributor’s warehouse. I am aware this does not mean they will be sold, but I am flabbergasted. Just that morning I had come away from Stephanie Ruhle and her CNBC panel thinking, Boy, did you pick the wrong time to release your book. (Later, I reassured myself, At least you killed off your predators and didn’t elect them to the U.S. Senate.)
And word reached me that Outlaws, Rebels…, (Fantagraphics. 2005) has sold out. This news surprised both me, who had been trying to restock his supply on hand with a half-dozen copies, and my publisher, who had been promising for months to send them. This was, we agreed, good news, but it made him no more eager to publish my new collection. (Forthcoming, from Spruce Hill Press. 2018).
And finally, the NYC friend, who had arranged six months ago for several of my books to be handled on consignment by a neighborhood book store, advised me that they “have their own south wall counter section.”
“Take a picture,” I said.
“You need the store owner’s permission,” she said. She is a stickler for etiquette and formalities. “Describe the purpose of the photo and how it will be used.”
“The purpose of the picture is so I can look at it,” I said. “You think I’m gonna splash it on a billboard?”
“There should be a business arrangement,” she said. “Confirm if the photo should be printed and sent by U.S. mail at the author’s expense, or via a digital file.”
“I can’t even get this guy to pay me,” I said. (See earlier Adventures.)
So if you’re on the Upper East Side with an I-phone…

Among my favorite reactions to my writing was the guy who launched a thread at the old Comics Journal message board: “Why Do You Keep Publishing Articles By Bob Levin?”
It meant, I realized, that not only had I written something he hated, but that I had written it so distinctively that he could connect it to something I had written months before which he’d also hated.
Which meant I had a style and approach – an identity – going for me.
Now I’ve had another emphatic line drawn.
“Bob Levin is a great finisher,” wrote a First of the Month responder about my recent “Fox and Foes” (Nov. 12, 2017), a piece in which I had reflected upon a 45-year-old, barely-known memoir by Stanley Robinson, a Chicago police officer:“His pieces always end well…,” that responder wrote. “I’ve learned to trust Levin’s process.”
This one made me smile. It recognized that I can sometimes take a circuitous route to arrive at where I’m going, a route which, in this case, began with my musings about literary style and ended, 3000-words later, linking to contemporary headlines which had been nowhere in my original contemplations. In fact, when I’d learned of Robinson’s book, I’d known I wanted to write something about it, but I did not know what that could be. In fact, when I began writing, I still did not know. It was only when I reached the last line, I thought, AHA!
The point is that it does not take much to firm up one’s resolve to keep doing what one believes is worth doing, as both my recent responder and that forgotten poster firmed up me.

Sold a “Schiz” to a writer-friend. His pattern has been to arrive at the café on a morning of errand-running and announce he is out of cash.

But this time I was waiting. “I take credit cards,” I said and ensnared him with my Square and amazing professionalism.

Meanwhile, Google says, “The Schiz,” through its new distributor, has become available in an additional country (Canada). Still no reviews and I have neither pursued, nor been pursued by, any readings/signings. But I used the occasion to re-email those on among my “Contacts” who had not bought the book when it first became available. This led to reported sales to four fellows from my freshman dorm (giving me a majority among those still living), a guy I’ve known since summer camp ’58, a cousin of Adele’s, the widow of a minister I knew in Chicago, a film-maker who interviewed me for a documentary on Dan O’Neill, and another college buddy who wanted copies for his grandchildren. (“If they’re over 18, you have my blessing,” I said.) Plus a secretary and an attorney from a firm I worked at in the ’70s seem to be leaning in the “Submit Order” direction.

Could they all have been waiting for the price to drop?

Anyway, my Amazon ranking may never be this high again.