Gave away one “Cheesesteak.”
“Are you Bob Levin?”
The young woman had black hair, wore black, was attractive and almond complected. Indian? I though. But her accent was not that and she pronounced my name with a familiarity that exceeded the degree of its likely recognition in Delhi or Bombay.
This familiarity, it turned out, was because my surname was hers – and her accent was French, in fact Parisian. She was part of a 14-person troupe performing a play by Camus at Zellerbach this weekend as part of a cross-country tour.
We discussed pronunciations. (There are no LE-vins in France, I learned, just LEV-ins.)
She learned I had been to France (“Once. Before you were born) and I that she had been to the states (“Once. With my parents.”) The troupe had visited Sausalito and San Francisco, at whose homelessness and drugs she shook her head and touched her heart. (“We have drugs, but mostly the a-sheesh, not…”) Their next stop was Telegraph Avenue, for which I did not offer much hope. (“Good used book store,” I said.) At this point the Rwandan panhandler who made my cafes part of his morning rounds arrived. When I introduced them, they conversed in French. (“Un bon American,” he called me. “A good American,” she translated, though my three years with Madam Malecot could have handled that.)
“You know Camus?” she asked me.
“Of course.”
“‘La Pestilance?”’
“‘The Plague?’ Yes.”
“You should come to our show.”
“Can you get us in for free?”
She had not expected that question. “I’ll try.”
So I gave her my book for the promise.
I mean A FRENCH ACTRESS.
Isn’t that what this writing thing is all about?

Sold one “Cheesesteak.” It was a reward for behaving well.
Grandparents had selected the café table beside mine to park two noisy grandchildren. I did not cast one annoyed glance. I did not huffily move. I barely thought, Can’t you stifle those brats? As they left, the grandfather said, “Are you the author?”
He turned out to be from Overbrook Park, a couple years younger than me, a lawyer now in Sacramento. “My ideal reader,” I told him. He e-mailed two days later he’d been enthralled by our points of connection and was eager to discuss/develop them.

I had another “Are you Bob?” too. (See: “Adventures” #72.)
It came from Tamara, maybe 30, floral print dress, brown hair pinned with a barrette. This time I was seated outside the café and she was headed in. She was a poet, she said, thinking of self-publishing too. “When do you write?” she asked. “Does anything disturb you?” (I had been a lawyer for 40 years. I’d had two heart attacks. That, I thought, was disturbing.) “$10,” I said, pointing. “$15.” “I’ll think about it,” she said.

Edward followed. Black, three-days white stubble, thick glasses, Second Life zipper jacket. Thinking of becoming a poet, he said. Studying how-to books about the process. “Read poems,” I said. “Write them. Read and write. Read and write.”
A car interrupted my instruction. “Was that my wife?” he said.
“Don’t let her get away,” I said.
“Is that a poem?”
“You never know.”

Andrew, 55, tained sweat shirt, shorts, low cut sneakers, came next. His face had the flush or sun and wind and alcohol. He wanted to know if I’d heard Tom Petty had died.
“Cardiac arrest,” I said. “66.”
This news had shaken Andrew, whom, I might add, I had never seen before. He had, he told me, read the story in the “Chronicle” three times. He had seen Petty perform at the Greek Theater three weeks before, which made, it seemed, the news difficult to absorb.
I said something about “any day” and “you never know.”
Andrew drew a lesson about not waiting. That if there was something you were thinking of doing, you should do it.
I had no argument there.
He talked about Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel and some more about Tom Petty. He asked if I knew The Traveling Wilburys.
“Hey,” I said, “I’m a huge Bob Dylan fan.” I turned around the baseball cap I had been wearing back to front, so he could read the name on it.
“When I was going to UCLA,” he said, “living up on Mullohand, I was hitching to class, and this red El Dorado pulled up, and Bob Dylan was driving. He gave me a ride.”
“Wow!” I said.
“People don’t believe me. But why should I lie?”
“I believe you.”
“He was playing Bob Dylan on his tape deck.”
A half-hour later, I saw him standing at the other end of the Safeway parking lot, unmoving, staring west., thinking, I supposed, what he wanted. Two day later, I saw him on the same corner.
\

My distributer asked for “comparatives.” That is, books written in the last three years similar to mine, which had been published by small independent presses, like mine.

“This is bullshit!” I patiently explained. “”Basically I don’t read books written in the last three years, and I don’t know any like mine, and if I did, I probably wouldn’t’ve written them.”

Milo explained that the distributor wanted its sales reps to be able to walk into a book store and say “The Schiz” and “Cheesesteak” were just like such-and-such so the store would know how many to order. And all the books he and I were comparing mine to had been written before the clerks and sales reps had been born. I said, “Okay.”

I looked on-line. I found nothing. I went to a downtown bookstore. The clerk was thirtyish, casually dressed, an untrimmed beard. I explained what I wanted.

He thought black comedies were “plays,” like, I guess, “The Jeffersons.”

“Day of the Locust,” I said.

He thought that was a satire. “What about Terry Southern,” he said after some reflection.

“Good enough,” I said. “But not the last three years.”

He looked on his computer. “It says Salmon Rushdie’s new book is a satire.”

“But hardly a small, independent publisher,” I suggested. “Let’s try something easier. What about a memoir. Preferable episodic. And…” I narrowed the window. “…by a white male, heterosexual, with no criminal past or substance abuse problems.”

He made a bee-line for the New Arrivals shelf and pulled out something by Mindy Kaling.

I told Milo I hoped the distributor would be happy to know my books have their markets to themselves.

A Brief Encounter

“Are you ‘Bob’?”
The sign on the café table says “Buy Bob’s Books” and the books beside it are by “Bob” and I am the only person seated, yet I am asked this question more than you might think. Each time, since it offers more than silence, I perk up.
“And you are…?”
“X,” she says (Not really).
“Wanna buy a book?” I say.
“Can I look at one?”
“You can look at both.”
She is young, cute. I am far from cute – perhaps “interesting” – at least, from available evidence, “non-threatening” – and, outside observers might think, her grandfather. I decide, playing my next question, to err on the side of complimentary. “Do you go to UC?” I ask, rather than “…Berkeley High?”
She is in graduate school. In engineering.
That is the first surprise.
The second is that it is the back cover blurb from R. Crumb that leads her to buy “The Schiz.”
When she notes that his treatment of women makes appreciation of his artistry and importance difficult, I issue a warning about Chapter 1 – and expose Shary Flenniken’s illustration. “A woman,” I point out in my defense. We agree “My Favorite Thing is Monsters,” which I have just begun, is wonderful.
Between vestigial reflective flirtation, minimalistic enlightenment, urbane cafe banter, and humoring the old codger, humanity has shown how well it can behave.
And I made $15.
ii.
A Briefer Encounter
The high-powered, how-to-publish consultant to which “Heart” had been recommended (See “Adventures” Week 71) set a date and time to speak on the phone or meet at her office.
We said we preferred to speak in person and requested her address.
That was that.
Of course we followed up.
Twice.
No e-mail, no phone in return.
“Maybe she sent a text,” Adele said the morning after the date and time had passed.
No text.
“Maybe she has been kidnapped and is being held hostage,” I said.
“I hope it is by someone who will publish ‘Heart,’” Adele said.

Sold a “Cheesesteak” to the same employee at Logos Books who bought a “Schiz.” Order for two “Cheesesteak”s from friends who want them as gifts, one for a Philadelphian, one for a couple here. (For those of you not hip to this, Bob’s books — available at this very web site — make ideal gifts, suitable for all — or no — special occasions.)

In other “Cheesesteak” related news, Ingram has requested additional information about it in order to boost it at a sales meeting; and I have exceeded my previous promotional budget by springing for a $50 ad in the tribute booklet for Philly’s annual Bennie Briscoe Awards dinner, emphasizing the cameo appearances in the text of Bad Bennie, Blinky Palermo, and Charley Scott.

In non-“Cheesesteak” news, Adele and I have set up a meet with a publishing world consultant to see what she can do for “Heart,” what this will cost us, and how many copies we will have to sell to pay for this help.

Order from the Brandx alum to whom I gave a copy last week. (Power of Good Will.) One is for a guy from Philly; one (I assume) for a lover of fine literature. Sent a copy to the widow of a minister I’d met while VISTA-ing in Chicago and with whom I’d kept contact after we both left.

In other news…

Adele and I were offered an introduction to a publisher who might be interested in “Heart,” with the caveat it only published books by women. “Adele’s a woman,” I said. “We can put her name first.” “And tweak the story line,” Adele said, “so it’s more ‘How I Gave up my Life for This Man and He Went and Got Sick on Me.” I also pitched my VISTA book to an editor who said, “It sounds like a memoir, and we only do memoirs by famous singers or convicted criminals or their lovers.” (I thought that was cute.)

Finally, I said to Robert, “My life has pretty much become my publishing empire, my health, and watching TV with Adele.”

“I’m not sure ’empire’ is the proper term,” he said.

“I’m pretty sure,” I said, “it’s not ‘cartel.'”