Well, I had my "reading" of No Bike at the local winery and – nobody came! Not a soul. But I got practice reading a selection to the owner and her helper. But the main result of the failed reading was a vast sense of relief. My stabs at promotion had had no effect at all, but they took time, angst and most of all psychic energy better put to other things – like writing.
No Bike and a much longer, more involved piece, "Evolution," sprang from a period (early 1980s) when I wrote just to write, to please myself and put together a work that would be as close to possible a personal perfection, even if it would never cause much rattle on the literary Richter scale.
These last weeks I've been wading through Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon, one of the most extraordinary novels of the 20th century (review coming soon). For me, it was a slow read because he chose to use 18th century language and typography and to explain the elements of astronomy and surveying as though the reader is a wholly intelligent inhabitant of the Enlightenment. As with Gravity's Rainbow and, really, pretty much anything else Pynchon's written, it was exuded in exactly the spirit I'm talking about – writing for the sake of writing to satisfy that inner need for perfection.
That's what I want to get back to and stay with. So instead of feeling defeated, even momentarily, by the lack of immediate response, I feel liberated.
Hey, though, buy the book. It's good.