Wanna Buy a Duck?

I was in a bookstore the other day leaning against a stack of books when a woman walked up and, gesturing to the book in my hand, said, “Any good?”

She was one of those people who, I could tell, loved to strike up conversations with strangers, but I am not one to reciprocate.

I said, “Not bad,” and turned away until I realized I had just rendered an indifferent review of my own book. I turned back to upgrade the assessment, but it was too late.

The woman had already wandered off and was chatting with a man near a pile of Judith Krantz erotica and having a fine time. I cursed myself and went back to scowling into space.

Conviviality is essential when one is on a book tour. I was touring on behalf of my own book, “City of Angles: a Driveby Portrait of L.A.” It is not something I love to do, and the attitude is reflected in my manner.

There’s a reason for that. I was on a book tour once with Irving Wallace, who was the perfect embodiment of buoyant joviality as he waited to sign books at a store on the Westside.

Wallace was a terrific smiler and loved to talk, on top of which his books had always been bestsellers. But though he sat for an hour looking like he wanted to jump up and hug anyone who passed, not one person stopped.

To top off the humiliating experience, a clerk informed him that his writing was rigidly formularized and he, the clerk, could count on a sweaty sexual episode every 33 pages in every book he wrote.

Wallace said something to the effect that he hadn’t been aware of that and smiled his way out the door.

*

The image haunts me as I go from bookstore to bookstore throughout L.A., feeling a little like the old radio comic who went from door to door saying, “Wanna buy a duck?”

I keep thinking suppose nobody comes, or suppose a clerk walks up and says he’s figured out my formula? I’m not organized enough for a formula. I don’t even know what’s on every 33rd page.

I try my best to smile as I face the public but I am not a born smiler, so that the expression on my face comes out looking like that of a demented troll. Children scream when I walk into a room smiling.

The idea of a tour is to visit as many bookstores as possible, read passages from one’s book and then autograph purchased copies. In addition to not being a good smiler I am also not a good reader, which God probably took into account when he made me a writer. Smiling and speaking are not essential to the craft.

I mumble through a few paragraphs into the faces of people who stare as though they’re not sure I’m the person who wrote the words in the first place. How can a man stumble so clumsily through his own prose?

“Don’t worry, dear,” my wife says in a comforting manner, “Dylan Thomas was drunk every time he read. At least you’re mostly sober.”

*

Later, I open the session up for questions. At a store in Santa Monica, a man who smelled faintly of Jack Daniel (I have a good nose for brands) stood and asked, apropos to nothing, “What about democracy?” I said it was worth a try, and he sat down, satisfied.

In West Hollywood, an artist who specializes in painting toilet seats wanted to know if I’d write about him. I took his name. In Beverly Hills, a woman asked if I loved the Virgin Mary. Fearful of what my answer might be, my wife interrupted with, “He’s crazy about her.”

When they are not holding up signs at sporting events, religious fanatics favor book tours. During his tour for “Roots,” Alex Haley was warned by a Bible-banger that Jesus was coming. He nodded, took a book off the stack and signed it, “To Jesus, best wishes, Alex Haley,” then said, “I’m ready.”

I guess I’m ready, too. Wherever books are sold, full price or 20% off, you will find me at a table wearing a kind of twisted smile or standing at a podium muttering my way through passages I don’t even remember writing.

Every time I arrive at a bookstore, another author is just leaving, and every time I leave, another author is just arriving. That is because there are 50,000 new books published every year and books, like ducks, don’t sell unless you hustle them.

No one seems to know how many authors peddle their prose in L.A., but the number must be considerable. I met one of them at a store in the San Fernando Valley whose attitude was no better than mine.

A woman asked jokingly, referring to his book, “Is it worth reading?” He replied without smiling, “It’s worth reading all right, ma’am. It just isn’t worth talking about.”

And somewhere, Irving Wallace frowned.

Al Martinez can be reached through the Internet at al.martinez@latimes.com