Harvey Seipp loved my book Yesterday's News Tomorrow: Inside American Jewish Journalism and he asked me to get him four copies.
So I ordered 30 copies of my book and sent out a handful as gifts and review copies. The rest I will sell.
I told Cathy I have her dad's books. She tells me to call him. "He'd be delighted to hear from you and says your memoir, which he was reading, is almost as good as Thomas Hardy."
Harvey calls me back Monday morning. "I'm impressed by the intellectual depth of your books," he says. "You're so monosyllabic when you're around the house. I just read XXX-Communicated. I was almost in tears at the end. You delineated so honestly the conflict between flesh and spirit. Hemingway would've been impressed by the honesty of your style.
"I just got finished with two of Thomas Hardy's books, Jude the Obscure and The Return of the Native. What a great talent but hard to read. Then I read yours, and I told Cathy, gee, I really enjoy this. He's so clear and strong and honest.
"Then I read Yesterday's News Tomorrow. That's a scholarly piece of work. I was never religious. I could never relate to religion. I learned more about my Jewish background from reading you than I had ever read before."
