When a Kansas schoolteacher named Krista Meisel e-mailed Rueben Martinez to make an appointment with him at his Santa Ana bookstore for last Tuesday, the bookseller didn't think much about it. An erstwhile barber turned nationally recognized missionary for Latino literacy, Martinez met with students and teachers almost every day.
At the appointed hour, however, there was no Krista Meisel. Instead, the telephone at Libreria Martinez Books & Art Gallery rang, and the man on the other end of the line, Daniel J. Socolow, congratulated Martinez for winning a $500,000, no-strings-attached MacArthur Foundation grant.
"I almost hung up on him, because I thought it was a crank call," Martinez recalled. "About a fourth of the way through the conversation, he said, 'Mr. Martinez, don't hang up, because this is the real stuff.' "
To prove it, Socolow asked Martinez if he had an appointment with a certain Krista Meisel for this hour.
"They just wanted to make sure I was here," the bookseller said.
Martinez is one of 23 recipients whose names the foundation formally revealed today. Eight live in California. Martinez is the only one in Southern California and no doubt the only one who cut hair for a living for more than 30 years before opening his bookstore in 1993.
The thought of half a million dollars, to come in quarterly payments of $25,000 for the next five years, has left Martinez a little dazed, he said. Having accustomed himself to the life of a bookseller -- a small, rented apartment in Santa Ana, a 19-year-old Volvo with 342,000 miles -- he's not sure whether he will invest the money in expanding his business, which includes the main store in Santa Ana, a children's bookstore next door and a satellite store in Lynwood, or save some of it for his old age.
"But I'll tell you what, man, the money comes only if I stay alive, so I'm not going to take chances on the road anymore when I ride my bike," he said.
At 64, Martinez is a small, trim, muscular man with perfectly cut gray, swept-back hair and apparently inexhaustible energy. When discussing books and Latino literacy, his dark eyes glow with zeal and his steady stream of words accelerates without warning into a whitewater of exhortation. This he typically delivers bent forward from the waist toward his listeners, his hands churning, a style he has demonstrated from podiums at local grade schools, national booksellers' conventions, as well as Harvard and Oxford universities and the Sorbonne.
