Alexander Boldizar

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Alexander Boldizar

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April 2012


Alexander Boldizar was the first post-independence Slovak citizen to graduate with a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School. Since then, he has been an art gallery director in Bali, an attorney in San Francisco and Prague, a pseudo-geisha in Japan, a hermit in Tennessee, a paleontologist in the Sahara, a porter in the High Arctic, a consultant on Wall Street, an art critic out of Jakarta and Singapore, and a police-abuse watchdog and Times Square billboard writer in New York City. He now lives in Vancouver, Canada.

‍Boldizar’s writing has won the PEN/Nob Hill prize, a Somerset Award for literary fiction, and other awards, including a Best New American Voices nomination. His novel, The Ugly, was a best-seller among small presses in the U
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Alexander Boldizar I worked as a summer associate at a French law firm in Prague in the mid ‘90s, shortly after the country split. At the time I often spoke English in …more I worked as a summer associate at a French law firm in Prague in the mid ‘90s, shortly after the country split. At the time I often spoke English in cafés if I if I didn’t want to be asked whether I could really afford the coffee. A table full of Czechs next to me didn’t realize I was Slovak, and I overheard them making fun of Slovaks as dumb mountain men who grunted and threw boulders at each other.

I absolutely loved the image. When I was younger, I had a bad habit of playing dumb whenever I could see someone start off with that assumption—I was large, drank too much, fought a lot, and had an East European love of the absurd that North Americans sometimes mistook for stupidity—and when I heard that dumb mountain man stereotype I wanted to run with it and turn it on its head.

At the same time, Harvard Law really was a very alien place for me at first. At one point in the book, Muzhduk gets an anonymous letter stating that his admission devalued the Harvard name for everyone at the school. That was, nearly word for word, taken from a real letter I received in my first year. It was a very careful place, where nobody knew if the person next to him or her might end up being a supreme court justice, or the president of some little country. Or big country. People who had lawyers for parents knew that the most valuable thing at Harvard wasn’t the education or even the name, but the connections—all in a hypercompetitive context. I preferred a directness that made me look like a caveman in comparison.

I had no interest in writing a One-L type neurotic complaint about law school, but I thought it would be fascinating to bring a real mountain man to Harvard Law and see what happened.(less)
Average rating: 3.83 · 1,641 ratings · 280 reviews · 2 distinct worksSimilar authors
The Man Who Saw Seconds

3.86 avg rating — 1,357 ratings — published 2024 — 4 editions
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The Ugly

3.66 avg rating — 284 ratings — published 2016 — 6 editions
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"It's very hard being an artist. A lot of the time it's like being invisible if you're not just ignored. Truth. Maybe it's different for some people, but for the rest of us, we either get skins of stone and perform our art in the dark or we preten..." Read more of this blog post »
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If Florida is purgatory with a sun, Florida Palms exposes what happens to the young men who grow up in the shadows—a tightly plotted page-turner filled with gangsters, brotherhood, and betrayal.

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I read. A lot. Like, a lot, lot. With some more lots thrown in for good measure.
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I use a spotter. If the blade seems ready to come down while my head is on the writer's block, I have someone slam the safety mechanism before decapitation occurs.
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Topography of Pain is a shattered masterpiece. It does for our increasingly fragmented social reality and personal identity what Kafka did for labyrinthine bureaucracy. It’s existential literature for an era with no unified existence, just shards of ...more
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Quotes by Alexander Boldizar  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“What we the people have is a minimal, once-every-four-years type of power, while nearly everything in our lives is controlled by others.”
Alexander Boldizar, The Man Who Saw Seconds

“People who do not eat butterflies will wear their clothes the wrong way, and people who wear their clothes the wrong way are inviting lemmings inside." -- Muzhduk the Ugli the Third”
Alexander Boldizar

“If you want happiness for an hour—take a nap. For a day—go fishing. For a month—get married. For a year—inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime—help someone else.”
Alexander Boldizar, The Man Who Saw Seconds

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“People who do not eat butterflies will wear their clothes the wrong way, and people who wear their clothes the wrong way are inviting lemmings inside." -- Muzhduk the Ugli the Third”
Alexander Boldizar

“If I have to have a past, then I prefer it to be multiple choice.”
Alan Moore, Batman: The Killing Joke

“Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners.”
George Carlin

“What Writing Is: Telepathy, of course.”
Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

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