Alex Kudera's Blog, page 114
January 13, 2015
tweeting about John Gardner like the wild and krazy guy i am
Raymond Carver said John Gardner, PhD Iowa, famous, if forgotten?, had a 4 or 5 course load of fresh comp at Oberlin: http://t.co/r6f6A2ILAk
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) January 12, 2015
maybe i should be anti-Gardner since i'm in w/the #Pynchon crowd & am known to dig caricature, distrust too serious http://t.co/r6f6A2ILAk
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) January 12, 2015
on the other hand John Gardner's Mickelsson's Ghosts got me back into writing fiction, would sit on Friday afternoons in Van Pelt, comfy 1/2
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) January 12, 2015
cushioned seat by big glass window, March, April, May 2004, never checked the book out of the library, used a clean dinner napkin 4 bookmark
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) January 12, 2015
returned the book to the shelf every single time, always read from same book although there was another exactly like it up there in stacks
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) January 12, 2015
first paragraph of Mickelsson's Ghosts led me to conceive of Cyrus Duffleman https://t.co/LEw2lAGnrF
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) January 12, 2015
although i think chapters 2 and 3 of Fight for Your Long Day were the first ones i wrote, pen on lined paper, skipping lines, June 2014
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) January 12, 2015
bought a used IBM ThinkPad to bring to Korea, once there wrote the whole thing from late June to early August, mainly lined paper in COEX
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) January 12, 2015
shopping mall corner Starbucks and then typing in, improving in evenings and mornings. did not grade papers that summer. Gardner was right!
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) January 12, 2015
so now Fight for Your Long Day is up there on the 3rd floor of Van Pelt w/ the 2 copies of Mickelsson's Ghosts; somewhat unbelievable to me.
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) January 12, 2015
i think you can still get into UPenn's Van Pelt library with a driver's license, as i would, although they take your photo at the entrance.
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) January 12, 2015
"He came to Chico in fall 1959, after having been fired from Oberlin for leading a faculty strike, and left in 1962." http://t.co/r6f6A2ILAk
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) January 12, 2015
so if you're a sucker for this kind of "writer's life" medium-to-long journalism, as i am, then i recommend: http://t.co/r6f6A2ILAk
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) January 12, 2015
January 11, 2015
jose kozer
Daniel Dragomirescu of Contemporary Literary Horizon sent me this poem:
JOSE KOZER (CUBA - UNITED STATES)
MY FATHER, WHO IS STILL ALIVE My father, who is still alive,
I don’t see him, and I know he has shrunk,
he has a family of brothers burned to ashes in Poland,
he never saw them, he learned of the death of his mother by telegram,
he didn’t inherit even a single button from his father,
what do I know if he inherited his character.
My father, who was a tailor and a Communist,
my father who didn’t speak and sat on the terrace,
to not believe in God,
to not want anything more to do with men,
sullenly withdrawing into himself against Hitler, against Stalin,
my father who once a year would raise a glass of whisky,
my father sitting in a neighbour’s apple tree eating its fruit
the day the Reds entered his village
and made my grandfather dance like a bear on the Sabbath,
and made him light a cigarette and smoke it on a Sabbath,
and my father left the village for ever,
went away for ever muttering his anger against the October revolution,
for ever hammering home that Trotsky was a dreamer and Beria a criminal,
abominating books he sat down on the terrace a tiny speck of a man,
and told me that the dreams of men are nothing more than a false literature,
that the history books lie because paper can take anything.
My father who was a tailor and a Communist.
*When I followed the Jose Kozer link above, I noticed that he is the age my father would be (b. 1940), and both had immigrants parents from Czechoslovakia.
JOSE KOZER (CUBA - UNITED STATES)
MY FATHER, WHO IS STILL ALIVE My father, who is still alive,
I don’t see him, and I know he has shrunk,
he has a family of brothers burned to ashes in Poland,
he never saw them, he learned of the death of his mother by telegram,
he didn’t inherit even a single button from his father,
what do I know if he inherited his character.
My father, who was a tailor and a Communist,
my father who didn’t speak and sat on the terrace,
to not believe in God,
to not want anything more to do with men,
sullenly withdrawing into himself against Hitler, against Stalin,
my father who once a year would raise a glass of whisky,
my father sitting in a neighbour’s apple tree eating its fruit
the day the Reds entered his village
and made my grandfather dance like a bear on the Sabbath,
and made him light a cigarette and smoke it on a Sabbath,
and my father left the village for ever,
went away for ever muttering his anger against the October revolution,
for ever hammering home that Trotsky was a dreamer and Beria a criminal,
abominating books he sat down on the terrace a tiny speck of a man,
and told me that the dreams of men are nothing more than a false literature,
that the history books lie because paper can take anything.
My father who was a tailor and a Communist.
*When I followed the Jose Kozer link above, I noticed that he is the age my father would be (b. 1940), and both had immigrants parents from Czechoslovakia.
January 8, 2015
other writers' Slovaks
And, finally, near the end of
Journey
, Celine arrives at his Slovak beauty, a far cry from the meth-infested psychotic "no-neck Slovak" of Robert Stone's "Helping":
Quite a few fine-looking girl applied for the job. In fact, so many strapping young women of all nationalities flocked to Vigny as soon as our ad appeared that we were hard put to it to choose among them. In the end we picked a Slovak by the name of Sophie whose complexion, energetic yet gentle bearing, and divine good health struck us, I have to admit, as irresistible.
In my imagined, or real, life of a Czech Kudera passing as a Slovak Soska (my father's father's true last name), my first literary sighting of any characters from the old country was late in high school and concerned the Czech girls on the American plains of Willa Cather's My Antonia , a book I remember enjoying very much. And, of course, Stone's "Helping" remains a favorite story nevertheless or because of its Slovak grace and wit.
As is our habit at L.U.S.K., we'll leave it to the next blogger to deconstruct the false binarism between the essential Slovak and constructed Czech in every man, neck or no.
Quite a few fine-looking girl applied for the job. In fact, so many strapping young women of all nationalities flocked to Vigny as soon as our ad appeared that we were hard put to it to choose among them. In the end we picked a Slovak by the name of Sophie whose complexion, energetic yet gentle bearing, and divine good health struck us, I have to admit, as irresistible.
In my imagined, or real, life of a Czech Kudera passing as a Slovak Soska (my father's father's true last name), my first literary sighting of any characters from the old country was late in high school and concerned the Czech girls on the American plains of Willa Cather's My Antonia , a book I remember enjoying very much. And, of course, Stone's "Helping" remains a favorite story nevertheless or because of its Slovak grace and wit.
As is our habit at L.U.S.K., we'll leave it to the next blogger to deconstruct the false binarism between the essential Slovak and constructed Czech in every man, neck or no.
January 4, 2015
January 1, 2015
Celine on people from our past
"He went on talking to me in the darkness, while I retraced the steps of my past with the sound of his voice as a charm with which to open the doors of the years and months and finally of my days, wondering where I could have run into this man. But I found nothing. No answer. You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past. It's frightening how many people and things there are in a man's past that have stopped moving. The living people we've lost in the crypts of time sleep so soundly side by side with the dead that the same darkness envelops them all."
~~ Celine, Journey to the End of the Night
~~ Celine, Journey to the End of the Night
December 19, 2014
Two from Celine
Both of these are from
Journey to the End of the Night
:
"The sadness of this world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time."
and
"A poor man in this world can be done to death in two main ways, by the absolute indifference of his fellows in peacetime or by their homicidal mania when there's a war."
"The sadness of this world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time."
and
"A poor man in this world can be done to death in two main ways, by the absolute indifference of his fellows in peacetime or by their homicidal mania when there's a war."
December 17, 2014
Christmas Trees
I enjoyed reading Patrick Wensink's article in Men's Health on Christmas tree salesmen, and it also reminded me of the short, spare piece I wrote about my father searching for an affordable tree in the late seventies.
December 5, 2014
My Father's Great Recession, Part 2
Part 1 of "My Father's Great Recession" was included in the July-August 2014 issue of Contemporary Literary Horizon, and now Part 2 of the story will be included in the November-December 2014 issue.
Dad's selfie from the 1970s with his college copy of The Sun Also Rises
Dad's selfie from the 1970s with his college copy of The Sun Also Rises
November 24, 2014
New Adjunct Novel!
I'm excited to announce that I signed a publishing contract for my second novel late last week. Beating Windward Press will publish Auggie's Revenge, a comic crime novel starring a trailer-park con artist, a supermarket seducer, and an adjunct instructor of philosophy searching for a life worth living.
sign of the line that is dotted, part 2
sign of the line that is dotted, part 2November 17, 2014
identify your firing squad
@Lit_Books @kudera They put him through mock execution, yes? N after all that, he still revered the Czar. #RussianSoul
— Ken Barnett (@kenaviba) November 16, 2014
@kenaviba @Lit_Books @kudera yes, of course, and famously; Ken, do you have Russian favs? I like D., Chekhov, Gogol, Shalamov, Olesha, Biely
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) November 16, 2014
@kudera @Lit_Books @kudera I'd add Isaac Babel, "My 1st Goose", "Odessa Tales". Life in the raw. Admire Gorky's humanity.
— Ken Barnett (@kenaviba) November 16, 2014
@kenaviba @Lit_Books excellent! Isaac Babel figures prominently in the second half Fight for Your Long Day: http://t.co/108lqouY1e
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) November 16, 2014
@kudera @Lit_Books Just ordered it. If good as it sounds, will end up in my library in Nicaragua.
— Ken Barnett (@kenaviba) November 16, 2014
@kenaviba @Lit_Books thanks, Ken! just shelve it with the mortal (as opposed to canonical great) writers, laugh, cry, and feel a bit weird
— Alex Kudera (@kudera) November 16, 2014
@kudera @Lit_Books Precisely what looking 4: contemporary that contains canonical.
— Ken Barnett (@kenaviba) November 16, 2014
