Alex Kudera's Blog, page 116
October 24, 2014
humor is such a genius thing to do. . .
at least according to this interview excerpt from Nayomi Munaweera: "I actually don’t feel like I can do humor very well because humor is such a genius thing to do."
Also in The Rumpus interview of Munaweera by Soniah Kamal, when I read the part about her family fleeing Nigeria when all Asians were forced out of the country, I thought of these words from Bharati Mukherjee's "A Wife's Story," what I'd been teaching just last week, "Idi Amin's lesson is permanent," and the pessimistic implications of the words.
Also in The Rumpus interview of Munaweera by Soniah Kamal, when I read the part about her family fleeing Nigeria when all Asians were forced out of the country, I thought of these words from Bharati Mukherjee's "A Wife's Story," what I'd been teaching just last week, "Idi Amin's lesson is permanent," and the pessimistic implications of the words.
October 12, 2014
My Father's Great Recession
My print copy of Contemporary Literary Horizon arrived last week, and it included the first half of "My Father's Great Recession," a fiction based upon visiting the old man in Ponte Vedra, Florida when he was living in a studio by the beach but only had forty bucks in his pocket because a "backer" wanted him to have pocket change while his son was around. Perhaps it's not my best short story, but it's most meaningful to me, and it was great to see it printed on good paper in original English and Romanian translation.
It will appear as the first story in the collection, Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served .
Thank you, as always, Daniel Peaceman.
It will appear as the first story in the collection, Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served .
Thank you, as always, Daniel Peaceman.
October 11, 2014
Mo Yan
I was browsing Mo Yan novels in the Greenville Public Library, and I came across his interesting choice for a prefatory quotation to
The Garlic Ballads
:
Novelists are forever trying to distance themselves from politics, but the novel itself closes in on politics. Novelists are so concerned with "man's fate" that they tend to lose sight of their own fate. Therein lies their tragedy.
~Josef Stalin
I don't think that it invariably requires a Nobel Prize in Literature to sell translated books in the states, but I do know Mo Yan won one in 2012. The books I was looking at in the library appeared worn, to an extent, so I'm guessing that they were on the shelf before that.
As you may know, Mo Yan is a pen name that means "don't speak," and if you follow the link to Wikipedia.org from his name above, you'll see that there was some controversy over his win in light of both his ties to Chinese authorities as well as his Swedish translator's connection to the Nobel committee. I haven't read his writing.
Novelists are forever trying to distance themselves from politics, but the novel itself closes in on politics. Novelists are so concerned with "man's fate" that they tend to lose sight of their own fate. Therein lies their tragedy.
~Josef Stalin
I don't think that it invariably requires a Nobel Prize in Literature to sell translated books in the states, but I do know Mo Yan won one in 2012. The books I was looking at in the library appeared worn, to an extent, so I'm guessing that they were on the shelf before that.
As you may know, Mo Yan is a pen name that means "don't speak," and if you follow the link to Wikipedia.org from his name above, you'll see that there was some controversy over his win in light of both his ties to Chinese authorities as well as his Swedish translator's connection to the Nobel committee. I haven't read his writing.
September 29, 2014
September 28, 2014
Jack Kerouac was a student in my class
I dreamed Jack Kerouac was a student in my class. He was a prankster, a disruptive young man although in the dream he appeared about my age, an adult Kerouac, not the drunk, bloated one from his last years, but rather the nimble healthy one from his writing and "roading" days. In the dream, Jack stole my glasses and my "dumb" phone, two essential items for my classroom survival, and I was aware of this, and at one point I was chasing him around the desks. I was angry at Jack. I couldn't catch up, or I couldn't find him. I felt frustrated, overwhelmed by "students these days" or at least this one in particular. Toward the end of the dream, he returned the items and acted like it was all in good fun. No big deal to swipe Old Man Kudera's spectacles and run around the room. Anyway, I woke up before I could reprimand or report his shenanigans to campus authorities. Alas. In a way, it's an embarrassing dream, but nevertheless, I share it with you.
September 24, 2014
September 22, 2014
Saccaro of Salon
“It can be a tremendous amount of work,” said Alex Kudera. Kudera started teaching in 1996 and is the author of a novel about adjunct professorship, Fight For Your Long Day. “When I was an adjunct, I didn’t have a social life. It’s basically just work all the time. You plan your weekend around the fact that you’re going to be doing work Saturday and Sunday — typically grading papers, which is emotionally exhausting. The grading can be tedious but at least it’s a private thing. It’s basically 5-10 hours a day for every day of the week.”
