Alex Kudera's Blog, page 122
April 1, 2014
1 avril
some of my father's KunderasIt's Milan Kundera's birthday, of course, and that's no joke.
Happy 85th, Milan!
I consider that a rather mind-boggling anniversary that I have almost no chance of seeing, but poor Kundera must not only continue to endure, but he has to spend his last years in disguise, hoping no one recognizes him as me.
Here at L.U.S.K., we grow older and more ridiculous on a month-to-month basis. Or sometimes all at once.
March 30, 2014
Clemson Literary Festival
The Clemson Literary Festival came and went, and as best I can tell, it was a huge success. For me, highlights were hearing U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Tretheway read her own poems, and then driving three other talented poets--Denise Duhamel, Natalie Shapero, and Craig Morgan Teicher--to or from the airport, and exchanging thoughts on topics ranging from writing to survival to teaching to raising kids.
Why did I drive writers to the airport?
Boredom, procrastination (instead of grading or writing), and making effort to keep my job count, but I was mainly inspired by some essays by Jonathan Ames, where he takes on various roles for the sake of adventure, and also by John McNally's After The Workshop , whose main character survives by driving writers around Iowa City. The driving seemed to go well, and I'm rather proud of the fact that with passengers in the car, I miraculously avoided one of my usual highway routines of suddenly and desperately pushing it to an exit whereupon I park in a gas station and dash for the men's room.
In fact, just a couple weeks ago, this was exactly what I was doing when Alexander Chee's voice came on NPR to further discuss the writers residency he invented for Amtrak. Alas, then, I missed most of the train talk as well as the delicious fried chicken that Travelers Rest gas station is known for.
So that's the news. . .
Why did I drive writers to the airport?
Boredom, procrastination (instead of grading or writing), and making effort to keep my job count, but I was mainly inspired by some essays by Jonathan Ames, where he takes on various roles for the sake of adventure, and also by John McNally's After The Workshop , whose main character survives by driving writers around Iowa City. The driving seemed to go well, and I'm rather proud of the fact that with passengers in the car, I miraculously avoided one of my usual highway routines of suddenly and desperately pushing it to an exit whereupon I park in a gas station and dash for the men's room.
In fact, just a couple weeks ago, this was exactly what I was doing when Alexander Chee's voice came on NPR to further discuss the writers residency he invented for Amtrak. Alas, then, I missed most of the train talk as well as the delicious fried chicken that Travelers Rest gas station is known for.
So that's the news. . .
March 29, 2014
"Scare Away The Dark"
Passenger, if you see this, send us a few of your favorite books and a few of your recent reads.
March 26, 2014
death on the nile
So I randomly posted a Roberto Bolano quotation from a story about a photojournalist's adventures in India, which I've often paired with a section of The Savage Detectives about journalists and photographers in Liberia, Africa, and then within 24 hours I read about the death of Matthew Power.
According to The Huffington Post, Power died in Uganda while on assignment following an explorer who was attempting to walk the length of the Nile. Heatstroke is believed to be the cause of death, and he was only 39-years-old.
I didn't know Matthew, but because I've been a Harper's Magazine subscriber for years, I did know some of his wonderful writing, particularly, "Continental Drift: River vagrants in the age of Wal-Mart" and "The Magic Mountain: Trickle-down economics in a Philippine garbage dump." I read these when they first appeared in the print issue and heartily recommend them both.
Life is short, and for many far shorter than it should be, but it sounds like Matthew Power made the most of his 39 years of living. Here's a nice tribute by Power's friend, V.V. Ganeshananthan, and another by Donovan Hohn.
Carry on, then.
According to The Huffington Post, Power died in Uganda while on assignment following an explorer who was attempting to walk the length of the Nile. Heatstroke is believed to be the cause of death, and he was only 39-years-old.
I didn't know Matthew, but because I've been a Harper's Magazine subscriber for years, I did know some of his wonderful writing, particularly, "Continental Drift: River vagrants in the age of Wal-Mart" and "The Magic Mountain: Trickle-down economics in a Philippine garbage dump." I read these when they first appeared in the print issue and heartily recommend them both.
Life is short, and for many far shorter than it should be, but it sounds like Matthew Power made the most of his 39 years of living. Here's a nice tribute by Power's friend, V.V. Ganeshananthan, and another by Donovan Hohn.
Carry on, then.
March 25, 2014
The Eye
"He was somewhat surprised to discover that it was not nearly as far away as he had thought; his flight had followed a spiral path, and the return journey was relatively short."
Roberto Bolano, from "Mauricio ('The Eye') Silva"
Roberto Bolano, from "Mauricio ('The Eye') Silva"
March 23, 2014
i'm not the first
For years, I assumed that I was the first person named Alex Kudera to live in the United States, and then one day during my thrice daily narcissism, the googling of my name that is, I came upon this fellow from the 1940 Census in Akron, Ohio.
I'll add to this later, hopefully with stronger detail and more interesting content.
I'll add to this later, hopefully with stronger detail and more interesting content.
March 21, 2014
pay adjuncts, work hard, live below your means
I didn't know Joseph A. Domino's article in The Huffington Post was coming, but I have known Joe through various e-mails since the spring of 2010, soon after I first learned that Fight for Your Long Day would be published. His early enthusiasm for the novel led to his testimony as a blurb on the adjunct situation at the front of the book.
Reading Domino's HuffPo piece, good writing that presumably didn't earn him a dime, it struck me that 1) Joe left out a lot of personal adversity he's faced; 2) in several fluid paragraphs, he captures the 1970s recession as well as the present moment for far too many; and 3) the man has worked hard, forty plus years of it, and he deserves his retirement with a degree of dignity.
Also, Joe says that some might call him "cheap," but I'd suggest that the way he implies he has handled his money over the years is very reasonable given the elasticity of the American economy with all of its downsizing, outsourcing, unpredictable inflation, artificial bubbles, and market gyrations. In fact, we're in an intraday all-time high for the S&P 500 right now, but everyone knows that the S&P index is unpredictable and recently has become less reliable as a predictor of the average adult American's fate.
So if there are any younger workers or students reading this blog, I'd encourage you to live like Joe, below your means, and, if possible, save more than a penny for a rainy day and try to navigate the world of lower-expense safer investments. On this topic, for younger Americans, student-loan debt is often a significant obstacle, and so I also wanted to share again one government website and additional information on possibilities for safely and legally lowering payments and even having some debt forgiven outright.
Reading Domino's HuffPo piece, good writing that presumably didn't earn him a dime, it struck me that 1) Joe left out a lot of personal adversity he's faced; 2) in several fluid paragraphs, he captures the 1970s recession as well as the present moment for far too many; and 3) the man has worked hard, forty plus years of it, and he deserves his retirement with a degree of dignity.
Also, Joe says that some might call him "cheap," but I'd suggest that the way he implies he has handled his money over the years is very reasonable given the elasticity of the American economy with all of its downsizing, outsourcing, unpredictable inflation, artificial bubbles, and market gyrations. In fact, we're in an intraday all-time high for the S&P 500 right now, but everyone knows that the S&P index is unpredictable and recently has become less reliable as a predictor of the average adult American's fate.
So if there are any younger workers or students reading this blog, I'd encourage you to live like Joe, below your means, and, if possible, save more than a penny for a rainy day and try to navigate the world of lower-expense safer investments. On this topic, for younger Americans, student-loan debt is often a significant obstacle, and so I also wanted to share again one government website and additional information on possibilities for safely and legally lowering payments and even having some debt forgiven outright.
March 19, 2014
J. Domino and Con Job
It was nice to see Joseph A. Domino's latest at The Huffington Post the same week that the full fifty minute version of Con Job: Stories of Adjunct and Contingent Labor became available for free viewing.
March 16, 2014
Hemingway, Hunger, and "My Old Man"
There are novels I've read at least three times, and both Hunger and The Sun Also Rises would fit this category. In the most recent rereads, I'm getting a lot more from the Hamsun than the Hemingway; for the former I've written down several quotations whereas when I was reading Papa in Suzhou, I found the book did not wear well with me.
In fact, just like my story "My Old Man" which began as a parody of a Hemingway story, or maybe, more so, a parody of my life, The Sun Also Rises, read in 2012, seemed to be an elementary tale about a bunch of drunks who were or felt like failed writers. That struck more than anything, that everyone from the opening Jew, Robert Cohn, to the narrator had a novel or an aborted effort somewhere in his dossier. So that's the ultimate writer's novel, but it's also the essential parody of all of us.
In the past though, particularly when reading it at my father's in his 1990s, $400-per-month studio by the sea in Ponte Vedra, Florida, I appreciated the book a lot more. Here's a section on Hemingway's slim novel that I wrote into my twenty-page story almost twenty years ago:
Out of the sun, and with the wind blowing from the water and cooling his place, I have energy for the first time since morning. As my father drifts off, I peruse his bookshelf, looking for something special among a shelf of sallow paperbacks. He has kept all his trade-paper Russians and Kunderas, and more recently added newer self-help and how-to-writes for memoir and screenplay, but I select from a section of Hemingway and pick out The Sun Also Rises.
It is my father’s copy from college, the Scribner Classic edition. When I was in Paris, I felt proud to read the same copies of Dostoyevsky as Hemingway read at Shakespeare & Company. Hemingway wrote his first stories in Paris, and as a busboy, un commis, I broke my first wine glasses there and wrote only a little in a journal each day.
I'd certainly still recommend The Sun Also Rises if you've never read it. But if you only have room for one Hemingway in your life, I'd go with A Farewell to Arms or my personal favorite, his memoir, A Moveable Feast. For the latter, I have yet to read the new "restored edition" that includes chapters cut from the first published version.
As a final note, yesterday, from a public library sale, for fifty cents I picked up some poetry by Lucille Clifton, another Dave Newman favorite, and this old Paris Review paperback with an all-star cast of more contemporary writers. From the library's lending side, I checked out The Old Man and the Sea, which I haven't read since high school, and To Have and Have Not, a title I've yet to read.
In fact, just like my story "My Old Man" which began as a parody of a Hemingway story, or maybe, more so, a parody of my life, The Sun Also Rises, read in 2012, seemed to be an elementary tale about a bunch of drunks who were or felt like failed writers. That struck more than anything, that everyone from the opening Jew, Robert Cohn, to the narrator had a novel or an aborted effort somewhere in his dossier. So that's the ultimate writer's novel, but it's also the essential parody of all of us.
In the past though, particularly when reading it at my father's in his 1990s, $400-per-month studio by the sea in Ponte Vedra, Florida, I appreciated the book a lot more. Here's a section on Hemingway's slim novel that I wrote into my twenty-page story almost twenty years ago:
Out of the sun, and with the wind blowing from the water and cooling his place, I have energy for the first time since morning. As my father drifts off, I peruse his bookshelf, looking for something special among a shelf of sallow paperbacks. He has kept all his trade-paper Russians and Kunderas, and more recently added newer self-help and how-to-writes for memoir and screenplay, but I select from a section of Hemingway and pick out The Sun Also Rises.
It is my father’s copy from college, the Scribner Classic edition. When I was in Paris, I felt proud to read the same copies of Dostoyevsky as Hemingway read at Shakespeare & Company. Hemingway wrote his first stories in Paris, and as a busboy, un commis, I broke my first wine glasses there and wrote only a little in a journal each day.
I'd certainly still recommend The Sun Also Rises if you've never read it. But if you only have room for one Hemingway in your life, I'd go with A Farewell to Arms or my personal favorite, his memoir, A Moveable Feast. For the latter, I have yet to read the new "restored edition" that includes chapters cut from the first published version.
As a final note, yesterday, from a public library sale, for fifty cents I picked up some poetry by Lucille Clifton, another Dave Newman favorite, and this old Paris Review paperback with an all-star cast of more contemporary writers. From the library's lending side, I checked out The Old Man and the Sea, which I haven't read since high school, and To Have and Have Not, a title I've yet to read.
March 15, 2014
a final quote from Hamsun's Hunger
"The intelligent poor man of course is a much finer observer than the intelligent rich man. The poor man has to look carefully around him every time he takes a step, he wisely mistrusts every word he hears from others, for him the simplest acts involve obstacles and problems. His senses are sharp, he is a man of feeling, he has experienced painful things, his soul has been burned and scarred. . . ."
Knut Hamsun, Hunger (published in 1890)
Knut Hamsun, Hunger (published in 1890)
