Alex Kudera's Blog, page 124

Letter from China

I'm happy to report that Contemporary Literary Horizon has included "Letter from China," published online as "First Impressions of Xi'an, China," in its 2013 print anthology of poetry and prose from around the world. As always, I'm wishing Dr. Daniel D. Peaceman the best this year.

Frank Conroy

On social media, the writer Michael Leone posted this quotation from Frank Conroy's Stop-Time :

It was as if all the saints, martyrs, and mystics of human history were gathered into a single building, each one crying out at the moment of revelation, each one truly there at the extreme of joy or pain, crying out with the purity of total selflessness. There was no arguing with these sudden voices above the general clamor, they rang true. All around me were men in a paroxysm of discovery, seeing lands I had never known existed, calling me with a strength I had never known existed. But they called from every direction with equal power, so I couldn’t answer. I stood balanced on the pinpoint of my own sanity, a small, cracked tile on the floor.   

turning his buck

In the screenplay, I'm depicting myself as a marginal man turning his buck by analyzing the marketing strategies of short films from Passenger and the owner of La Colombe.

A key is to say you're doing something you love and that it's not about the money.

But hey, what's not to like about good music and coffee?

If while sipping your La Colombe coffee in Rittenhouse Square, you hear the strumming of the world's happiest busker, be sure to think of L.U.S.K.

And have a good weekend.

How Iowa Flattened Literature

I'm so tired I can't even remember if I've read the entire article, but I did reflect a bit on the following two quotations from it:

"If your central motive as a writer is to put across ideas," the writer Steve Almond says, "write an essay."

I found this interesting because one reason I enjoyed Almond's excellent lead-off story from the Richard Russo 2010 Best of American Short Stories is that it does have ideas we can play with. They relate to the analyst v. analyzed, gambling, and fathers and sons among other things. Of course, the story has many other things going for it. Well, I do like novels with ideas, if not precisely of ideas, and for me that's partly what I get out of Voltaire, Nabokov, Pynchon, Dostoyevsky, and others.

And then "How Iowa Flattened Literature" pretty much depicts Frank Conroy as petty and pathetic. Similar to John Gardner, Conroy is a man intent on validating realism at the expense of the experimental, postmodern, or other unusually good stuff.

When I was at Iowa, Frank Conroy, Engle’s longest-running successor, did not name the acceptable categories. Instead, he shot down projects by shooting down their influences. He loathed Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis, Barthelme. He had a thing against J.D. Salinger that was hard to explain. To go anywhere near Melville or Nabokov was to ingest the fatal microbes of the obnoxious. Of David Foster Wallace he growled, with a wave of his hand, "He has his thing that he does."

I've never felt a lasting need to uphold one kind of literature at the expense of another, but I hope if I'm ever accused of having "a thing" that I do, it means I've sold some books. (By the way, DFW is the only writer mentioned in the above paragraph that I've never read although I've never finished anything by Gaddis. I love at least one novel or story by all the others.)

Iowa Writers Workshop

"How Iowa Flattened Literature" has been in the news recently, about the CIA and the workshop, and in fine blogging fashion, I've only skimmed parts of it so far. Nevertheless here are ten things I think of when free-associating about the Iowa Writers Workshop:

1) The Stone Reader a documentary about a forgotten Iowa writer that the director determines to find

2) The Same River Twice by Chris Offutt

3) After the Workshop by John McNally

4) Fred Exley at Iowa in Pages from a Cold Island

5) drinking stories about Raymond Carver and John Cheever at Iowa

6) stories I've assigned by Bharati Mukherjee, Nam Le, and Sana Krasikov

7) John Gardner and T.C. Boyle, wildly successful, prolific novelists with PhDs from Iowa (if I'm not mistaken, Gardner was one of America's first PhDs in creative writing although this is perplexing as I've always been under the impression Iowa does not offer such a degree)

8) John Irving, one of my father's favorites

9) Kurt Vonnegut, Ralph Ellison, Philip Roth, Richard Yates and other literary greats who passed through Iowa

10) my rejection in '93 or '94; in retrospect, I'm sure it appeared to be a rather weak application (no publications, undergrad workshops, or thorough references, and a hurried seven semesters of college; my creative writing sample was likely somewhat experimental and weird)

ps--need to get to work but plan to add hyperlinks and Jesus' Son, Joy Williams, and others

pps--shouldn't forget Alexander Chee or Steve Almond

Throwaway Americans, 10th Anniversary Edition

In "Throwaway Americans," Stu Bykofsky has the audacity to wave a white race card and get the reader to sympathize with a guy who went to private schools, once owned an airplane, and even has a part-time job, and, alas, maybe because the guy is 54, just as in my 1994, non-airplane-owning, flat-broke father's experience as fictionalized for "My Old Man," I do, at least somewhat, even as I wonder where I'll be in ten years. In 2024, just as in 1994 and 2014, it seems likely a majority of the folks making the "hiring decision" will be other white men.

At least that was certainly true in my dad's situation 20 years ago when he finally found his way back into the world of employment. I've noted this before at L.U.S.K., that he wound up getting his 15 seconds of fame as "the poet, Jay Roberts" while working at a gas station convenience store off A1A in Ponte Vedra, Florida after his downstairs neighbor in the beach bungalow they split a low rent on was kind enough to bring back an application and help return him to work. My father did about 20 to 30 hours a week at minimum wage, $5.05 at the time, I think, and enjoyed the job because playing cashier reminded him of working in a liquor store thirty-five years previously. He had time to walk on the beach and write his poetry, and he was quite happy for those reasons.

If anyone seeing this would like to read "My Old Man," my story based upon visiting my father back then, I'd be happy to send you a copy of my e-book although sales are always appreciated.

2014: inequality gets eyeballs

From Robert Reich's "Why There's No Outcry" to Stu Byfosky's "Throwaway Americans," inequality, unemployment, and poverty articles remain the easiest ones to find between Miley, Bieber, and Sochi headlines. Apologies again for pasting in URLs, but I'll update this list as I see them, and I'm sure it will prove impossible to capture even "the 1%" of the total. So to speak.

(In "Throwaway Americans," Stu has the audacity to wave a white race card and get the reader to sympathize with a guy who went to private schools, once owned an airplane, and even has a part-time job, and, alas, maybe because the guy is 54, just as in my 1994, non-airplane-owning, flat-broke father's experience as fictionalized for "My Old Man," I do, at least somewhat, even as I wonder where I'll be in ten years.)

Inequality:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-theres-no-outcry_b_4666330.html

http://barrygrahamauthor.com/post/74927339360/guest-blog-post-a-brief-primer-on-inequality-by-larry

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/business/the-middle-class-is-steadily-eroding-just-ask-the-business-world.html?action=click&contentCollection=Europe&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&region=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/how-inequality-hollows-out-the-soul/?_php=true&_type=blogs&hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2014/02/gender-inequality-costing-global-economy-trillions-dollars-year

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/opinion/krugman-inequality-dignity-and-freedom.html?_r=0

Unemployment:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20140214_Throwaway_Americans.html

http://www.ibtimes.com/us-january-jobs-report-2014-unemployment-rate-falls-66-nonfarm-payrolls-rise-113k-1553925

http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/business/20140213_ap_97aa78f9a8514fc2a176869f28786b75.html

Poverty:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/nation-jan-june14-povertysuburb_01-11/

Frade Killed Ellen

In January, I gathered some stories and published them for kindle as Frade Killed Ellen (and other stories).

They were written over the last twenty years, from 1994 to 2013, and are often consistent with the inequality and poverty themes found all across the world wide web these days. I'd say "My Old Man" and "Blue Truck" resonate the most in this regard, but the title story is my recent favorite even if it is not my very best writing. I also included "The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity," which is still available a la carte for a buck. On amazon, that one has three unsolicited five-star reviews, and then a one-star special showed up more recently.

What can any of us do?

The writing life is to be endured, friends.

Moscow Zoo

At some point between the publication of Gogol's Dead Souls and the Russian Revolution, a zoo was born. Happy 150th to the Moscow Zoo!

beating around the academia

Quickly, a couple blogs on academia caught my eye recently, and inspired by both, I wanted to renew the L.U.S.K consumer and gifting pledge!

So here it is:

No matter how low our marketing strategists stoop, under no circumstances will we be sending underwear to any standing U.S. governors (and, yes, we are including both long and flannel as part of this pledge), and, likewise, we will never ever, or ever never, purchase a pre-owned automobile from any curbstoner who happens to be moonlighting as a university president (not even if he has taken to calling himself a sales and leasing consultant or referring to student debt as "the collective vig").

That's our guarantee to you, friend.