Alex Kudera's Blog, page 127

favorite quotation, 2013

I believe poet Amy King posted this article from Open Culture on facebook and led me to what would become my favorite quotation of the year.

Slavoj Zizek: "Oh, if Žižek recommends him, [there] must be something terribly wrong with him."

revisions, 2014

If in passing through a library or bookstore, and you should chance upon your book upon the shelf, take it down, open it up, and make those revisions that have been nagging you ever since the "final version" was published.

If you see your book in your house or apartment or the residence you are visiting this holiday season, you are allowed to do the same.

Of course, try to do all this when no one is looking, when no shopper or relative or spouse or stranger is around. Above all else, do not allow another author to see you in this revising state.

Do not draw attention to yourself when you cross out and write in your published book.

Red or black ink only, please.

some fiction I read in 2013

Moscow to the End of the Line by Venedikt Erofeev

A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kis

The Incorporation of Eric Cheung by Stephen C. Lo

Changing Places by David Lodge

Cartilage and Skin by Michael James Rizza

I Married A Communist by Philip Roth

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

26 fictions and 3 memoirs that stayed with me (and then more than 9 others)

(For my favorite novels and short story collections, I limited myself to fiction but cheated so I could add Richard Wright's Black Boy and Iain Levison's A Working Stiff's Manifesto. I listed no more than one work per author.)

1) A Fan's Notes by Fred Exley
2) The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
3) Brothers Karamazov by F.D.
4) Chump Change by Dan Fante
5) Like Life by Lorrie Moore
6) Benito Cereno by H. Melville
7) Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
8) Hunger by Knut Hamsun 
9) Candide by Voltaire
10) Lolita by Nabokov
11) Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
12) The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
13) The Bridegroom and Other Stories by Ha Jin
14) The Middleman and Other Stories by Bharati Mukherjee
15) A Working Stiff's Manifesto by Iain Levison 
16) The Joke by Milan Kundera
17) Petersburg by Andrei Biely
18) Envy by Yuri Olesha
19) Black Boy by Richard Wright
20) Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

and then I thought of some more (and cheated more with memoirs, Offutt and Pham):

21) The Music of Chance by Paul Auster
22) White Noise by Don DeLillo
23) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
24) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
25) Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow
26) The Same River Twice by Chris Offutt
27) Catfish and Mandala by Alexander X. Pham
28) Caucasia by Danzy Senna
29) Native Speaker by Chang Rae Lee

And because this is such a highly professional blog, I'll come back later and add some links.

30) Hard Times by Charles Dickens
31) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
32) The Cliff Walk by Don J. Snyder
33) The Human Stain by Philip Roth
34) Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner
35) Water Music by T. C. Boyle
36) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
37) Television by Jean-Phillippe Toussaint

and saving the best for last

38) The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano although Last Evenings on Earth is an extremely close second for me

Until I remembered to also include these:

39) Selected Stories by Andre Dubus
40) The Overcoat and Other Tales by Nikolai Gogol
41) Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver
42) The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth

So with that final four, until I remember others, I still kind of have a saving-the-best-for-last thing going on.

Feel free to find me at Goodreads for star ratings and a few reviews.

A fine final correction would be

43) The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Okay, then, until I add more. . .

26 fictions and 3 memoirs that stayed with me (and then 9 others)

(For my favorite novels and short story collections, I limited myself to fiction but cheated so I could add Richard Wright's Black Boy. I listed no more than one work per author.)

1) A Fan's Notes by Fred Exley
2) The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
3) Brothers Karamazov by F.D.
4) Chump Change by Dan Fante
5) Like Life by Lorrie Moore
6) Benito Cereno by H. Melville
7) Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
8) Hunger by Knut Hamsun 
9) Candide by Voltaire
10) Lolita by Nabokov
11) Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
12) The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
13) The Bridegroom and Other Stories by Ha Jin
14) The Middleman and Other Stories by Bharati Mukherjee
15) A Working Stiff's Manifesto by Iain Levison 
16) The Joke by Milan Kundera
17) Petersburg by Andrei Biely
18) Envy by Yuri Olesha
19) Black Boy by Richard Wright
20) Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

and then I thought of some more (and cheated more with memoirs, Offutt and Pham):

21) The Music of Chance by Paul Auster
22) White Noise by Don DeLillo
23) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
24) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
25) Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow
26) The Same River Twice by Chris Offutt
27) Catfish and Mandala by Alexander X. Pham
28) Caucasia by Danzy Senna
29) Native Speaker by Chang Rae Lee

And because this is such a highly professional blog, I'll come back later and add some links.

30) Hard Times by Charles Dickens
31) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
32) The Cliff Walk by Don J. Snyder
33) The Human Stain by Philip Roth
34) Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner
35) Greasy Lake and Other Stories by T. C. Boyle
36) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
37) Television by Jean-Phillippe Toussaint

and saving the best for last

38) The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano although Last Evenings on Earth is an extremely close second for me

Until I remembered to also include these:

39) Selected Stories by Andre Dubus
40) The Overcoat and Other Tales by Nikolai Gogol
41) Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver
42) The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth

So with that final four, until I remember others, I still kind of have a saving-the-best-for-last thing going on.

Feel free to find me at Goodreads for star ratings and a few reviews.

26 fictions and 3 memoirs that stayed with me (and then others)

(I limited myself to fiction but cheated so I could add Richard Wright's Black Boy. I listed no more than one work per author.)

1) A Fan's Notes by Fred Exley
2) The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
3) Brothers Karamazov by F.D.
4) Chump Change by Dan Fante
5) Like Life by Lorrie Moore
6) Benito Cereno by H. Melville
7) Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
8) Hunger by Knut Hamsun 
9) Candide by Voltaire
10) Lolita by Nabokov
11) Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
12) The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
13) The Bridegroom and Other Stories by Ha Jin
14) The Middleman and Other Stories by Bharati Mukherjee
15) A Working Stiff's Manifesto by Iain Levison 
16) The Joke by Milan Kundera
17) Petersburg by Andrei Biely
18) Envy by Yuri Olesha
19) Black Boy by Richard Wright
20) Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

and then I thought of some more (and cheated again with memoir, Offutt and Pham):

21) The Music of Chance by Paul Auster
22) White Noise by Don DeLillo
23) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
24) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
25) Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow
26) The Same River Twice by Chris Offutt
27) Catfish and Mandala by Alexander X. Pham
28) Caucasia by Danzy Senna
29) Native Speaker by Chang Rae Lee

And because this is such a highly professional blog, I'll come back later and add some links.

30) Hard Times by Charles Dickens
31) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
32) The Cliff Walk by Don J. Snyder
33) The Human Stain by Philip Roth
34) Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner
35) Greasy Lake and Other Stories by T. C. Boyle
36) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

we're shrinking

Sad to see Goddard College in this article on campuses with budget problems that could lead to faculty cuts.

At the same time, articles like this one, about guys with college degrees working 4 jobs for 60 hours per week and earning $20,000 total, reminds us of why fewer folks are finding college affordable or even enrolling at all.

And then, there's the Motley Fool, suggesting that the "shadow economy" is much more active than anyone realizes and, in fact, is luring people away from the employment rolls. So you don't need to worry so much about all the folks disappearing and no longer counted. Aside from the fact that they are making no contributions to social security and most likely "doctor visits" are to the emergency room as uninsured people, our millions of "shadow workers" are no doubt living high on the hog this holiday season.

Tell me another one, Santa.

American inheritance

From the comments after this CNN article, I learned that the $177,000 is a median, not a mean, for inheritance to be divided among all due to inherit, but that only 50% of Americans expect to give anything at all. So I guess that would mean the person straddling the line between the top two quarters is the one able to pass on 177K. It's not quite a 1% versus 99%, no, but I can't prove we aren't heading in that direction.

2014 Appearance Schedule

So far in 2014, I have firm commitments to speak and participate at the MLA Subconference at Columbia College in Chicago on January 8 and 9 and the College English Association Conference in Baltimore, Maryland from March 27 through 29.

Here are details I have so far for Chicago:

Subconference of the MLA “Resisting Precarity” Program
January 8-9, 2014
Location: Columbia College Chicago
Collins Hall, 624 S. Michigan, Chicago, IL

And I'll be reading from Fight for Your Long Day and answering questions as part of this panel discussion:

Thursday, January 9
4:00-5:30 PM: Adjunct Labor and Pedagogy
Moderator: Andy Broughton
Karen Madison (University of Arkansas, New Faculty Majority Coalition)
Alex Kudera (Clemson University)

In Baltimore, I'll be speaking about sales and marketing strategies for contemporary literary fiction, with more details forthcoming.

"stories about shattered dreams"

The Lenny Cooke story applies very much to the writing life, but, of course, literary America is suffering from an overrepresentation of affluent spawn, the young writer, agent, and publisher straight out of Scarsdale or Bethesda, not Coney Island or Flint. Even our writers who claim "working class" origins are often ignorant of the fact that by statistical data their homes had much more than most, unattached suburban residences with two parents, two incomes, etc.