Alex Kudera's Blog, page 130
October 31, 2013
hit on the head inside his office
From 1996 through 2007, I taught classes in this building, Anderson Hall at Temple University, and so this story, too, touched me very directly. There's the indignity of being 81 years old, contributing to campus by teaching Intellectual Heritage at Temple (you don't have to be Eva Keuls to know there is also a war against Thucydides and friends in this country), and then getting robbed and beaten inside "his" office (most likely a shared one). The adjunct instructor is presumably on Medicare, but as a "part timer" he wouldn't have health coverage from the university and because PA has rejected the Medicaid expansion, he most likely wouldn't be able to afford any health coverage were he under 65. As best I understand the latest news on the story, although he suffered "brain trauma" he was well enough to be released from the hospital after a one-night stay. This man deserves better, no?
October 30, 2013
October 28, 2013
NFM at TRN
For Campus Equity Week, The Real News interviewed Craig Flanery of New Faculty Majority.
October 25, 2013
campus equity week
Campus Equity Week is this coming October 28 to November 2.
October 22, 2013
de man, further deconstructed
A new book on transcontinental post-European Paul De Man, by an angry Barish, has him in greater detail as a narcissist, grifter, careerist, and leaver of women and children whose academic credentials were hardly in order even as he found plentiful spare hours for staring into mirrors at his beautiful self.
I've nothing to add other than an anecdotal detail from his descent into 1970s New Haven. And that's as to the specific accusation of Paul's fascistic turn toward grade inflation, when an offended A-w/honors grad student accosted him about this, the post-facist-press Professor shot back, "Fight for your D, Man."
I've nothing to add other than an anecdotal detail from his descent into 1970s New Haven. And that's as to the specific accusation of Paul's fascistic turn toward grade inflation, when an offended A-w/honors grad student accosted him about this, the post-facist-press Professor shot back, "Fight for your D, Man."
October 21, 2013
You may not be interested in literature. . .
Within the essay "The Business of America is War," a quotation from Leon Trotsky, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you," inspires me to think that the same idea very much applies to literature.
October 20, 2013
real adjuncts with Cyrus Duffleman
As part of a post titled "Adjunct instructors in dire straits with lack of pay, full-time jobs," Real Money With Ali Veshi described a 39-year-old teacher living in his parents' basement and earning less than $10,000 a year. At the end of an accompanying video (top of article), the adjunct is seen in tears, crying because his plans have not worked out; far from a ticket to dignity and security, higher education has proven to be a path to dependence and disappointment.
In fact, as much as a possible adjunct's tale, and I don't necessarily feel his circumstances could be described as "representative" of all "adcons" in academia, his story is an American one. It resonates, I'm sure, with any reader of Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes , the 36 percent of millenials who report living at home, the twenty-five percent of recent college grads without any job at all, and, even, most tenured professors in the humanities, who do commonly have their financial needs met, but feel forgotten or disregarded as intellectuals, writers without readers, the neglected and rejected, the true 99 percent of the literary world.
And that's the real story of America, the more universal one of failure and disappointment, what Exley understood to be an honest representation of American democracy full of earnest expression from teachers and parents about "doing what you love," "if you work hard, you can make it," and "follow your dreams." Although both Exley and author Saul Bellow much preferred the engagement and anticipation of American adventure described in Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March , and that was the book Freddy Ex indulged in on his mother's Davenport sofa (yes, a couch from a defunct company is where he sat and read before he was to, finally, write his first substantial drafts in a mental institution), Bellow wasn't kidding when he wrote that more die of heartbreak.
In fact, as much as a possible adjunct's tale, and I don't necessarily feel his circumstances could be described as "representative" of all "adcons" in academia, his story is an American one. It resonates, I'm sure, with any reader of Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes , the 36 percent of millenials who report living at home, the twenty-five percent of recent college grads without any job at all, and, even, most tenured professors in the humanities, who do commonly have their financial needs met, but feel forgotten or disregarded as intellectuals, writers without readers, the neglected and rejected, the true 99 percent of the literary world.
And that's the real story of America, the more universal one of failure and disappointment, what Exley understood to be an honest representation of American democracy full of earnest expression from teachers and parents about "doing what you love," "if you work hard, you can make it," and "follow your dreams." Although both Exley and author Saul Bellow much preferred the engagement and anticipation of American adventure described in Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March , and that was the book Freddy Ex indulged in on his mother's Davenport sofa (yes, a couch from a defunct company is where he sat and read before he was to, finally, write his first substantial drafts in a mental institution), Bellow wasn't kidding when he wrote that more die of heartbreak.
October 18, 2013
Czech Lit in PA
I try to be modest and full of verve and self-deprecatory wit, and yet, if someone in Steeler Country doesn't fly me in on a private jet soon, whereupon I should be fed meats and starches and then led through the Prague Writers Festival on my own private donkey and greeted with flowers and asked to sign books, yours and mine of course, I'm going to feel snubbed, as if the Reigning King of Literary Pennsylvania's Slovak Nation has not been properly recognized (and don't give me that bull about Allen Ginsberg in 1965 or social-justice Czechs who worked in and wrote about steel mills and such, great uncles who "Slav-ed" so I could teach school and all that).
the age of environmental anxiety
Still smarting from my failed speculation in the Munro market, I chanced upon more people effecting change in society. Like the aforementioned fellow living without cash, there is the young couple who built and now live in a glass house in a field far from the grid and a friendly father of four leading a movement to reduce carbon emissions through "transition towns." Indeed, the insomnia, and all the wasted hours sitting around not writing novels or grading papers while breathing in the cancer, wouldn't be the same without these articles about happy folks changing their world or mine.
October 16, 2013
alice munro
A facebook tip from the talented and kind Alexander Chee led me to read my first Alice Munro short story. "Dimension" offers craft and sadness and a breath or two of unexpected life at the end. I was happy to spend some time with it.
In another version of the writer's life, one that doesn't include a Nobel Prize, a "body of work," or even an expectation of being alive past 70, I took my daughter to a used bookstore to read her stories and stumbled upon two near "fine" first editions of Munro's books, no remainder mark or any significant blemish. So along with a sticker book and a few Berenstain Bears that we couldn't resist, I left with these two hardcovers in hopes of selling them to you.
In another version of the writer's life, one that doesn't include a Nobel Prize, a "body of work," or even an expectation of being alive past 70, I took my daughter to a used bookstore to read her stories and stumbled upon two near "fine" first editions of Munro's books, no remainder mark or any significant blemish. So along with a sticker book and a few Berenstain Bears that we couldn't resist, I left with these two hardcovers in hopes of selling them to you.
