Alex Kudera's Blog, page 132

toilet talk

It's good to see that there are international officials who refuse to censor themselves and are willing to speak sincerely about some of the major global issues of our time. Because literature is written, at least in part, to inform, I've enjoyed pairing George Packer's essay "The Megacity" and Uwem Akpan's short story "Baptizing the Gun." Both concern Lagos, Nigeria and, at least in part, address open-air squatting. Indoor-pooping progress anywhere will lead to healthier lives everywhere.

fist fights

At 9:11 p.m. on the anniversary of 9/11, I felt compelled to post some thoughts on fist fights, literature, summer camp, and more. Enjoy.

Off the tenure track in Pittsburgh, PA

But thanks to the matchmaking of Karen the Small Press Librarian, Dave Newman and I had an opportunity to interview each about our novels of academic life off the tenure track. Karen posted part one, Dave asked and I answered, earlier today. If you're a fan of novels of working life, and you also appreciate Pittsburgh, writing, teaching, drinking, or living, you'd probably enjoy Dave's Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children. My interview with Dave should be posted on Karen's blog relatively soon.

washing dishes

I'm pleased to note that "Awash in Barach & Bolono" will appear in CHM's July-August 2013 special print edition on Chilean poetry. It's yet another story of mine with a dish-washing scene, and it's one I've fiddled with on and off for almost my entire six years teaching at Clemson. Originally inspired by seeing President Obama give his stump speech on campus in late winter or early spring of 2008, it also concerns pounding the pavement in Paris, searching for restaurant work or any employment I could get. With Roberto in the title, it feels right to find it in an issue dedicated to Chilean poetry.

I also noticed online that editor Daniel D. Peacemen has recently translated some Amy Tan into Romanian.

Daniel Kalder's 10 favorites of Russian fiction

Partly inspired by his recent piece on Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate, partly in honor of the recent chill in Russian-American foreign relations, partly so I could recommend his intriguing post-Soviet travel narratives Strange Telescopes and Lost Cosmonaut, partly because F.D. Reeve's passing is still floating around the psychic swamps, and partly just for the hell of it, I recently asked travel writer and anti-tourist Daniel Kalder to supply me with a list of his top-five Russian novels from both the 19th and 20th centuries, and he thoughtfully included a story collection as well as a 21st-century text (I, too, am one of those people who "loves Gogol" but has never read Dead Souls, and I probably would have included Babel, Chekhov, and Shalamov even if asked for novels).

Here is what Kalder sent to L.U.S.K.:

In no particular order and with no claim to finality, these are the books that came into my head the day I was asked. They’re all good, but I can’t say I would pick exactly the same ones if I were asked on a different day after a better night’s sleep:

19th Century 1) The Devils (or The Possessed), Feodor Dostoevsky.

I could probably fill an entire 19th century list with books by Dostoevsky, but I shall attempt to branch out. This novel is an exceptional study of terror and political extremism in 19th century Russia, and Dostoevsky’s insights into human evil and perversion are as apposite today as they ever were. Also: it’s funny. 2) Petersburg Stories, Nikolai Gogol

Not exactly a novel, but some of these stories are quite long at least. Divine lunacy, fantastical grotesques, plus a bit of satire, all written by a man who- legend has it- was buried alive. I’ve read his novel Dead Souls, but it was years ago and in a horrible translation… I’ll revisit it one day. 3) Notes from Underground, Feodor Dostoevsky

Actually let’s do Dostoevsky again. A slim novella featuring a very nasty protagonist, celebrated for its penetrating exploration of man’s irrational and self-destructive impulses. If more politicians, journalists and think-tank parasites read this, then they would understand the human species better and our public discourse would be much less asinine. 4) Anna Karenina, Lev Tolstoy

I recognize Tolstoy’s greatness--who doesn’t? But I’m definitely more of a Russian grotesque- fantastical kind of reader. At the same time, this book constantly astounds with its perpetual stream of psychological insights, and for that I can forgive the now very dated waffly bits about agriculture, serfdom, etc. 5) Oblomov, Ivan Goncharov

The Russian 19th century canon is pretty much established and although Oblomov is certainly not better than War and Peace I mention it here because of its uniqueness, specifically in regard to the author’s 50-odd page description of the stupendously lazy hero’s epic struggle to move from his bed to a chair. After that you can stop reading--it’s downhill all the way. 20th Century

1) Soul, Andrei Platonov

Soul tells the tale of a man who returns to his tribe in the wastelands of Soviet Turkmenistan after receiving an education in Moscow. He wants to lead them to happiness and the bright communist future. Unspeakable suffering ensues as the tribe wanders in the desert starving and dying. Remarkably, Platonov was a believing communist- or at least he tried to be one. 2) Life and Fate, Vasily Grossman

Epic doorstopper about Stalingrad, written by a Soviet war correspondent who was present at and who was also among the first to write about Hitler’s mass executions of Jews in Europe. Highly critical of Stalin, the Soviet state confiscated it and Grossman never saw it published in his lifetime. It also has interesting reflections on science--Grossman was a trained scientist. More authors should know about science. It’s important, after all. 3) Cancer Ward, Aleksandr Solzhenitysn

Solzhenitsyn is pretty unfashionable these days, but I found this book very affecting when I read it some years ago, and it was still powerful when I read it again a few years after that. Solzhenitsyn’s reputation as anti-Sovet warhorse no doubt leads a lot of people to expect didactic political hectoring in his novels, but in Cancer Ward he views the regime through the eyes of its foes, supporters and fellow travelers alike, and it is a gripping, human story about illness besides.



4) The Letter Killer’s Club, Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky Few people have heard of Krzhizhanovsky, not least because he only ever published one story in his life or something ridiculous like that. This is the strange tale of a society of storytellers who vow not to write down their bizarre narratives but only relate them to each other orally at the meetings of a secret society in Moscow. It’s strange, philosophical and very good.

5) The Ice Trilogy, Vladimir Sorokin
Post-Soviet literature took a decade or so to really get in gear, and this book is the work of a once underground author who started his career in the 80s, but became very famous in the 21st century. I am cheating here as The Ice Trilogy was written this century, but I feel it is my duty to mention it as it’s a unique and deranged concoction mixing 20th century history, SF tropes and apocalyptic theology in a blend that may or may not make sense, and I’m not persuaded that it ultimately matters either way.        (Back to L.U.S.K.) At a glance, I've read his first three from the nineteenth century, and they'd all get strong consideration for my own list, and then I've always wanted to read his next two (and I've hardly read any Tolstoy at all, I must confess), and although I've even taken a college course in 20th Century Soviet Literature, I've only read one of his listed authors (you guessed it, Solzhenitsyn) and none of the specific books. Kalder's published books, Lost Cosmonaut: Observations of an Anti-Tourist and  Strange Telescopes: Following the Apocalypse from Moscow to Siberia  take us through post-Soviet Russia, and some of the absurdity he chances upon, from Siberian traffic-cop Messiahs to architecture that could pass for a sci-fi film set, would ring quite true to fans of Gogol and many other Russian writers. 

"What," you scream at your screen, "No Olesha or Biely?"

Well, you're welcome to submit some favorites of your own. 

Labor Dreams

A lot Atticus Books fiction concerns how blue-collar Americans struggle to make ends meet, but I'm sure their newest book, Paper Dreams, has a lot on how folks wielding manual and electronic writing and printing devices have also struggled to stay afloat. You don't have to be Edmund Wilson to know the writing life is suffered more favorably on a wealthy patron or partner's dime.

Anyway, it's Labor Day, and a slither or two of unrefined reflection on my father's own "downturn" in the early nineties is partly what I thought of just now after reading this Counterpunch article that insists these are not good times. Its notable statistics include President Obama's economic approval rating is down to 35 percent, a record 36 percent of all "millennials" (aged 18 to 31) are living at home, and that 936,000 of the 963,000, or 97 percent, of new hires in the past six months report that their new jobs are part-time. And then over at gawker, this cynical breeze through Labor Day's past and present moment appeared.

I must say, though, I attended the Dayton, Ohio County Fair earlier today and saw what appeared to be extremely happy working families, thousands of folks with little polish or pretense easily dropping fifty to a hundred dollars on amusement rides and concessions, and no feeling that we were living in a world of bread lines or worse. Of course, it could well be that the stats above support a less visible malaise.

So happy Labor Day?

You tell me.

a bit more Buk

For hump day, here's just a bit more from John Fante's star student, two-bit Chuck.

And here's another because Bukowski was hardly an average fellow.

student debt under the lights

General Electric (CNBC) takes time out from lighting the world to swoop in late and sell advertising off the student-loan bubble. When I watched, I saw race (three white people with white-collar jobs in a report on a black family with significant intergenerational student-loan debt), and I thought that it would be disingenuous not to share that aspect of it with you. The show's anchor, like our President, is the perfectly middling-hued gent Melville waxed utopian about in the middle of Moby Dick , so no doubt, despite the segment's visual rhetoric of a race-to-obligation correlation, we are rowing toward a greater America than ever before. Or, at least increasing our collective debt. . . on your oars, ladies and gents!

pause for station identification

we interrupt this duck for Chuck,

and while we're here,

why not dabble in some Buk redux?

the most in over a year

Yesterday evening, I swam 36 lengths, or a half mile, slowly with breaks over 30 minutes. But this was the most swimming I'd done in at least a year, nearly tripling my largest lap number of the summer, and so it makes me certain I'll be swimming a slow mile again soon.

So forget any aforementioned failure. I'm a big success.

In other news, I've seen Mark Edmundson's name popping up in The Chronicle of Higher Education and The New York Times , and I wanted to mention that his memoir Teacher: The One Who Made the Difference  was also a book I'd read that led me to write my own version of teaching although my setting, of course, would be the adjunct scene of urban higher education.

Like some of my all-time favorites, Edmundson's memoir was one I chanced upon while browsing in a brick-and-mortar bookstore, and I enjoyed his writing about a favorite twelfth-grade instructor, a passionate fellow who dared Mark and his classmates to resist conformity (but soon after that year ditched teaching for law school). It was a nice complement to Boston Public and the testimony of various friends and family members caught up in the K-to-12 teaching life as well as Felicity and my own teaching and tutoring schedule. With television and work, what else could I need?

Following up on the coincidence angle, it was of course Wes-MOOC President Michael S. Roth who wrote The New York Times review of Edmundson's book.