Alex Kudera's Blog, page 144
April 21, 2012
April 21 (poorest county)
Philadelphia is the poorest county in Pennsylvania and the only major metro area aside from Baltimore (if we count Baltimore as such) to appear in this slide show of poorest counties in each state. Congratulations! In fact, our leadership in poverty does help maintain the reasonable pricing of rents and restaurants, at least compared to other cities.
Maybe along the lines of "the city that loves you back," we could have something like, "the poverty that sleeps on your park bench," or "poverty with a smile," or "Philadelphia: bringing poverty to the twenty-first century."
I'm hoping I have a few more liveable years before I slide back into our leading indicator. I'm hoping for a few more years of teeth, too, because there's nothing quite like poverty with a blue solution in a glass for the dentures while one's food is being mangled and made mushy by one's gums.
And then, reminded of my own slim margins, I chance upon this poor lost soul debating the merits of a BMW purchase and kitchen remodeling and felt all was right with the world.
All was right for all of us who aren't even close to Rex Pickett as far as fame and experience and luck and talent and connections and Hollywood credentials go. Okay. "Right" may be a strong word, but we were persisting. We were still alive. We were. Weren't we? Rex was wronged, though, and that seems to be one point of this article that indicates he's come to see big publishing as no more of an ally to literary fiction than Jeff Bezos. I hear your "duh," but still enjoyed reading his screed. And for Sideways, I certainly enjoyed both the film and the book.
Meanwhile, President Obama does what so many big media entities do as well. That's cater to the next generation of consumers, voters, etc. with a nifty election-year student-loan pitch (while to the best of my knowledge remaining mute on the question of what these colleges that students should go into debt for are paying the teachers that the students will meet on the inside). Hey, maybe Trident could have gotten Rex that nice book deal if he'd agreed to name it Sideways Youngbloods, and instead of beautiful scenes with middle-aged gripers and philanderers swishing and spitting merlot and cabernet he added a bunch of nine year olds dropping their weekly allowances on fruit-punch pouches at the local conveniencery?
And even as I'm writing this stuff, I'm thinking to myself that I should be writing.
Fight for Your Long Subsistence in a Lower Middle Quintile!
And have a good weekend.
[image error]
Maybe along the lines of "the city that loves you back," we could have something like, "the poverty that sleeps on your park bench," or "poverty with a smile," or "Philadelphia: bringing poverty to the twenty-first century."
I'm hoping I have a few more liveable years before I slide back into our leading indicator. I'm hoping for a few more years of teeth, too, because there's nothing quite like poverty with a blue solution in a glass for the dentures while one's food is being mangled and made mushy by one's gums.
And then, reminded of my own slim margins, I chance upon this poor lost soul debating the merits of a BMW purchase and kitchen remodeling and felt all was right with the world.
All was right for all of us who aren't even close to Rex Pickett as far as fame and experience and luck and talent and connections and Hollywood credentials go. Okay. "Right" may be a strong word, but we were persisting. We were still alive. We were. Weren't we? Rex was wronged, though, and that seems to be one point of this article that indicates he's come to see big publishing as no more of an ally to literary fiction than Jeff Bezos. I hear your "duh," but still enjoyed reading his screed. And for Sideways, I certainly enjoyed both the film and the book.
Meanwhile, President Obama does what so many big media entities do as well. That's cater to the next generation of consumers, voters, etc. with a nifty election-year student-loan pitch (while to the best of my knowledge remaining mute on the question of what these colleges that students should go into debt for are paying the teachers that the students will meet on the inside). Hey, maybe Trident could have gotten Rex that nice book deal if he'd agreed to name it Sideways Youngbloods, and instead of beautiful scenes with middle-aged gripers and philanderers swishing and spitting merlot and cabernet he added a bunch of nine year olds dropping their weekly allowances on fruit-punch pouches at the local conveniencery?
And even as I'm writing this stuff, I'm thinking to myself that I should be writing.
Fight for Your Long Subsistence in a Lower Middle Quintile!
And have a good weekend.
[image error]
April 20, 2012
April 20 (420)
If you like to keep the flame lit with commencement angst or eternal recurrence, this could be the story for you. In other news, it sounds like the police at Colorado--Boulder are intent on bogarting the festivities with sprinkler systems and the college-ID requirements. I'm guessing the local convenience stores and sandwich shops may have mixed feelings about this intent to douse the fires of commerce.
It is somewhat amusing that a stoner holiday would depend upon such an exacting time constraint, the official 4:20 spark up, etc. Maybe someone can get through to Spicoli and find out if he'd like fries with that.[image error]
It is somewhat amusing that a stoner holiday would depend upon such an exacting time constraint, the official 4:20 spark up, etc. Maybe someone can get through to Spicoli and find out if he'd like fries with that.[image error]
April 19, 2012
April 19 (let the old content make way for the new content)
More or less, I got nothin', but I'll be teaching Roberto Bolano tomorrow (haven't decided yet as to what lessons he'll learn) and thought I'd share a favorite passage from late in
The Savage Detectives
:
In Paris, it's different. People drift away, people dwindle, and you have time to say goodbye, even if you'd rather not. Not in Africa. People talk there, people tell you their problems, and then they vanish in a cloud of smoke, the way Belano vanished that night, without warning. And you never even consider the possibility of running into X or Y again at the airport. The possibility exists, I'm not saying it doesn't, but you don't consider it. So that night, when Belano disappeared, I stopped thinking about him, stopped thinking about loaning him money, and drank and danced and then fell asleep in a chair and when I woke up with a start (more out of fear than because I was hungover, since I was afraid I'd been robbed, not being in the habit of going to places like Joao Alves's) it was already morning and I went outside to stretch my legs and there he was, in the yard, smoking a cigarette and waiting for me.
Yes, it was quite the gesture. (497)
As to the first part, it's worth noting that false dichotomies may be binaries we can deconstruct and yet their extremes tantalize us and often make for great writing, or at least writing that can lead to some conversation.
Bolano has also been on my mind because by coincidence the same week he shows up on my syllabus, I stumbled upon (or I should say it was twossed in my direction via the e-chirper) this bit of Bolano blog. According to the attribution, it's Daniele Pantano's sharing of a Roberto Bolano section that appeared on the NYRBlog. From the text, I know for sure it's a curious bit of writing about observing V.S. Naipaul in Buenos Aires in 1972. Is this real or imagined? I couldn't tell you.
Anyway, Pantano also sent a shout for more quality submissions for his literary journal, and it looks like a promising one with an international flavor and a fancy curve over its first "e." (I suppose I should pretend I know what it's called and not admit to having googled "umlaut" even while remembering that would be two dots).
So that was something.
As you were.[image error]
In Paris, it's different. People drift away, people dwindle, and you have time to say goodbye, even if you'd rather not. Not in Africa. People talk there, people tell you their problems, and then they vanish in a cloud of smoke, the way Belano vanished that night, without warning. And you never even consider the possibility of running into X or Y again at the airport. The possibility exists, I'm not saying it doesn't, but you don't consider it. So that night, when Belano disappeared, I stopped thinking about him, stopped thinking about loaning him money, and drank and danced and then fell asleep in a chair and when I woke up with a start (more out of fear than because I was hungover, since I was afraid I'd been robbed, not being in the habit of going to places like Joao Alves's) it was already morning and I went outside to stretch my legs and there he was, in the yard, smoking a cigarette and waiting for me.
Yes, it was quite the gesture. (497)
As to the first part, it's worth noting that false dichotomies may be binaries we can deconstruct and yet their extremes tantalize us and often make for great writing, or at least writing that can lead to some conversation.
Bolano has also been on my mind because by coincidence the same week he shows up on my syllabus, I stumbled upon (or I should say it was twossed in my direction via the e-chirper) this bit of Bolano blog. According to the attribution, it's Daniele Pantano's sharing of a Roberto Bolano section that appeared on the NYRBlog. From the text, I know for sure it's a curious bit of writing about observing V.S. Naipaul in Buenos Aires in 1972. Is this real or imagined? I couldn't tell you.
Anyway, Pantano also sent a shout for more quality submissions for his literary journal, and it looks like a promising one with an international flavor and a fancy curve over its first "e." (I suppose I should pretend I know what it's called and not admit to having googled "umlaut" even while remembering that would be two dots).
So that was something.
As you were.[image error]
April 18, 2012
April 18 (drizzling Kunderas)
It's drizzling outside, a fitting complement to this evening's early a.m. insomnia. Earlier in the evening (in the yesterday part of tonight), I scribbled a few pages of the rough stuff and called it "My Life as Kundera" although I may ultimately use "Think and Grow Kundera" as the title, taken from my earlier tweet in support of the idle twoughts of Alexander Chee. Anyway, the topic was my meandering musing on the Kudera-Kundera likeness, my father's interest in Milan's writing, me not being him, etc. It could become a section of
The Book of Jay
(see bottom links for rough-draft excerpts), but of course, I'll have to improve it a lot before it becomes anything at all.
It passed the time, though.
Speaking of J. Robert's engagement with the K., here's a photograph of some of my father's Kunderas, the paperback copies he discovered in bookstores decades ago:
The photograph is from earlier today, or I should say yesterday, but this copy of The Joke as a Penguin edition (1970) was his purchase decades ago and is the one I read when I finally read a Kundera novel in 2004. It's the third English translation of the book, but not the "definitive" one that includes Kundera's criticism of the previous translations of the book. That would be the Harper Perennial edition originally published in 1992. In the "Author's Note" at the end of the HP ed., Kundera's main expressed criticism of the Penguin edition concerns the editor's efforts at sabotaging the writer's punctuation.
Milan I feel your pain and I must confess that I have had similar feelings that I've never expressed formally in any Author's Note not yet and I've also tried to come to terms with allowing for such differences over commas and periods and even the possibility that the author does not and cannot know what is best in every way for his completed book while also recognizing that it is not only the apostrophe and the semicolon that must all be part of the joke
or no?
It passed the time, though.
Speaking of J. Robert's engagement with the K., here's a photograph of some of my father's Kunderas, the paperback copies he discovered in bookstores decades ago:
The photograph is from earlier today, or I should say yesterday, but this copy of The Joke as a Penguin edition (1970) was his purchase decades ago and is the one I read when I finally read a Kundera novel in 2004. It's the third English translation of the book, but not the "definitive" one that includes Kundera's criticism of the previous translations of the book. That would be the Harper Perennial edition originally published in 1992. In the "Author's Note" at the end of the HP ed., Kundera's main expressed criticism of the Penguin edition concerns the editor's efforts at sabotaging the writer's punctuation.
Milan I feel your pain and I must confess that I have had similar feelings that I've never expressed formally in any Author's Note not yet and I've also tried to come to terms with allowing for such differences over commas and periods and even the possibility that the author does not and cannot know what is best in every way for his completed book while also recognizing that it is not only the apostrophe and the semicolon that must all be part of the joke
or no?
April 17, 2012
April 17 (The South Will Rise Again)
At the very least, the price of gas in the South will rise again. I enjoyed this article full of hyperlinking to all kinds of Southerners--scholars, writers, designers, musicians, and more--but don't follow the Bill Maher link if you want to believe in the strength of our union (the whole "one nation" biz). Maybe Maher should get fined for using the guy with no teeth?
My Aunt Nancy's tasty grits were a highlight of my first trip to the true deep South, a visit to the Florida panhandle on the hot, humid Gulf on Mexico. Not too far from Pensacola, I met my Southern cousins and watched MTV for the first time. One of the most memorable lines of my entire childhood was Cousin Billy's, "You mean you ain't never heard of Jimmy Buffet?" To the best of my knowledge, thirty years later, Bill is doing quite well as a resident of the great state of New Jersey, the same place his Mom and my Dad were so ready to escape from.
In addition to everything else I have to try to summon enough concentration to write, my visits and residence in various parts of the southeastern United States could at least make for a solid essay. And, yeah, as we all know, that's easier blogged upon than written. I think you know what I mean.[image error]
My Aunt Nancy's tasty grits were a highlight of my first trip to the true deep South, a visit to the Florida panhandle on the hot, humid Gulf on Mexico. Not too far from Pensacola, I met my Southern cousins and watched MTV for the first time. One of the most memorable lines of my entire childhood was Cousin Billy's, "You mean you ain't never heard of Jimmy Buffet?" To the best of my knowledge, thirty years later, Bill is doing quite well as a resident of the great state of New Jersey, the same place his Mom and my Dad were so ready to escape from.
In addition to everything else I have to try to summon enough concentration to write, my visits and residence in various parts of the southeastern United States could at least make for a solid essay. And, yeah, as we all know, that's easier blogged upon than written. I think you know what I mean.[image error]
April 16, 2012
April 16 (Radical Teacher)
Radical Teacher's Jennifer Gaboury has a review of Fight for Your Long Day behind its $18 pay wall, but it's possible you can get free access through a local university library. They kindly call me Alex
Kundera
, so we can sit back and see where that leads. If you followed the last hyperlink, then to answer your question, "I doubt it," but this is not the first case of the added "n" and surname confusion.
So, in any event, thank you Professor Gaboury for the review, and I'll certainly love you ever more madly if you can squeeze Cyrus Duffleman into one of your Political Science or Gender Studies courses for fall semester.[image error]
So, in any event, thank you Professor Gaboury for the review, and I'll certainly love you ever more madly if you can squeeze Cyrus Duffleman into one of your Political Science or Gender Studies courses for fall semester.[image error]
April 12, 2012
April 12 (Meg Pokrass asks Frances Lefkowitz)
Over at Jurgen Fauth's fictionaut, a social-media site for fiction readers and writers, I posted a story for the first time, and also found Meg Pokrass's new interview with Frances Lefkowitz.
Below is a photograph of the serious-minded fool, aka me, immersed in egg salad on wheat and Lefkowitz's To Have Not . I'm washing it all down with sweet tea at The Starving Artist Cafe, a pleasant establishment across the wide road from Poor Richard's Booksellers in Easley, South Carolina.
[image error]
Below is a photograph of the serious-minded fool, aka me, immersed in egg salad on wheat and Lefkowitz's To Have Not . I'm washing it all down with sweet tea at The Starving Artist Cafe, a pleasant establishment across the wide road from Poor Richard's Booksellers in Easley, South Carolina.
[image error]
April 11, 2012
April 11 (Clemson Literary Festival)
The fifth annual Clemson Literary Festival begins today and continues through Saturday. Richard Ford is the featured writer, but there are many others in the fold. I'll be reading from Fight for Your Long Day as part of the Society of English Graduate Students event on Thursday, April 12 at 1:30 p.m. in Hendrix's McKissick Theater.
April 10, 2012
April 10 ("Ode to Antoine" by Alan Heathcock)
It's hard to blog everyday, even to write just a couple crummy paragraphs, but to help take up the slack, I'm pleased to share with you a quickie poem from a guy who spent ten years on an award-winning story collection. Here's Idaho resident and Volt author Alan Heathcock's words of wisdom on the recent retirement of former NBA star and recent D-League Boise baller Antoine Walker:
Ode to Antoine
The man could ball
The mighty do fall
Like the banks don't say please
Age works on the knees
You've paid your debt Antoine
No sense in going on
Pinch your pennies
Love your memories
and get your hand loosed
to sit by the blue ribbon goose
and sign ball cards at the state fair
for folks like me, the few who still care
Carry on, but don't palm the ball.
Ode to Antoine
The man could ball
The mighty do fall
Like the banks don't say please
Age works on the knees
You've paid your debt Antoine
No sense in going on
Pinch your pennies
Love your memories
and get your hand loosed
to sit by the blue ribbon goose
and sign ball cards at the state fair
for folks like me, the few who still care
Carry on, but don't palm the ball.
April 9, 2012
April 9 (another one)
Here's another one of those long, dreary, unemployed-youth articles that some of us find positively intoxicating. I tell you many of us get drunk off the wines of depression, reading these things, until we are nearly comatose, barely able to lift our bodies, weighted down so by our bleeding hearts and midnight snacks, off the lazy boy and onto the rest of our lives.
When Gertrude Stein told Hemingway he was part of a lost generation, she probably wasn't thinking of a future where we'd have millions of college grads living at home and tweeting from their basement "grad caverns."
I wonder where the 21st-century version of Stein's salon is taking shape. And what they're reading, writing, and thinking there.
When Gertrude Stein told Hemingway he was part of a lost generation, she probably wasn't thinking of a future where we'd have millions of college grads living at home and tweeting from their basement "grad caverns."
I wonder where the 21st-century version of Stein's salon is taking shape. And what they're reading, writing, and thinking there.
