Alex Kudera's Blog, page 20

The Age of Genius

“If I have to read the manuscript of every oddball who comes to Warsaw with a book,” Nalkowska says, “I’ll have no time for my own writing.”

~~from "The Age of Genius" in The New Yorker, June 1, 2009* 

*article tweeted on June 4, 2024 by author Sara Lippman

The orchard is full of sound.

 

Ben Tanzer and the creative life

Ben Tanzer speaks with Brad Listi about perfectionism, failure, goals, teaching, learning, writing, and the creative life.

a working life

Over a few days, I appreciated Michael Deagler's second Philly short story in Harper's Magazine: "The Pleasure of a Working Life."

thank goodness

Thank goodness I've not a single offending sentence or three among my published novels and short stories, so I need not concern myself with ever getting canceled. I'm free!

Dayton, Ohio

Frontline + ProPublica's "A Rust Belt City's Economic Struggle," establishes the substantial challenges of Southwestern Ohio, but offers nothing on the greatness of Dewey's Pizza and Dayton's Original Pizza Factory.

spell catastrophe

Andrew Lipstein's "What Goes Up: Does the rise of index funds spell catastrophe?" is worth a read.

Rabbit's China, Gorbachev, Tiananmen Square . . .

"The nightly news has a lot of China on it—Gorbachev visiting, students protesting in Tiananmen Square, but not protesting Gorbachev, in fact they like him, all the world likes him, despite that funny mark on his head shaped like Japan. What the Chinese students seem to want is freedom, they want to be like Americans, but they look like Americans already, in blue jeans and T-shirts. Meanwhile in America itself the news is that not only President George Bush but Mrs. Bush the First Lady take showers with their dog Millie, and if that's all the Chinese want we should be able to give it to them, or something close, though it makes [Rabbit] miss Reagan slightly, at least he was dignified, and had that dream distance; the powerful thing about him as President is that you never knew how much he knew, nothing or everything, he was like God that way, you had to do a lot of it yourself."

~~ from Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

Memorial Day 2024

 

What goes up . . .

Andrew Lipstein's "What Goes Up: Does the rise of index funds spell catastrophe?" is worth a read.