Alex Kudera's Blog, page 39

What Happened When My Wife Died

I hope to return to Charles Bock's "What Happened When My Wife Died."

the list of stolen books

"The fact that she didn't have genuine proof of identity, the way her accent shifted, like her grandfather's, the old guy's strange ideas, their peculiar way of life, even her skill at outwitting alarm systems: all of this suggested that our love affair had been a trick, not a trick performed by two human beings in order to deceive a third, but a product of my own delirious imagination. Except that I wasn't crazy, I had proof that both of them existed: the list of stolen books, Ahmed's testimony (unless he was in on the scheme), and Juana's, and the hospital bills."

~~ from Severina by Rodrigo Rey Rosa

my body's weight on my thumbs

"Forget it, okay? Back to reality, please; back to my life. I’d listen to Avi after so many years, but I’d never turn to rigorous calisthenics; I’d never do push-ups, never mind sets of fifty with my body’s weight on my thumbs. Unfit, if not incontrovertibly destroyed, I didn’t care for his recommendations. Yet Avi was an old friend, and I hardly knew any of the others I’ve described.

"Teaching abroad in Suzhou, China, there was no bird—no cardinal or goldfinch—but back in the states, there was an old friend’s phone call—about the life I would never have unless I took action—which reminded me of working abroad and disappeared youth; a butcher’s knife swung at the air above an old friend’s throat; an imagined bird; and a brief, if emphatic, encounter with a Korean-American adolescent in a basement shopping mall."

Paul Klee's Fish Magic

the bookseller with literary aspirations

"Bookshops are infested with ideas. Books are quivering, murmuring creatures. That's what one of my business partners used to say. He was a poet, quite a clever guy (though not as clever as he thought), and likable enough. There's something to it: the three little Russian books stood there on the shelf next to the cash register for several days, murmuring, quivering, preserving her memory, but she didn't return. Those were eventful days, or rather I heard that they'd been eventful (there was a rash of lynchings in the inland villages and a coup in a neighboring country, cocaine became the world's number one illicit substance, stagnant water was discovered on Mars, and Pluto definitely lost its status as a planet), my life having shrunk once more to the ambit of books; I had become another specimen of that sad type, the bookseller with literary aspirations."

~~ from Severina by Rodrigo Rey Rosa

Uncle Sam's Decline

I was excited to see that The Airgonaut published "Uncle Sam's Decline," an excerpt from Spark Park. Previously published excerpts from my true first novel appear as "Persecuting the Poet" at Malarkey Books and "Night Shift" at Revolution John.

And the Canon Rap Got Played

It made me happy to see that an early story posted in an obscure place had almost a thousand views.

Swartz had skipped out

"[Aaron] Swartz had skipped out on the lessons taught by the American high school--the lessons in cynical acquiescence, conformity, and obedience to the powers that be. He was right to think these lessons injure people's innate sense of curiosity and morality and inure them to mediocrity. He was right to credit his 'arrogance' for the excellence of the life he had lived."

~~ from "The Life and Afterlives of Aaron Swartz" in The Souls of Yellow Folk by Wesley Yang

Lockdown Mike

 Contribute to a food charity by listening to Passenger's Patchwork.

Autumn spiral

"Autumn spiraled downward, every day a little more. One morning, after my usual walk down the tree-lined street, I entered the schoolyard to find a kind of flower whose name I didn't know, blooming in the beds inside the gate. Round blossoms with giant petals of light pink and white, popping up like carefree afterthoughts from a surface of dry algae.

"It must have been some kind of flower that only grows in fall. But captivated as I was, I realized this was just another marvel from a world that would never accept me."

~~ from Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

Working-Class Studies

I don't believe that I've previously noticed this Fight for Your Long Day mention in the Fall 2020 Book Notes from the Working-Class Studies Association. See page 3, lower right corner.