Alex Kudera's Blog, page 42

ex-friends

"He had no old friends, only ex-friends. He could become terrible, going into reverse without warning. When this happened, it was like being caught in a tunnel by the Express. You could only cling to the walls, or lie between the rails, praying."

~~ from Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

Humans of the Train

"On the other side of my brain, I was mulling over an old expression, which may even be a cliché to some, but has been an endless puzzle to me: 'Always treat children like adults, and adults like children.' I turned to the twosome and tried to see if this saying would help me understand a grown man blasting music in his ears while ignoring his small child. Did the father do the right thing by telling the son he couldn’t listen to the music? Was the father preparing the son for a lonely world in which you have to bring your own tunes on public transportation? Was this then treating him like an adult, the way you’re supposed to treat a child? Or did the father do the wrong thing by censoring the music, telling the son he was too young, a child, and that the music was for adults only. Should he have let the son listen to the music, and then explain all of the lyrics and why they were inappropriate to share with children?"

poetry and proles

"It's been a whole day of atonement."

"You've seen enough of the whatchamacallems? I learned some new words at the poker game from you."

"Which words?"

"Proles," he said, "Lumps. Lumpenproletariat. You gave us a little talk about Karl Marx."

"My lord, I did carry on, didn't I. Completely unbuttoned. What got into me?"

"You wanted to mix with riffraff and the criminal element. You went slumming, Charlie, and you had a great time playing cards with us dumbheads and social rejects."

"I see. I was insulting."

~~ from Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

the American novel as it was according to John Updike in 1989

In 1989, John Updike assessed the state of the American novel, and then he discussed some of his own books and related topics.

get to the point

"On a high shelf beneath a low ceiling, I’d discovered a single copy of Harry Mathews’s The Sinking of Odradek Stadium. It was a novel recommended to me in a professor’s rushed, indecipherable scrawl on the first story I ever submitted to a college class—a literature course, not one of those dreary, impossible fiction-writing workshops. The professor added that I had the talent to be a writer, but that I had to quit rambling and get to the point. Twenty-five years later on the other side of the world, the book was waiting. His point had found me."

from Gordon's enemies list

 

Gordon's friends

 

the universal appeal of fascism

"What [Professor] Licht initiates as glib anecdote moves to officious young Americans pretending to be serious critics. As a group, we want to speak about the cycles of history, when the next Hitler might appear, and how and whether fascist moments can be avoided in future history or contemporary moments. But isn’t it the rule and not the exception? We wander from cycles as Licht steers us toward the principle of backbiting within the Reich. A man could not be trusted who would not willingly lie and sleep his way to the top, or at least ahead of his best friends and neighbors. He suggests that even the Reich had its secrets. He asks if anyone would like to speak of the universal appeal of fascism, or if we should just break for McDonalds and washrooms."

giraffe

"This reminded me by some strange association of a giraffe I once saw at a zoo that lowered its great head below the brute next door that was pissing at the time, from which piss it took great gulps, only to raise itself when the piss stopped, and suck inwards as if tasting wine with spittle, a great trail of which spit was carried upon a breeze, together with some half ingested piss, across the face of a woman standing just by me who was gazing at the spectacle like many others beside her. She remarked upon it, referring only to her eye, there is giraffe piss in my eye, she said, no mention of the face, displaying great restraint given the circumstances. I express more disgust when shat upon by a small bird than she did with a face full of piss. The great comedy of her situation, the fact that made it so deliciously grotesque, to my mind, was not just that she had giraffe piss in her eye, but giraffe piss that had been savoured by another such creature and communicated to her upon a trail of saliva."

~~ from The Sick List by Ansgar Allen

lost his way

"A v-shaped squadron of geese breaks the silence with their squawking and barking. A late commute south before the frigid temperatures set in permanently, although from my angle, it appears they head east, maybe slightly to the north even. I'm not the only one who has lost his way, that's for sure. A last goodbye, and then I depart for work."