Alex Kudera's Blog, page 51

isosceles triangle

"When they arrived home, [Dostoevsky] fell on his knees once again, begging for ten francs, only ten francs, to try his luck just once more, for the very, very last time, because he would never have another chance again—after all, they were leaving, and of this very last time he just had to win, if only a small amount, if only ten francs equal the amount he was asking from Anna Grigor'yevna—but the main thing was to win without losing anything, not even a single franc, and then he would be able to leave with peace of mind because the last word would have been his, the last spin, and then all this would take on the appearance of an isosceles triangle which, despite having very acute angles and a blunt apex, at least would have some kind of peak—otherwise, it would all just resemble an ordinary horizontal line with nothing to crown it."

~~ from Summer in Baden-Baden by Leonid Tsypkin

this totally decrepit modern world

"The very first lines of this effort, when I reread it, gave me the idea of editing a book-length collection of Roithamer's short descriptive pieces, in a time such as ours when everything but what is noteworthy, everything but what is truly original as well as most brilliantly scientific is edited and published, when every year hundreds and thousands of tons of imbecility-on-paper are tossed on the market, all the decrepit garbage of this totally decrepit European civilization, or rather, to hold nothing back, this totally decrepit modern world of ours, this era that keeps grinding out nothing but intellectual muck and all this stinking constipating clogging intellectual vomit is constantly being hawked in the most repulsive way as our intellectual products though it is in fact nothing but intellectual waste products, at such a time it is simply one's duty to bring out a work of art as unassuming and unadorned as the art of Roithamer's prose, to publish it, even though it would not be likely to make any kind of a stir, I think, but just to make sure that it would never be lost again, once it is printed and preserved forever, because these prose pieces of Roithamer's are indubitably precious gems and the greatest rarities anywhere, including our country."

~~ from Correction by Thomas Bernhard

curiosity cabinet

"Gone were the days when he would give absurd accounts of his worldwide travels or when he would indulge his fondness for irony and sarcasm and deploy all his theatrical talents in merciless accounts of his family, whose contempt had hardened into hatred and whom he described as a curiosity cabinet containing a collection of Catholic-Jewish-Nazi specimens. Nothing he now had to offer had the whiff of the big wide world, as they say; there was only the odor of wretchedness and death. His clothes, though as elegant as ever, no longer made the same debonair impression or aroused the same unfailing admiration: they seemed shabby and threadbare, like anything he still ventured to say."

~~ from Wittgenstein's Nephew by Thomas Bernhard

Novel Excerpts

Spark Park

"Persecuting the Poet": An Excerpt from Spark Park, Malarkey Books, June 2021

"Night Shift": An Excerpt from Spark Park, Revolution John, April 2021

Auggie's Revenge

from Part I, Chapter 3: "Be Patient, Rover" at American, British and Canadian Studies

Part I, Chapters 1-3: Auggie's Revenge Sample at Beating Windward Press

Part I, Chapter 9: "Uncle Sam's Blood Money" at When Falls the Coliseum

Fight for Your Long Day

no active links at present

Short Stories

"A Thanksgiving," Eclectica Magazine, July 2021

"Bombing From Above," Heavy Feather Review, June 2020

"Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served," Eclectica Magazine, October 2019 "Awash in Barach and Bolano," The Agonist, July 2019 "Free Car," Heavy Feather Review, September 2018 "My Father's Great Recession," Heavy Feather Review, March 2018
"Frade Killed Ellen," Dutch Kills Press, July 2015
"Turquoise Truck," Mendicant Bookworks, September 2015
"The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity," Gone Dog Press, February 2011

Short Stories and Novel Excerpts

Enjoy links to short stories and novel excerpts:

"A Thanksgiving," Eclectica Magazine, July 2021

"Persecuting the Poet": An Excerpt from Spark Park, Malarkey Books, June 2021

"Night Shift": An Excerpt from Spark Park, Revolution John, April 2021 "Bombing From Above," Heavy Feather Review, June 2020 "Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served," Eclectica Magazine, October 2019 "Awash in Barach and Bolano," The Agonist, July 2019 "Free Car," Heavy Feather Review, September 2018 "My Father's Great Recession," Heavy Feather Review, March 2018
"Frade Killed Ellen," Dutch Kills Press, July 2015
"Turquoise Truck," Mendicant Bookworks, September 2015
"The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity," Gone Dog Press, February 2011

honest teacher

"An honest teacher would bring about the extinction of the entire teaching profession. An honest teacher would obliterate every illusion, practice, and malpractice that keeps this edifice of teaching in place, I thought."
~~ from The Sick List by Ansgar Allen

The Sick List

"Universities were everywhere setting up psychiatric wards, I discovered. It became an accepted feature of university life, these wards, and the necessity of setting them up. My own institution was particularly proud of its own. Not only was it the first to set up such a ward, it could also boast the most impressive ratio between diminished employees and beds. My university maintained the longest standing and most comprehensive provision of beds for the lowest proportion of incarcerated employees. That index, a ratio of one thing to another, was a source of considerable pride. We had more beds than we needed, and so were always ready, whereas other institutions often had more immobile and dessicated employees than beds."

~~ from The Sick List by Ansgar Allen

my least unsuccessful

"I'm not going to write it just for my own satisfaction, after all, and then leave it lying around when it's finished. Naturally I intend to publish it, whatever the consequences. For I actually believe that this work will be my most successful, or rather my least unsuccessful. I certainly am thinking of publishing it! But before I can publish it I have to write it, I thought, and at this thought I burst into a fit of laughter, of what I call self-laughter, to which I have become prone over the years through being constantly alone. Yes, you've first got to write the work in order to be able to publish it! I exclaimed to my own amusement."

~~ from Concrete by Thomas Bernhard

the weight of their luggage

"People always make the mistake of taking too many clothes on a journey, half killing themselves with the weight of their luggage, and then, if they have any sense, always wearing the same things when they get there, Now I've been travelling on my own account for over thirty years, I told myself, yet I still always take too much at the last moment. But on this journey, which will possibly—indeed almost certainly—be my last, I thought, I won't take too much. That at least was my intention."
~~ from Concrete by Thomas Bernhard