Alex Kudera's Blog, page 52

a certain defect of character

"To publish anything is folly and evidence of a certain defect of character. To publish the intellect is the most heinous of all crimes, and on a number of occasions I have not recoiled from committing this most heinous of crimes. It wasn't even done out of a crude urge to communicate, because I've never wanted to communicate my ideas to anybody. That has never attracted me. It was a craving for fame pure and simple."
~~ from Concrete by Thomas Bernhard

This is America

"I'm at my driver's side door next to the chain-linked fence when I see something dark and shiny slither out at an angle from beneath the engine. Surprised, I drop my car keys, bang my head against the driver-side mirror as I rise too fast after retrieving them off the cracked cement. Fuck. I stomp my feet to shoe the garden snake away, although it's already lost in the crab grass grown over an abandoned overflow lot behind the dealership. No ancient idiotic symbolism is going to ruin the drive home after I made my monthly nut. No, sir, it won't. So seated behind the wheel, I crank the engine. As I pull out of my spot, I hit the stereo and turn up a country station I can't escape. This is America, not the apocalypse, and Thanksgiving weekend has been good to me."

~~ from "A Thanksgiving," by Alex Kudera

     Eclectica Magazine, July / August 2021

diamond ring

" At this point, I'm wide awake, even alert, and I begin to see myself past midnight and standing at a rope for discount jewelry. I turn to my left. I can see all the way down the aisle to the toy section. It's a mob scene. Crowds rummage through blue and pink plastic. Shelves in disarray. Grasping, pushing, shoving. An occasional moment of kindness. Our turn arrives. I stumble forward, almost fall, when a store employee releases the yellow cord. I have to recover quickly as everyone around me is already on the move. But I suppose there is a God because it seems my item—the diamond ring—is not the most desired one. It must be too expensive for the midnight Wal-Mart shopper. There are only three of us, and there are four rings. Just like that, I have one. But now I have to escape from the store. "

~~ from "A Thanksgiving," by Alex Kudera

     Eclectica Magazine, July / August 2021

American holiday

"My client shut the grill cover and led us off the porch. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,300 points over the next three days. Within two months, my new-home inquiries dropped to zilch. You could say that's the life of a commission-based independent contractor, or you could say we were screwed. Two different clients took me to court to undo their deal and get their money back. That's when our slow demise became a race to the bottom. It was hard to adjust to our family's 'new normal,' so we spent as much in our first six months of living off savings and home equity as we did the next year. Eighteen months after falling through the floor, we'd gathered our wits enough to squint through the darkness and climb out of the mess we'd made."

~~ from "A Thanksgiving," by Alex Kudera

     Eclectica Magazine, July / August 2021

Nitzsche from Philadelphia

"Though George E. Nitzsche of Philadelphia did not express Bachmuller's sense of debased surroundings, his letter [to Nietzsche's sister] similarly shows a self longing for exaltation and connection. It was quite literally, Nietzsche to whom he sought to cleave himself: 'My name, as you will see from the above letterhead, is one of the few Nitzsches in America--probably the only one. Unfortunately, my grandparents, in a legal document, left out the "e," and the error was perpetuated. However, I am proud of the name, and that probably my ancestors came from the same stock as you and your illustrious brother.' In an effort to sketch out the possible trunk of their mutual family tree, Nitzsche went on to tell the woman he hoped was a not-so-distant cousin about the Moravian and Bohemian roots of their people, and how his branch of the Ni[e]tzsche family immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1739."
~~ from American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas 

        by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

a hobo's life

"I come to a period in which I was literally a wandering student, a steady occupant of libraries, leading actually a hobo's life, but with the outward leisure of gentleman and scholar. I supported myself by small jobs of free-lancing or other efforts of the brain, and what I lived on is all but incredible. I met many people, but I made few ties. I may seem to have been derelict, but such was not the case, not so much as when I was working up to be a buyer for Boshnack's. I was waiting and watching constantly for some opening, that I might become a part of American intellectual life. When I got tired of one library, I packed my brief case and took up the hitchhiker's station along the road."
~~ from  East Goes West  by Younghill Kang

The "Ohio Country"

"Helene Bachmüller of Dayton, Ohio, wrote to let Förster-Nietzsche know that her brother had inspired the belief that human greatness was still possible in the modern world. Though unworthy of his greatness, he nevertheless awakened in her a longing for something deeper in herself. Nietzsche, Bachmüller confessed, had saved her from her 'own inner emptiness.' The 'Ohio country' she called home had become 'tame and commonplace,' filled with lives 'trivial and . . . essentially ugly, for they are engrossed with matters of money and motors, not work or faith or art.' Though disgusted by the offensive mediocrity around her, she was also chagrined by her own limitations: 'It would be, probably, impossible for you to imagine anything more superficial than I am.'"

~~ from American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas 

        by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

Running for the Bus

Running for the Bus: Life and Love in the time of COVIDby Thomas J. Hubschman

"My Apology" by Sam Lipsyte

" The events themselves—the words, the acts, the intent—are a blur, a frantic smear. A certain phrase, once quite common and, by my lights, benign, was uttered, I admit, by me. Its lesser-known and brutal associations, to which I was not privy at the time, choked the office like a poison gas.

Currents of history pushed this gas, herded it, prevented it from dissipating or exiting through vents. My history seeped into that of the offended party, which collided with the history we’d all been taught in school, as well as the revision of that history we knowing people knew, as well as the revision of that revised history, which had recently gusted in with the force of a reckoning.

Also, it should be noted with appropriate candor that after I uttered the aforementioned phrase and suffered an onslaught of verbal abuse from my co-workers—no doubt unmooring me from my usual sense of decorum—I did, in fact, in plain view of all, urinate on my offended colleague’s desk. "

~~ from "My Apology" by Sam Lipsyte

Independence Day

I'll have new fiction about another American holiday published by the middle of July, but for now, enjoy "The Bicentennial with Grandpa Andy," a memoir excerpt that may yet become part of a published book.