Alex Kudera's Blog, page 53

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.

conversation was the firebrand

"Senzar was an Indo-Oxford product, and was now in America studying engineering. Of course, he was a fanatic patriot, but his words were very much in the clouds, you could not make out whether he intended to go back to India or not. So long as he kept silent, Senzar looked handsome, poetic and sad. And at first he kept silent, rolling around the splendid melancholy of his great dark eyes, so silent that everybody was sympathetic, thinking him shy. But with Senzar it was not shyness. His idea of conversation was the firebrand, elemental attack, mortal combat. On any subject he was ready to die. He was just looking around for an opponent. I do not know if English domination has made Hindus that way—I suppose so—for most of them are ready to go off at a moment's notice. Anyhow, Hindus and Far-Easterners did not get along well together in Boston schools. It is thought by some Orientals that Hindus lack humor and proportion. What Hindus think of other Orientals, I do not know. But Senzar soon fastened on me as his opponent. Suddenly he began questioning me about my college."
~~ from  East Goes West  by Younghill Kang

The Buyer

"To be a buyer is the dream of every clerk in every department store in America. And I was in almost the biggest one of all. Boshnack's sold the littlest thing as well as the biggest. There were buyers for needles, for rugs, for books, for china, for airplanes. Each buyer was given so many inches of space in the big store. This was his kingdom. Just like a small proprietor, he paid for all that went into his space, and kept track through his clerks of all that went out . . . except that he made no profits. In his department he was looked up to almost as much as Mr. Boshnack himself. When he passed, the underlings said in a hushed voice, "The Buyer!"
~~ from  East Goes West  by Younghill Kang

scattered pages

"All during the summer months, I was like a hungry cow eating grass in a valley. There was a public library within five minutes' walk, and also I could use the various college and university libraries of Boston and Cambridge. I browsed from shelf to shelf—sociology, philosophy, poetry, anything that took my fancy. I consulted only my appetite. Shaw, Gibbons, Wells, Sinclair Lewis, Thackeray, Thomas Hardy, everything in odd assortment . . . the Brontes, the works of Jane Austen . . . the Americans, Hawthorne, Cooper, Poe, Melville, Whitman. I read translations of Plato and Aristotle. Besides what I read thoroughly, I touched scattered pages of thousands of books."

~~ from East Goes West by Younghill Kang 

Happy Father's Day

For writing about my father, several pieces you can access online are the short story "My Father's Great Recession" and the memoir excerpts "Back and Broke in Philly" and "A Poor Man's Christmas." There were times when he was flush, and he was hardly an invariably unhappy man, so I can't say that these slices of his life capture the whole of Dad. While there's a lot more I hope to publish, I also have a vintage selfie, his Kunderas, and other reflections in and around this blog or elsewhere.

so thin and underfed

"Every once in a while at the hotel there would be a banquet. A banquet it was indeed, even for those lined up at the back door, the extra helps. Sometimes as many as twenty additional hands were called in. I noticed that at a banquet—behind the scenes at least—nobody seemed to get tired of eating, ever. At the beginning we were idle for a few minutes sometimes. Then each contrived to get a handful of nuts or a swallow of coffee . . . taking our last course first. I could see why the extra helpers ate. They all looked so thin and underfed, I think they had no other job. Day after day just waiting for banquets.Maybe they called at all the big hotels. Maybe they hunted garbage. I don't know."
~~ from  East Goes West  by Younghill Kang 

Bloomsday 2021

Leopold Bloom wanders on.

a stroll through Dublin

 With Bloomsday approaching, it's a fine time for a stroll through Dublin.

patience toward writers

"Roger Straus was legendary for his patience toward writers on his list, blithely letting deadlines pass as long as he felt reasonably certain that someday the wait would prove worthwhile. But even he had a limit, as the epic vagaries of Charles Jackson would eventually bear out. By 1960, as Roger noted, his friend had 'red ink on the books to the tune of $9,398.94,' which didn't include personal loans in the nrighborhood of $2,700 ('or at least that is the total of the traceable sums in my file'), though almost to the end he continued to encourage Charlie and help him make ends meet. However, there simply wasn't as much to talk about now that Charlie only made 'an occasional, embarrassed, dutiful allusion' to his stalled novel(s), as he would admit five years later in 'The Sleeping Brain,' where he nonetheless also claimed that his meetings with Roger had remained as frequent and affable as ever. His letters tell a different story: 'Wanna take any bets on my lunch date with Roger tomorrow?' he wrote Sarah in 1961. 'It's still on but momentarily I expect a cancellation.'"

~~ from Blake Bailey's Farther and Wilder: The Lost Weekends and Literary Dreams of                                           Charles Jackson

Persecuting the Poet

Back at the office, a fanless Wrent passes from solid to liquid to gas, drenched in summer sweat and nostalgia. It’s all in the past now. At fifty, he finds himself a tortured man, a tired man, more a tortellini than a taco man. This last morsel resists definite sexual content. Food or sex? Indeed, the old two-pronged problematic engendered his fertile ballpoint in the early years. By sixth grade, Roger was the angry young writer par excellence, dishing out guzes and doles of vulgar Pop-Tartery, layer cake glued with cheesy verbiage, often heavily iced with suckatash smut. The stuff of which famous literary agents are made, in words, epaule de dogfood. A fool for pastry coincidence, he cut many a young rhyme in the school cafeteria. Neatly sandwiched between the hot dinners and the cold deli, he spied on the world, waxing loquacious over its steamy beefs, jerky adolescents, both gawky teen girls and geeky boys. For love of verse, he spurned the occasional heraldry of paper-triangle football or three-penny table hockey. His first poem, perhaps premonitory of future interest or investment, rented limerick form, with a couplet addendum, for a no-nonsense theme.

~~ from Spark Park: A Tale in Two Parts