Alex Kudera's Blog, page 6

I wear blue jeans and write about New York City.

"Lastly, a writer dressed in blue jeans and a dress shirt, read from his book Fight for Your Long Day. He said in his introductory comments, “If I want to sell the book, I guess I need to let you know who I am. My name is Alex Kudera.” The audience clapped enthusiastically. His reading described a day in the life of a very tired adjunct in New York City. So much of what he dealt with Heather could relate to: trying not to leave anything behind, rushing in and rushing out of the classroom, the students desperately trying to talk while you are trying to make it to your next gig and don’t have time to listen, the colleagues and chair who say demeaning things to you but are impervious to the way they talk down to you. It felt good to laugh about it instead of the daily grind of dealing with it, day in and day out."

~~ from Adjunct Headquarters, "Subconference of the MLA" by Lydia Field Snow

Joy Hui Lin remembers Andrew X. Pham

“Istumbled upon my sister's copy of Catfish and Mandala in my earlytwenties from her Asian American literature studies class at Stanford. I hadnever read any piece of literature before that captures the painful andspecific love of existing in a country that constantly rejects you. I reachedout to Pham personally when a Norton editor explained that my living abroadbook proposal was a great idea, except she, a white woman, could not featurehow to market me, an Asian American woman, as the narrator. To say I wasdevastated would put it mildly, but Pham replied swiftly and with kindness andempathy. His writings have led the way forward for so many of us who are stilltrying to love a country that doesn't love us back. Pham evinced through hiswritings and life that he will be remembered as one of the literary world’sfavorite kind of protagonists: a hero, both strong and tender.”

~~ Joy HuiLin

Andrew X. Pham, rest in peace

Late Friday, I learned that the talented Andrew X. Pham passed on earlier this spring. Catfish and Mandala is a compelling read and one of the first books by an Asian American author I remember reading. I enjoyed his second book, The Eaves of Heaven, as well. He had published his first novel only last year. Rest in peace, Andrew X. Pham.

Philly

"I knew the meek [ain't] inherit shit."
~~ from "Ganny: Truer Words at a Funeral" by Joseph Earl Thomas

nyrb, 05/29/25

The few I've read so far have been engrossing.
 

Memorial Day

"But to me, he didn’t seem like a threatening monster or lunatic who’d fought in both world wars—volunteering to 'kill the Krauts' both times, first as a teenage runaway, the second as a volunteer nearing forty, out too late with his drinking buddies and willing to serve abroad despite three children already and one on the way. I was just a 7-year-old kid excited to see Grandpa, and he seemed like a nice old man. To win us over, he bought gifts, and I can’t remember what mine was, but for my sister, he bought a two-foot-long, plastic baby doll. It was for an age range years below my sister’s, and nothing at all she’d play with, but you could tell he was trying to play the good grandparent despite any talent for the role."

Pirates of Peru

L.U.S.K. enjoyed the South American adventures of talented and ever ebullient Sarah Miller as she traveled to South America in search of a better mood.

McMurtry on Hemingway

"Hemingway's reputation is now so encrusted with a seventy-five-year accumulation of biographical lore--most of it unfavorable to him--that it is easy to forget how well he wrote at the beginning of his career. Picasso said somewhere that no one had looked at Matisse as hard as he had. Hemingway, as a young man, had the same ability to look hard, as hard as a painter, at a place and at the often destructive human emotions operating within a place that was seemingly as lovely as northern Michigan."
~~ from Roads by Larry McMurtry

"Behold My Suit!"

Although Gary Shteyngart interrupts the narrative to brag about the elephants he's slaughtered with his bare hands as well as his Herschel-esque 40-yard-dash time and subtle mastication of both Iron Mike's ears (no double entendre), Hong-Kong Gary manages nevertheless to produce a humane and humble narrative that illuminates a world neither the author nor much of the audience has had access to in any detail. I highly recommend an hour or three away from it all to read the March Atlantic Monthly's "Behold My Suit!"

Saturday Night Substack

 I'm not active on Substack, but now I have a post that originated there.