Alex Kudera's Blog, page 64

Happy Dragon Boat Festival!

Happy Dragon Boat Festival!https://t.co/RMui1cNSwR#FridayReads #amreading #amwriting #WritingCommunity #WritingLife #awp #mfa #China— Alex Kudera (@kudera) June 26, 2020

Bombing From Above

"In my actions, I was opposite this sentient cadre of uber-citizens successfully navigating a fast-paced American city. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, and so on. No, I was a crazed lunatic, a fringe adjunct who’d flown halfway around the world to scold others in foul weather. Do something! My God! Thank goodness I had the decency to leave that scene. I’m certain that the young woman was alive. I pray that she recovered. Hopefully, there was no permanent paralysis."~~ from "Bombing From Above" by Alex Kudera

Austerlitz

"And so, said Austerlitz, no sooner had I arrived in Prague than I found myself back among the scenes of my early childhood, every trace which had been expunged from my memory for as long as I could recollect. As I walked through the labyrinth of alleyways, thoroughfares, and courtyards between Vlasska and Nerudova, and still more so when I felt the uneven paving of the Sporkova underfoot as step by step I climbed uphill, it was as if I had already been this way before and memories were revealing themselves to me not be any mental effort but through my senses, so long numbed and now coming back to life. It was true that I could recognize nothing for certain, yet I had to keep stopping now and then because my glance was caught by a finely wrought window grading, the iron handle of a bell pull, or the branches of an almond tree growing over a garden wall."

~~ from Austerlitz by W. G. Sebald

a check that would never be repaid

"We eat hotdogs and sauerkraut for lunch. After lunch, my father calls the telephone company and explains to them that he cannot pay his debt. He gets angry over a misunderstanding and berates the customer-service rep. He owes ninety bucks for last month plus three hundred from the winter, but he yells at the lady because before they said he could pay the ninety to keep the line and now she’s telling him three ninety or nothing. But he holds neither sum so the point is moot, and bankruptcy leaves one bitter or quarrelsome. He hangs up and bitches about those corporate mothers. When you lose your phone, you lose call backs from prospective employers too. I listen and despair and resist the urge to write him a check that would never be repaid."

~~ from "My Father's Great Recession" by Alex Kudera

Is this doomsday?

"Is this doomsday? Should I grow a potato patch? Should I clean out the orchard? Ron said he knew someone who had a cow to give away. Should we take it? Is this a possibly for-real Doomsday, or just a short interlude of inactivity to be forgotten by history?"   

~~ from "Letter from the Heartland" by Ken Ilgunas

the object of exaggerated scrutiny

"His work, and the results of his campaigns and philanthropy, could be seen everywhere, but the man himself was elusive. He hid from journalists, he hated to be photographed, he seldom gave interviews. He no longer attended his own openings, but instead sent his wife and daughter to preside over them while he stayed at home, unwilling to speak—a great example of how writers and artists should respond—letting his work speak for him, with greater eloquence.

"He was that maddening public figure, a person so determined to avoid being noticed and to maintain his privacy that he becomes the object of exaggerated scrutiny, his privacy constantly under threat. It is the attention seeker and the publicity hound who is consigned to obscurity--or ignored or dismissed. The recluse, the shunner of fame, the "I just want to be alone" escapee—B. Traven was one, so was J. D. Salinger—seems perversely to invite intrusion. Say 'Absolutely no interviews,' and people beat a path to your door."

~~ from On the Plain of Snakes by Paul Theroux

and books were written

Books were written by bank tellers, insurance salespeople, & campground security guards. Books were written by taxi drivers, dishwashers, strippers, and telemarketers. Books were written by authors who wrote copy and others who lived in their vans. Books were written last.— Alex Kudera (@kudera) June 1, 2020

Books were written in code, with typers, and on original scrolls. Books were written by hand, in gulags, on toilet leaf, and at kitchen tables by an open stove. Protesters did not write books, or they wrote books, and some of the books were protest novels while others were not.— Alex Kudera (@kudera) June 2, 2020

books are written

Books are written in basements by broken heaters; books are written during revolutions; books r written about, during, and despite marriages, divorces, and separations. Write books. Write your best books this summer. Or a story, an amazing story you didn't know you could write.— Alex Kudera (@kudera) May 31, 2020

Books are written during wars; books are written during pandemics; books are written on death beds; books are written when Rome is burning. I hope to read your books soon.#WritingCommunity #WritingLife #SaturdayFeeling #SaturdayMotivation #amreading #amwriting #mfa #awp— Alex Kudera (@kudera) May 31, 2020

a way of dealing with my life

"Lo que más me gusta de mi trabajo," I began, and thought hard, because no one in fifty years had ever asked me this question. And what was it that I most liked about my work? That I had no boss, no employees, no rivals, no competition—the freedom of being a writer? That it was a way of dealing with my life, transforming my experiences, finding ways to understand it—recording life's joys, making its tribulations bearable, and also, in writing, easing the passage of time? Making a living this way, my own way, self-employed—that was something to like. Curious to know more about Mexico, I could get in my car and drive from home to the border, and from the border to Mexico City, and then here, making notes at the end of the day answerable to no one."

~~ from On the Plain of Snakes by Paul Theroux

on the road in Mexico

"' La única gente que me interesa es la que está loca, la gente que está loca por vivir, loca por hablar, loca por salvarse ,' it began, and anyone who has read On the Road  will easily recognize it as the mission statement of the man who inspired my generation to hit the road: 'The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.' (The end of the book, seldom quoted, was a soberer reflection:  'Nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody, besides the forlorn rags of growing old,' a condition that Kerouac was never to know, dying in Florida at the age of forty-seven.)~~ from On the Plain of Snakes by Paul Theroux