Alex Kudera's Blog, page 83

#AWP2019

The two times I've been to AWP, I've lucky enough to sit at a table at the Bookfair with copies of my novels on display in front of me and available for signing and selling. It was pleasant to see sections of Minneapolis and Los Angeles as well, and I have nothing against the myriad panels I failed to attend. The whole thing costs quite a bit of money--hotel, conference fees, airfare--so unless a publisher, university, or other organization is paying for your trip, it can feel as if the money was wasted unless you're treating it like a vacation for book-gazing and sightseeing. I'd be cautious about expecting a reward for your efforts at AWP2019. It may be that authors are using AWP connections to pick up freelance work and adjunct classes, but it's nothing that was visible to me when I participated.

Jessica Bruder's Nomadland for film

Jessica Bruder's Nomadland will become a film released as soon as this fall!

Firmin II

"I loved it when he talked about the revolution too, about Joe Hill, Peter Kropotkin, and the Paterson strike. One of his favorite phrases was "after the revolution." When people bought his books, he would apologize for taking their money and tell them that books were going to be free after the revolution, a public service like streetlights. He also said Jesus was a Communist, which caused some of the people to get worked up."

~~ from Firmin by Sam Savage

even "a bag of dirt"

If someone hands me a bag of dirt and tells me it’s a poem, it gets to be a poem. It might not be a poem that satisfies me intellectually or brings me any delight, I may not want to spend much time with it, but it’s a poem because the person who built it called it a poem.— Kaveh Akbar (@KavehAkbar) March 18, 2019

Firmin by Sam Savage

"When someone is in despair and tells you how cold and unkind the world is and how much pointless suffering there is in life and how much loneliness, and you just happen to agree with him on every point, it puts you in an awkward position."

~~ from Firmin by Sam Savage

Fermin by Sam Savage

"When someone is in despair and tells you how cold and unkind the world is and how much pointless suffering there is in life and how much loneliness, and you just happen to agree with him on every point, it puts you in an awkward position."

~~ from Fermin by Sam Savage

more from Bolano's Last Evenings On Earth. . .

"This is where the story should end, but life is not as kind as literature."

~~ from "Days of 1978"


"Meanwhile I chain smoked Bali cigarettes, looking at the window at the highway and thinking about the disaster that was my life."

~~ from "Gómez Palacio" in Last Evenings On Earth

Kundera in Romania. . .

Then and again, I'm listed as "Kundera," as in, Milan, we can suppose. It's a mistake that's been made a few times, this last one in a Romanian library entry where a short story collection was printed with extremely limited circulation. My fiction has little in common with Kundera's although there is an allusion to The Joke in Fight for Your Long Day that not one reader has ever mentioned. At least in German Wikipedia, the only encyclopedia in which I appear as an "author," I'm in an entry for Kuderas, not Kunderas. I only wish I could tell you that I was the Kudera who fought the Nazis.

Bolano and the Beats

"Roberto Bolano and the Beat Connection" appeared in The New Yorker earlier this month.

Last Evenings On Earth

I've been enjoying a reread of Roberto Bolano's collection Last Evenings On Earth, including the title story which I've only read once before.