Alex Kudera's Blog, page 95
December 26, 2017
Happy Holidays!
Happy holidays from the all of us at the Less United States of Kudera. We'll return to regular blogging sooner than you can fret about proper holiday greetings for all of your friends, relatives, neighbors, coworkers, capitalists, and comrades. But please don't hesitate to purchase literature while you wait for our less than triumphant return.
December 3, 2017
Andy Warhola and Alphonse Mucha
Last week I enjoyed carrying a paperback copy of Czech novelist Bohumil Hrabel's I Served the King of England through a Dayton Art Institute exhibit of Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, "Master of Art Nouveau." Then, over the weekend I stumbled upon the Andy Warhol section of Olivia Laing's The Lonely City which noted that Warhol was Slovak and that his relatives were members of the Ruthenian Catholic Church and also once citizens of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Whereas the Warhols were Warholas before they came to live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, my father's side kept their "a" at the end but moved from Soska to Kudera when they arrived in a section of Ohio close to Pittsburgh and later settled near Allentown, PA. It was always a point of curiosity for my father as to how his parents communicated when they first met, but I recognized a possibility from reading about Warhol: they were both Slovaks after all.
I say this because although my earliest memories are of being told that his mother was Ukrainian or Russian, later in life my father mentioned that she may have been Ruthenian. It's highly possible she was Ruthenian, but in the sense of religion, not ethnicity, and that she was in fact Slovak. Anyway, for whatever reason, I'd always thought Warhol was Polish, not Slovak, but now I know better. To the best of my knowledge, I have no Czech relatives.
Whereas the Warhols were Warholas before they came to live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, my father's side kept their "a" at the end but moved from Soska to Kudera when they arrived in a section of Ohio close to Pittsburgh and later settled near Allentown, PA. It was always a point of curiosity for my father as to how his parents communicated when they first met, but I recognized a possibility from reading about Warhol: they were both Slovaks after all.
I say this because although my earliest memories are of being told that his mother was Ukrainian or Russian, later in life my father mentioned that she may have been Ruthenian. It's highly possible she was Ruthenian, but in the sense of religion, not ethnicity, and that she was in fact Slovak. Anyway, for whatever reason, I'd always thought Warhol was Polish, not Slovak, but now I know better. To the best of my knowledge, I have no Czech relatives.
November 28, 2017
#GivingTuesday
Consider buying books as an additional act of charity. #GivingTuesday
November 26, 2017
November 24, 2017
November 23, 2017
progress on the sequel
As of 5:30 a.m. Thanksgiving morning, the sequel to Fight for Your Long Day runs 75,120 words.
November 22, 2017
November 18, 2017
October 27, 2017
October 26, 2017
why read Joyce's Ulysses
I've never read James Joyce's Ulysses, and frankly, it would seem beyond my capacity to do so these days, what with various writing, reading, teaching, and parenting obligations in play, but I did enjoy watching this TED Talk arguing that any of us would do well to read the famous novel. Of course, with famous literature among the rabble, you can see the book sports a humble 3.74 of 5 stars on Goodreads, not so different from my own books rated there.
