The Less United States of Kudera

Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense

2012-01-17T13:59:00.001-05:00

In the middle of my insomnia, I stumbled upon an informal but engaging review called "Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense" and written by Black Man in the Cosmos. With candor, wit, and self-criticism, the writer considers both Fight for Your Long Day and Professor X's In the Basement of the Ivory Tower. The reviewer, a doctoral candidate at CUNY writing his dissertation on African American academic novels, is fair to both books and lets his wit shine through in a section on plagiarism. Here's an excerpt that I enjoyed:

17. One thing I liked about Fight For Your Long Day is that it feels very much like a 21st century novel. Kudera depicts a world of higher education where the aspirations of learning and self-improvement still exist, but they exist alongside a world full of the crass, crude, and pornographic, a world that militates against contemplation and learning, a world where everything from violence to paranoia to frivolous pop culture is filtered through the interactive screens that nearly all of the students carry around with them everywhere they go. The book is full of allusions to current events, politics and pop culture, and is probably oversaturated with too many references, but even in that sense it feels familiar.

I didn’t like the fact that the book had thinly drawn secondary characters. But then again, thinly drawn characterizations are sometimes all we are able to get from our students when they are being throttled through the higher education assembly line [italics mine]. I went to a small liberal arts college where I knew my professors and they became mentors. I went back to attend a retirement celebration for one of them last year. I haven’t seen any of the students I taught in my courses since the classes ended, and barely saw them outside of class when they were enrolled.

He numbers his sections of the review, and I also particularly recommend 9 through 12 on plagiarism, influence, and giving credit where credit is due. According to the blogger, this review was also printed in the GC Advocate, a CUNY online publication, but I could not find the September, 2011 issue online.

Psychology Today

2012-01-11T22:40:00.000-05:00

Dr. Susan K. Perry at Psychology Today was kind enough to grant me this interview, and while I didn't have opportunity to explore all of my doubts and inadequacies, I did get that cathartic feeling when I sent my responses back. She's an accomplished writer currently shopping her own quirky novel. Also, the writer Michael Leone reviewed Fight for Your Long Day at When Falls the Coliseum. Thank you, both!

live at Moonstone Arts Center

2011-12-23T11:51:00.000-05:00

Abeer Hoque, Alex Kudera, and Don Riggs will read poetry and fiction at Moonstone Arts Center, 110A S. 13th Street, Philadelphia, PA, on Friday, January 6 at 7 p.m.

This event promises to be bigger than playoff football, or at least more affordable. Expect a few ounces of wine and a morsel of cheese, and that parched and annoyed feeling if you arrive a few minutes late and all the little plastic cups are gone.

Abeer Hoque is a Nigerian born Bangladeshi American writer and photographer with BS and MA degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA in writing from the University of San Francisco. She is the recipient of a 2005 Tanenbaum Award, a 2007 Fulbright Scholarship, and a 2012 NEA Literature Fellowship, and she has attended residencies at Saltonstall, VCCA, Millay, and Albee. Her writing and photography has been published in ZYZZYVA, XConnect, Nerve.com, Farafina (Nigeria), India Today, the Daily Star (Bangladesh), 580 Split, Wasafiri (England), and KQED Writers Block among others. She likes looking at gargoyles, eating at King's Wok, and watching you dance. Philadelphia was her first home in America. See more at olivewitch.com.

Alex Kudera received his M.A. in fiction from Temple University in 1998. His debut novel, Fight for Your Long Day, won the 2011 Independent Publisher’s Gold Medal for Best Fiction from the Mid-Atlantic Region. It is an original academic tragicomedy told consistently from the perspective of the adjunct instructor, and reviews and interviews can be found online at Inside Higher Ed, Academe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and other locations. Many of Kudera’s stories survive in slush piles across the continent or huddled together in unheated North Philly storage space, but The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity is available as a 99-cent single wherever e-books are downloaded. Alex currently teaches writing and literature at Clemson University in South Carolina.

Don Riggs received his M.A. in poetry in 1997, after already having completed a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from University of North Carolina. He has published several articles in the Journal for the Fantastic in the Arts, and is actively engaged in research and teaching in Science Fiction literature. His poetry has appeared in many publications, including 16th Century Journal, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Painted Bride Quarterly, xib and ixnay. He is the Co-Editor of and featured poet in the book Uncommonplaces: Poems of the Fantastic. He is the Editor of Lamont B. Steptoe's A Long Movie of Shadows and translated Chinese Poetic Writing by Francois Cheng. At Drexel, Dr. Riggs teaches several courses for the Department of English and Philosophy, including Science Fiction Literature, Philosophy in Literature, Renaissance and Enlightenment Literature, Creative Writing, Visions in Writing, and Freshman Writing.

devalued content

2011-12-19T16:02:00.000-05:00

If you, or anyone you know, becomes burdened with the gift of an electronic reading device this holiday season, you're welcome to take a crack at this sizzling e-single, my only publication of 2011 (or at least the only one that folks are invited to pay for). In Australia, a guy I don't know compares it to The Brothers Karamazov, and, well, even though it's only thirty-five pages, I hope that means it could be worth 99 cents. Try here for kindle, here for nook, and here for everywhere else e-books are downloaded.

december post (not much to report. . .)

2011-12-16T15:25:00.001-05:00

But this is what I'm reading, and this is what I've read. If you want to drink what I'm drinking, and support contingent faculty (aka adjuncts, academic contract workers, etc.), then this might lead you to the path of enlightenment. Or at least help you stay awake.

Happy holidays, end of semester, etc.

fish loaf

2011-11-03T16:10:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday, November 8 at 7:00 p.m., I'm reading for ten minutes with seven others in the Self Auditorium at the Strom Thurmond Institute on Clemson's campus in South Carolina. It's a benefit for Loaves and Fishes, a "food raiser" as it were, where folks can bring canned goods and suffer through poetry and fiction. (Cash donations are also accepted, but don't expect me to shut up for just any amount of dough!) For more information, visit http://www.loavesandfishesgreenville.org/ or contact Mike Pulley in the Clemson University Department of English.

the saddest story i've listened to as an audiobook

2011-10-24T17:08:00.001-04:00

Cyrus Duffleman finds himself in good company over at http://www.iambik.com/, sharing the homepage and a discount opportunity with arguably the greatest overlooked novel of the twentieth century, Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier.

Okay, so Ford may be the canonical genius, the great one I just mentioned as the most overlooked--yeah, but you know better to listen to what I say, and all that, but I would suggest that Cyrus's sloppy, sadsack routines can give Ford's narrator a run for his sadness. Unless you find his troubles to be amusing.

and don't forget

2011-10-20T01:55:00.000-04:00

Strictly for the purposes of personal promotion, I'm writing an even slimmer volume on why people should read Benito Cereno and Billy Budd, Sailor, but I'm also tearing my hair out in neurotic angst over whether or not I should italicize or put these titles in quotation marks. Or maybe throw folks off by italicizing one and putting the other in quotes? (The Billy Budd hypertext from the University of Virginia is worth linking to more than once.)

And please don't forget Pierre, "Bartleby the Scrivener," "I and My Chimney," "The Encantadas," Israel Potter, and so forth.

As a final thought, I'm transfixed by the possibility that Herman Melville would have been a great name for one of those huge, seven-foot, tree-trunk centers who were so prevalent in the 1970s NBA (the other NBA). Of course, Nathaniel Philbrick also resonates in this regard. Where have you gone Caldwell Jones? And what are you reading?

Linh Dinh

2011-10-11T21:03:00.000-04:00

Over at counterpunch, I stumbled upon a familiar name, that of Philadelphia's own Linh Dinh.

I remember that in the early nineties, my early twenties, he was already recognized as a new and important voice in town. I believe he was understood to be a poet, then. One night at McGlinchey's, I'm pretty sure we met, and we talked a bit over famously inexpensive drafts. I didn't have any literary accomplishments, so I imagine that I would have been impressed with whatever he had to say.

McGlinchey's is the kind of place where the hipper Temple and University of the Arts professors mingle with everyone else although I began to indulge in sobriety and never had time to go there once I started teaching all around town. (I've never been a party type, but you could say the adjunct overloads kept me off the streets.) My understanding is that the bar might not be the extreme bargain it once was, or that even the bargains don't seem so these days. In fact, I'm having trouble picturing it at all with the smoking ban now firmly in place although the comments at yelp suggest smoking inside is alive and well at the "dive-y" bar and grill.

Anyway, Linh Dinh's current project includes photographs from Occupy Wall Street and, if I'm not mistaken, dozens of other occupations. And he is accepting donations, perhaps because he needs them: "Speaking of solidarity, I wouldn’t have been able to observe the protest if a dozen readers of my blog hadn’t sent me hundreds of dollars this past month alone. Part of this cash was used to fix my broken camera. With a poisoned media, untrained citizens must anoint themselves journalists."

Well, I suspect that most of the "poisoned media" are just trying to survive like the rest of us, and even many writers considered mainstream are freelance and hustling to make ends meet. But Linh Dinh's photographs are certainly not indicative of an "untrained" eye.

new web design

2011-10-07T16:26:00.000-04:00

The Atticus Books website received a total makeover, and now the homepage sports title rotation worthy of the very finest in Dim Sum table spin. (No, I don't know what that means, but it's worth checking out.)

occupying a nice first print run

2011-10-01T18:05:00.002-04:00

Within hours of learning that The Philadelphia Inquirer no longer prints a Saturday edition (I do remember that one shrinking over the years), I read that Occupy Wall Street printed its first newspaper--raising $12,000 and printing 50,000 copies.

I guess it's safe to say that we can now count Occupy Wall Street as among and in support of the 99% of writers who contribute to the global economy of words on paper and screen and yet fail to reap a swell wage with full benefits. But would that be at the expense of the 1% of writers who still hold the good union jobs with corporate newspapers?

Fight for Your Long Page!

CAAH

2011-09-30T15:29:00.000-04:00

Clemson University's College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities had the peculiar misfortune to find The Duffler Occupying its website this month. If we get a chance to interview Cyrus, we'll try to find out why he left his tiny apartment to live in the public domain.

we who are

2011-09-28T11:32:00.000-04:00

In the We Who Are About To Breed series at We Who Are About To Die, Patrick Wensick was kind enough to include a special segment on We Who Are About To Grade Too Many Undergraduate Blogs and Essays. Thanks for the interview!

NYTimes "Gunning" for Protestors?

2011-09-25T09:16:00.001-04:00

Like a well trained dog, I exceed my reading limit early each month, but I'm still able to pass on that the New York Times has Occupy Wall Street front and center on the Sunday morning website, and that they include links to three stories.

The main headline reads, "Protesters Are Gunning for Wall Street with Faulty Aim."

To me, it's unfortunate that peaceful protestors would be described in a "legitimate" news source as "gunning." And, alas, the first sentence is a dig at the ignorance of these peaceful young people:

"Demonstrators on Wall Street this week seemed to lack hard knowledge of the system they were fighting."

In fact, if they do lack this "hard knowledge" it could be due to how the system's statistics continually mask reality, whether we're talking about rates for unemployment, inflation, or pay for college grads. It's only in the last few years that we've seen more establishment journalism include information on discouraged workers or workforce participation rates.

Harper's Magazine in the Index ran the statistic that 85 percent of 2011 college grads returned to live at home after commencement, and any teacher in America who has ever reported this statistic or something similar to his or her students is greeted by expressions of shock and disbelief. That statistic certainly doesn't mean that these young people remain at home for the rest of their adult lives, but it also doesn't account for the millions of other adult Americans living with their parents due to economic necessity.

So, perhaps, if it is true that these young people lack hard facts, perhaps it is also their sources--educators, journalists, parents, and others--who might take some responsibility for that? And perhaps the journalist who "broke" the story for The New York Times could also, by at least some criteria, be counted as among those who lacks "hard knowledge"? Or, perhaps, she is at least expert enough to know where her salary comes from?

There was also a nice Mom from Queens on the Occupy Wall Street livefeed just now who sent her love to the viewer who asked if she could be his Mom. And then, she sent her love to all of us. And blew kisses.

first thought, best thought

2011-09-24T07:49:00.001-04:00

I've been reading about Allen Ginsberg's "first thought, best thought" ideas, which seem particularly suitable or relevant to contemporary studies of blogging--perhaps much more so than studies of poetry. In fact, according to American Scream, an easy to read book primarily about "Howl," Ginsberg's most famous poem was rigorously edited despite Jack Kerouac's insistence that Allen cut and revise as little as possible. In fact, at the time, it became apparent that "first thought, best thought" was much more Jack's idea than Allen's. This somewhat adds to the sad irony of Ginsberg living a full, marketed life that culminates with a decade's worth of professoring at Brooklyn College while Kerouac dies relatively young, relatively drunk, and of course, more or less living on his relative's (as in Mom's) couch and dime.

As to how "first thought, best thought" relates to this blog, I did in fact just revise a recent entry to make myself appear less cynical and perhaps more generous. (Yes, a kind soul who was only partly obsessed with how low his meager stock holdings would decline during the current revolution in Liberty Park--that is how posterity and the present should know L.U.S.K. Oh, how I wish I were one of those grain-fed affluent liberal-to-lefters who remains completely unaware for an entire lifetime that his or her retirement has primarily been secured by ample holdings of and dividends from Big Oil, Fat Retail, Large Car, Long Bomb, Private Money, Warren Insurance, Dessert Buffet, etc.) I'm sure this impulse to revise relates to the fact that this is a public blog, and so there is also the possibility that the usual censors--from peers to authorities to parents to potential employers could chance upon it, and consider whether or not it opines in an appropriate manner, treating each topic with the dignity it deserves.

Anyway, I also noticed I didn't revise out in the earlier entry the "And" at the start of four consecutive paragraphs.

OK. I'll post now and then come back to this later!

if you build it,

2011-09-23T21:00:00.000-04:00

people will come?

It seems plausible.

Saturday in New York City, they are expecting 10,000 people:

http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/occupywallstreet-saturday.html

I know this is the Kudera kiss-of-death, for me to predict anything at all, but it has become apparent that this movement could be successful at having its "one demand" met.

But what will the one demand be?

No clue.

news worth ignoring?

2011-09-23T18:20:00.000-04:00

I still haven't found a business news article that connects the first week of Occupy Wall Street to our worst week for stocks since 2008. Have you?

PS--we can't afford to only sell Will Bunch's books

2011-09-23T03:44:00.003-04:00

PSC CUNY showed up to express solidarity with the protestors at Occupy Wall Street, and at least for a moment I felt a solidarity with the cause-in-itself and almost a euphoria. (I should note that the "one demand" remains undemanded, so it's difficult to know what I am feeling almost in solidarity with.) But Thursday around 9:30 p.m., the presence of teachers on the ground at Liberty Park seemed to offer the whole business a legitimacy, even a way of seeing beyond the usual register, and hoping for better times, even fairer times.

And although young people entering their adult years at a time of high unemployment and terrible worker-participation rates (according to The Fiscal Times, only 55 percent of Americans 16 to 29 are in the workforce at all) were still being dragged off to jail for touching trees, violating boundaries and such, the CUNY teachers helped me move past the cynical notions that this overtly commodified reality TV version of anticapitalist protest could be merely a non-profit's attempt to gain mediashare, a vehicle for Keith Olbermann Studies, or a way for Will Bunch to sell his book. Which of course brought me back to the Less United States of Kudera's original raison d'etre, which was to publish and sell my own. (Note to any young or old, anti or procapitalists reading this blog: although it certainly seems played out, blogging will be part of your expected path to publication, so it could be wise to begin now.)

And so I thought then it would be a shameless omission if I did not once more burden you with new and old views of my own materials: Fight for Your Long Day and The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity. They are of course both packaged and priced for the aforementioned 16 to 29 demographic, and with contents particularly suitable to the 45 percent without work. And with that in mind, here are the 28 libraries where a copy can be lent to you.

And I should also note that when I went back to adbusters.org to copy the link, I believe I saw an ad for vodka ("Genocide and Juice," but when I google, I learn that it is a rap album released by The Coup in 1994), but then also, the livefeed was down but a Democracy Now video segment seemed to offer a clip of an interview with the protestor who was last seen being dragged on the cement and shouting that he needed his inhaler while other scared protestors asked him to say his last name. Well, pardon me if in fact this is not the same protestor, but he looked clean and safe and outside the police precinct and safely expressing his views about "freedom to assembly," America, and such. And now the livefeed reads, "Let's Chill - Live Feeds Back ~ 7AM," and they are playing older video of a kind, young, harmonica-and-guitar-Bob-Dylan-cover protestor. Not the worst I've heard.

And now, it sounds like the loud young people who woke me up at 2:30 a.m. are retreating to their own livefeeds and other indoor activities, and so it could be the optimal time to return to bed.

Or do I shout out the window and quiz them on their workforce-participation rate?

Goodnight.

but a bunch of what exactly, Will?

2011-09-22T14:18:00.005-04:00

Will Bunch, blogging for The Philadelphia Daily News, does believe in a Big Media Brownout of the Wall Street Protests:

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Big-medias-shameful-blackout-on-the-Wall-Street-protests.html

It could indeed be the case, but Will Bunch even acknowledges that there has been some Big Media Coverage:

"That's not to say there hasn't been some level of news coverage -- including from the newsrooms of the New York Times. The Times has published three blog posts about the protests, although they were not easy to find on the web site (here and here-- you had to navigate well below the layer of Ray's Pizza) and the Washington Post has also published blog posts (here and here) and even photo essays, which is good way of saying "look at these crazy and colorful kids" without addressing the actual issues. I've noticed that a lot of the American coverage that I found through Google News was in the form of online photo essays. Look, I'm somebody with one foot in the blogging world and the other foot still planted in the mentality of the old-fashioned newsroom, and I can tell you that sometimes buried blog posts and photo essays are a way to say you "covered" something without, you know, actually covering it, not in a way that counts."

(Please see the Will Bunch blog for the links.)

Fair enough, but I'm working on another theory, not necessarily a competing one, but one that could also make sense to Big Media. Well, here goes: the larger media entities are merely good media capitalists, and possibly even thoughtful people (I know!), and, perhaps, they are thinking, "Hey, Adbusters is going to pay for advertising if that's partly what this is about." They've probably seen the ads for Red Bull that play during the livestream of the protests at adbusters.org, and they've probably seen that protestors who don't share in the ad revenue are getting arrested, and they've probably thought through these things a bit and in fact are somewhat genuinely apprehensive about running a lot of stories about such a commodified protest.

Or, Big Media will just do anything to capture and grow their own young audience while fending off a smaller player like Adbusters?

Or, they haven't thought much about it at all because hundreds of protestors just aren't such a Big Story for Big Media?

Or, as Will Bunch notes, they have looked out the skyscraper window--and they're scared?

Sigh and move on, I suppose, but in closing, I'll note that at least one law firm is offering pro bono services to help process arrested protestors through the legal system.

I'm not sure if that's the moral equivalent of giving away the cigarettes for free.

wall street protest?

2011-09-21T20:51:00.002-04:00

According to Alisson Kilkenny's blog at The Nation:

Outcry erupted yesterday when it became apparent that Yahoo was censoring e-mails that contained references to the Occupy Wall Street protest. A sender would receive a message that there was “suspicious activity” detected on their account when they tried to send a message relating to the event. Yahoo later responded, saying the culprit was an overzealous spam filter.

But yahoo.com later apologized and said its spam filters had encountered a "false positive."

Is a "false positive" the same as censorship? I'd think not, but then again, how would I ever be able to know if this is The Nation's overzealous use of the word "censoring" or legitimate and somewhat intriguing news?

The "Wall Street protest" caught my attention this morning when I saw four different people had shared news about it on facebook, and one person shamed The New York Times for not covering the story.

And yet, The New York Times is covering the story.

And then, back at you know where after work, it appears a dozen people in equal measure are commenting on the potential for execution in Georgia (temporary stay as best I understand it) and the break up of R.E.M.

I'm in no position to add it all up at present, but this "dissident journalism"--written by a young man with $200,000's worth of undergraduate education (read "NYU") insists, "The point is, we are sick and tired of being ruled by a shadowy and exclusive group of oligarchs." And that the protest's goal is democracy and even "consensus." But he looks like a nice kid from Yeshiva high school who considers himself a student of Melville and Shakespeare. Which, of course, seems nice from this less united perspective. And innocent?

Could the young journalist be among the 60% of American undergrads with a median student loan debt of 23K? Is he a young writer with no job, living on cold floorboards, with a forged passport, in a Manhattan apartment?

Am I living in a different America? Or is everyone living in an individual one with occasional big and little overlaps here and there?

You say you feel fragmented?

Diffuse?

Of late night fame?

OK.

Goodnight.

the latest from amazon

2011-09-20T14:04:00.001-04:00

Although I haven't bought a book from amazon in almost two months, I'm one of the shoppers guilty of being lured by discounts and ignoring book community pleas to support Indy bookstores. This got my attention though:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/employees-faced-brutal-working-conditions-amazon-warehouse-135842747.html

We'll see how it plays out, but it's the kind of thing that one could almost assume to be true. Not once have I heard of an Indy bookstore employee complaining of heat exhaustion or brutal working conditions.

Have you?

And, of course, it was never my experience at the brick and mortar bookstores, including a Borders, that I worked in years ago.

the latest from Atticus Books

2011-09-18T19:13:00.000-04:00

Lacey N. Dunham has joined Atticus Books, the red hot lover of Atticus Review, an on the prowl, or at least online, literary journal presently experiencing a lot of eyeball action (read "page views"). With reporters on the ground in an ever increasing number of nations and business concerns, The Less United States of Kudera was able to penetrate deep into the bandwidth for top-secret communiques, and extract this snippet from Atticus Publisher Dan Cafaro:

"Lacey is a former bookseller with Politics & Prose Bookstore & Coffeehouse in Washington, DC, and the editor of the online literary publication, THIS Literary Magazine. For Politics & Prose, Lacey performed an assortment of duties and was their go-to person for social media and online book groups. Lacey has written for Ploughshares, The Collagist, The Washington Spark, and The Feminist Review, among others, and is a columnist at the Used Furniture Review. She studied writing at Hollins University [in Virginia]."

Atticus also placed a rack of its titles at Novel Places in Clarksburg, Maryland, and rumor has it that the young pub might be the first press in history to offer a million-dollar book contract to an imaginary friend.

borders finale

2011-09-12T16:25:00.000-04:00

I'll confess that when I saw the headline, I found myself getting awfully sentimental, sad even, although compared to half the other big stories, it's not a matter of death and life. But Ann Arbor, I'm sure, will never be the same.

The Funny Man

2011-09-10T20:23:00.000-04:00

John Warner's The Funny Man arrives soon to an amazon warehouse near you, so I thought I'd claim the possibility that I'm sort of the Al Gore of John Warner Studies although I haven't yet sent a white paper to my department chair in hopes of making a minor out of it. But, possibly, I was the first one in the history of the internet to interview him although there's certainly a great chance that isn't true. (But I'd rather write that and keep it than try googling his name.) Anyway, he made the mistake of responding to some questions about Frederick Exley last winter break, and, well, actually, I thought he gave some swell answers.

Good luck, John. Good luck, book!

Fante Published Today

2011-08-30T19:53:00.001-04:00

Dan Fante's Fante: A Family's Legacy of Writing, Drinking, and Surviving is officially out and about today. I was lucky enough to read it earlier this summer, and my immediate sense was that Dan had written his best book yet.

It also got me back to exploring his father's novels, and I particularly enjoyed Dreams from Bunker Hill and The Brotherhood of the Grape.

The Less United States of Kudera is wishing Dan well at his hometown reading this Friday night at Skylight Books in Los Angeles. Here's my interview with Dan on his Bruno Dante novels, his father, alcoholics anonymous, and more.

Iambik audiobook

2011-08-18T16:16:00.000-04:00

Fight for Your Long Day is now available as the first Atticus audiobook thanks to Mark F. Smith's voice and many others, no doubt. On the book's page at Iambik, point to and click on "listen to first chapter" for a sample.

Poe's woes

2011-08-08T11:08:00.000-04:00

When times are tough, even dead writers suffer?

For some time now, I've thought that Edgar Allen Poe was living quite an extravagant life--three homes in three Mid-Atlantic cities seemed a bit much, and I had a sneaky feeling he may have had rent control in the Bronx and unpaid property taxes in Philly.

Well, this article suggests the tell-tale signs that the authorities are on to fast Edgy, and that officials will finally force him to live (in death) a bit more moderately. Baltimore is hiring consultants (scholars of literature and readers of classics, no doubt) to develop plans for Poe and his home to become self-sufficient in the town where he died.

There's no word yet on whether we'll be able interview the dead writer on these new austerity measures.

no worries, it's legal!

2011-08-06T21:58:00.001-04:00

So now that corporations have unlimited fundraising capability (bye bye McCain-Feingold, right?), it appears that the mystery man who created the corporation merely to donate $1,000,000 to a Mitt Romney PAC did so legally. Possibly. But if so, this means that any wealthy person who wants to overcome the $2,500 maximum donation rule can do the same if I'm not mistaken. Or rather, I should say that any person who wants to bother creating a shell company can do this, and then just as Romney's "friend" did, dissolve the corporation a few months later.

I think.

Yah, scary. It'll be interesting to see if the new laws can stand or if the election cycle becomes an even greater parody of such--this time, creating an entire economy driven on the need for people to learn how to set up corporations (and then dissolve them), so they can aid personal favorites just a little bit more.

Which could mean jobs, and could be good? For years now, I've noted that major political contests do create jobs, thousands of temporary positions at the very least.

I should note that I might be mistaken about some of the facts and the legality, here, and this entire blog entry could merely be attributed to S&P Downgrade Anxiety (SPDA); however, the mystery contributor was willing to reveal his name.

follow up

2011-08-05T11:05:00.002-04:00

This is a much more developed article about the 37 year old man who lost his life in California earlier this week. In fact, the story tells a lot about about the need to support, care for, and protect the mentally ill as best any society can. And so, it is all the more troubling that the country's (and states') financial position(s) might mandate cuts to these services, and even more so, that some people (and insurance policies) still fail to recognize mental health at all.

burden the many, and for the few?

2011-08-04T13:36:00.002-04:00

I've often connected the themes of Fight for Your Long Day to the egregious debt loads a majority of college students face, but at least, as of now, we have no debtor's prison for when the money can not be repaid.

There are also the cases where in the process of enforcing our "laws" we end up killing young people; these two stories caught my attention yesterday and today:

http://news.yahoo.com/florida-teenager-dies-jail-being-arrested-possession-marijuana-185653175.html

and

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/126554518.html

Meanwhile, yahoo.com is also reporting that Mitt Romney has received $1,000,000 donations from companies created for the sole purpose of eliding campaign-finance laws:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/mysterious-company-dissolves-giving-1-million-pro-romney-142445497.html

the revised me, other artists, and you

2011-07-29T11:31:00.001-04:00

i'm still here, too, although it feels odd to unfair not to be blogging about floods in Seoul, chaos in Yemen, mass murderers, unemployment, dire warnings, debt ceilings here, or defaults there.

well, i've linked to this one before, but if you want to feel happy to be alive, i offer up Cassendre Xavier's "Happy To Be Alive."

i suppose that i'm more "too tired to be alive," which is not the same as tired of living.

and it has nothing to do with the hiccups and giggles with my analyst or anyone else.

another way to get a lift out of life is to view the photography of Abeer Hoque.

have a great weekend, wonderful reader!

bolano, ebooks, tweets, etc.

2011-07-19T12:32:00.002-04:00

I'm engrossed in Bolano, Roberto, again--polished off the second section being serialized by The Paris Review (197) and then jumped right into The Skating Rink, which I'm finding pleasantly suspenseful. I'm also enjoying how this slimmer novel resonates with Bolano's other work. We meet alternating narrators, a broken poet, South Americans in exile, the murdered and the forlorn, and a rich sadness that can be absurdly comical, and thus radically destabilizing, all at once. Or, you could say Bolano can write scenes that perfectly create the feeling of simultaneous laughter and tears.

(I believe I first read about Bolano's writing being described this way in a review either in Harpers Magazine or The New Yorker, and I apologize for being unable to pin it down. This wonderful website of Bolano articles appeared when I tried to search for the original quotation.)

At a slight tangent, it seems fitting that I received my form-letter rejection from The Paris Review last night; Bolano's success is most often in his fully realized vision of our failures.

But I guess my book is still in the news if we define "the news" as all information I so desperately search for online everyday. Which does indeed mean that although I failed to watch the women's football (soccer?) championship or follow all the blow-by-blow of the NFL and NBA labor disputes, and the "debt-ceiling crisis" is only an occasional worry and not a constant fear for me or my meager holdings, I did learn that Fight for Your Long Day is now also available as a google e-book, and if you click on "View Sample" to the right of the screen (or follow the last hyperlink), the first 25 pages can be read for free.

And then an amazing blogger, Lori at The Next Best Book Club, has tweeted on it several times, and has even invited shy Cyrus into the bedroom for a late night finale (a dash to the finish line?) according to one tweet. She has also hung it on the front page of her blog under currently reading for quite some time--alas, possibly due in part to the fact that the last half reads a lot faster than the first half for many. A final cool thing about TNBBC is that she is also an alt.punk fan.

Last, the talented writer and photographer Abeer Hoque was kind enough to share this photograph from the Chestnut Hill Book Festival:

Thanks, Abeer and Lori!

And now it's probably time to return to all of my Saul Bellows and Bolanos and John Fantes and other writers who'd probably not be caught dead blogging about themselves or their writing.

Alas, I suppose they died before we could find out, so that they're dead is all we can know for sure.

(So in other words, I wouldn't wish promoting one's own writing on anyone? Or death? Watch out! Yikes! Yeah, I know. I'm a goner.)

The Adventures of Augie March

2011-07-10T10:26:00.001-04:00

Before I drove up to Philly, in bed but awake at 7 a.m., I shoved down the last ten pages of The Adventures of Augie March, and I can tell you the last word was America even if it would be ridiculous to suggest this novel could be the last word on America.

In fact, it's not, and although I know that from reading James Atlas's biography and other sources, Bellow ended his life in favor of Augie's active spirit as opposed to the hopelessness and fatalism of the much shorter Seize the Day, it still seems that you don't have to live through the Great Depression or the current situation to recognize that by the numbers, the protagonist's life in Seize the Day much more accurately depicts life for many more Americans than the adventures of Augie. (Still, we could consider that's not the point at all, and that while both inform, it is Augie March that better entertains.)

And for the slim majority of Americans that do live their whole lives floating well above surface, housing and health benefits intact, etc--well, their adventures are not often with gigantic eagles, gamblers, thinkers, and Russian revolutionaries on the run, but rather, exist on planned vacations and shopping and HDTV where some other fellow is ramming his head into an incredible hulk of a defensive line.

As for the book itself, similar to Ravelstein, my interest waned when Bellow took his protagonist South of the border. Save for the Trotsky section in Mexico, I found most of the writing much more exciting when Augie was in America, Chicago for the most part, but not exclusively. I can't say why that it is, and it could surely be coincidence.

I can see why Bellow's friends and admirers were downright angry at the Atlas biography, and yet, frankly, it was good, easy reading, and in some ways, to me, the man's life was more interesting than his prose.

Another favorite nonfiction concerning Bellow is the chapter included in Brent Staples's Parallel Time, which although seemingly based upon a misreading or incomplete reading of Mr Sammler's Planet offers a great chase scene and is still fascinating in the way it brings perspective to the circumstances in which the canonical writer was living at University of Chicago in the late sixties and early seventies. I highly encourage a read of Staples's book concurrent with Sammler.

Bellow did come through with many great quotable sections of Augie, and I'll leave you with this one (for clarity, in short-quote format--with quotation marks, period in the wrong place, but alas, no identifying tag because I have no colon on this netbook and I just drove myself mad pasting in all the periods!--not because I'd want any of you to ignore MLA format for long quotations).

"Take the fact that people generally were full of loathing and it cost them an effort to look at one another. Mostly they wanted to be left alone. And they dug for unreality more than for treasure, unreality being their last great hope because then they could doubt that what they knew about themselves was true" (482).

And as we do, we move on, and now I'm reading number 197 of The Paris Review (great interviews with Samuel Delany and William Gibson, photography, and the next section of an early "lost" Bolano novel) and John Fante's Dreams from Bunker Hill.

Fante criticism but no fiction

2011-07-03T23:42:00.000-04:00

Well, I've been blogging on Saving Bookstores (and buying more than I should, too), but I wanted to come clean and be sure that everyone knows that I purchased the John Fante straight from the Evil Bezos himself on Friday. This was after I discovered that my otherwise wonderful university library had books of John Fante criticism but none of his novels.

Please thank Allen Ginsberg if this first thought is in fact the best one:

The parasites suck the host dry and then live to gloat about it in the stacks!

(I should come clean and admit that I checked out both books of criticism and have enjoyed some of the essays so far. In fact, if you count comp and business writing as separate strands of college English, then for some time now, I've been swinging from far more than two sides of the departmental plate.)

Well, I've read The Road to Los Angeles and Ask the Dust, so I ordered Dreams from Bunker Hill and The Brotherhood of the Grape.

If you want to learn more about John Fante, or the writing of his son Dan, then John's Ask the Dust and Dan's Chump Change are good places to start, but Dan Fante's memoir Fante: A Family's Legacy of Writing, Drinking, and Surviving coming later this summer, will work just as well. Maybe better.

prizewinners die broke?

2011-07-03T10:57:00.000-04:00

Well, I doubt that's invariably true, but the gold stickers on the wall haven't lifted me away from run-down townhouse living on the poorer side of university town, South Carolina. The optimistic angle could be that the final days of living on Mom's couch have been avoided so far (Et tu, Kerouac, Exley, et al). To be frank, I have a feeling that sobriety and fear will keep me working and dull enough to support myself for many more years.

It ain't exactly the Nobel or Pulitzer, but I suppose an Indy regional prize is better than nothing at all.

Betrayal e-book URLs

2011-06-29T16:40:00.001-04:00

Here are the URLs to a graduation-angst story I wrote on and off over fifteen years. It'll set you back 99 cents, but I like to think it's worth it.

You can read The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity off the screen or via download at Smashwords:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/40939 (two great reviews here now)

And then at all the usual places where electronic reading devices are sold:

Amazon (kindle): http://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-Times-Peace-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B004MDLSMK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1299991227&sr=1-1

Apple (i-etc): http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-betrayal-times-peace-prosperity/id421351533?mt=11

B&N (nook): http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Betrayal-of-Times-of-Peace-and-Prosperity/Alex-Kudera/e/2940011191442/?itm=2&USRI=alex+kudera

Diesel (epub): http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/item/SW00000040939/Kudera-Alex/The-Betrayal-of-Times-of-Peace-and-Prosperity/1.html

Sony: http://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/alex-kudera/the-betrayal-of-times-of-peace-and-prosperity/_/R-400000000000000346243

It will appear in Romanian translation over the next few print issues of Contemporary Literary Horizon as well.

Best,

Alex Kudera

Happy Save Bookstores Day!

2011-06-25T11:17:00.002-04:00

Happy Save Bookstores Day! Rumor has it is that the thing to do on Saturday, June 25 is to visit an Indy bookstore or two and buy something--most likely, a book. We plan to get to at least one over the weekend, and I wish I could easily get back to all the Indy stores that have been generous in supporting Fight for Your Long Day. If you care to hit up your local Indy store for a copy of the [redacted], it's most likely they'll order it all special, just for you!

I guess, in truth, it's hard for me to know or say if owners of independent bookstores are any worse off than adjunct faculty, the fifteen million without work, or anyone else in this economy staring at a double dip that does indeed have the fancy ice creams on sale at our local American-owned Ingles (which means they are priced just a bit over regular Wal-mart prices). It could indeed be better not to own anything brick and mortar unless it is one of those magically affluent recession-proof places. But do those mirages exist?

Well, I guess it's still fun to browse and blow coin on books on any given Saturday. . . and so I offer:

READER-CONSUMER, ACTIVATE! SHAPE OF A BOOK BUYER!

PS--What I wrote below in February, 2010 seems connected to the here and now of book, but of course, the actual holiday proved only to be a false rumor and thus not part of our shared mythology:

Yes, it is true. February is national "Shelve Your Indy Novel in the Superbookstore" month. This means that sneaking into a local big-box store known for housing book product and in clandestine fashion placing your independently produced novel on the shelf, with sticker price affixed, is the thing to do. No dark glasses, trenchcoat, or other disguise is required; a hidden camera might make things more interesting, but of course, the store most likely already provides those. Alphabetical order is expected, but the organizers of this month's theme have not yet arranged to check up on folks. I'm assuming this means it can also be "Pretend Your Last Name Begins with a Q Even if it Begins with an X" month.

Reminder: It is absolutely NOT national "Sneak Strong Coffee for Free in the Superbookstore Cafe" month, and as per usual, shoplifters will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Ah, humanity, and the way of all fiction. . .

PPS--There are so many new authors these days that my dream of being snug against and sold because I'm mistaken for Kundera is nowhere near 2011's reality. Not only is my title most likely not in your store, but at any store with a decent selection of K and then Us, there are now a half dozen fine books standing between us. I'm sure this is not quite as troubling to Milan. . .

Father's Day

2011-06-20T06:07:00.001-04:00

Thirty minutes before the closing bell, I did manage to get a memory of Dad up on the wall over at When Falls the Coliseum.

Happy Father's Day, to you and your father!

blurbs added, sales stalled

2011-06-19T16:32:00.001-04:00

More blurbs were added to the amazon link for Fight for Your Long Day, but once more, after the great Chronicle of Higher Ed rush of early June, 2011, sales seem to have stalled. So, yes, please don't rush out to buy a second copy (or a fifth, Mom), but if you're currently sans Duffler and looking to make this Daddy happy, don't be afraid to Indy-up or point and click in some other soft Cyrus place (in fact, there's free shipping direct from the Atticus Books online store).

''[A]n expose of academia and the labor that sustains it, the kind of novel one learns from and rallies behind. Eyebrow-raising and wry, Kudera's take on the ivory tower certainly makes it look less pearly white.'' -- ForeWord Reviews

''Cyrus Duffleman and Fight for Your Long Day cast light on [the] situation in which many contingent faculty members find themselves ... I hope the novel is popular enough to make a big change; it has already changed me.'' -- Isaac Sweeney, Academe

''[I]t is not unfair to call Fight For Your Long Day a protest novel, in much the same category of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. And like Sinclair's book, it sounds a note of genuine disgust at economic injustices ... Kudera is an extremely talented and driven novelist. The authenticity of the experience he writes about burns through on each page. The story of Duffleman and his many similarly suffering peers in the real academic world is a plight long overlooked finally getting its deserved attention.'' ---- The Southeast Review

Product Description

2011 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Award - Gold for Best Regional Fiction (Mid-Atlantic)

Interview with ForeWord Reviews

2011-06-09T08:21:00.001-04:00

This link leads to the full text of an interview with ForeWord Reviews:

http://atticusbooksonline.com/one-of-a-kind-a-foreword-interview-with-alex-kudera/

You can see in this first response, I "out" myself as a Little House on the Prairie man:

ForeWord Reviews: When did you start reading, and what did you like to read as a child?

Alex Kudera: I believe my first attempt at reading a novel was around age seven when I read Little House on the Prairie. I can’t tell you why I skipped Little House in the Big Woods. By seven, I was conscious of the fact that I was reading late relative to a number of kids I knew. My sister, 20 months older, was already an avid reader, and my closest friend, just three months older than me, had read to my sister’s class when we were in four-year-old nursery school. It took me a month to get through the first chapter of the book, but slowly, I improved and learned to enjoy sustained reading.

By the way, I also required speech therapy as a child. I believe that this was around first or second grade, and I remember I had to walk through my older sister’s “academically talented” classroom to get to the therapy room. I just want to note that both reading and speaking did not come easily to me, and so perhaps, there could be some inspiration found here for other aspiring novelists who never experienced writing or related skills as a gift or something to be taken for granted.

But back to my favorites, after Little House, I went on to read many different books, but I remember enjoying Matt Christopher’s sports fiction, The Hardy Boys, and all different kinds of sports biographies for kids. Judy Blume, Encyclopedia Brown, Lloyd Alexander, C.S. Lewis, and many others came later, and then by high school, I was reading classics commonly assigned.

Chronicle of Higher Education

2011-06-06T11:37:00.001-04:00

A few days after Isaac Sweeney was kind enough to interview me for one of his Chronicle blogs On Hiring (The Two-Year Track), Ms. Mentor wrote:

"But it took nearly 40 years before anyone wrote a novel told consistently from the perspective of an adjunct: Alex Kudera's Fight for Your Long Day (2010)."

Thank you for noting the originality of the idea and for including an adjunct's perspective in an article that would have to be heavily weighted with the voices of the tenured or those fortunate to earn their living from writing, not teaching.

(I did notice that the two of the 11 finalists I've read are both told from the perspective of tenured professors, but I like both books quite a bit. In fact, I often speak of The Human Stain as my favorite by Philip Roth, a writer I do not always endorse, and Don Delillo's White Noise is one I've taught many times.)

PS--As a side note, Steve Himmer, also of Atticus Books, posted this quotation from the Isaac Sweeney interview:

To me, the most significant American stories have almost always been stories of alienation; the alienation could be emotional, social, psychological, or economic and is typically a combination of these. The university is central to the information economy and employs millions of workers across the country and more throughout the world. The fantastic irony of the marginalized teacher caught in the middle of the educational economy is too much to ignore; it is a rather fantastic elephant in the room that the place of greatest alienation in the university could be right behind the classroom lectern, where a contract worker without health benefits is the only adult most freshmen will have significant communication with.

Thanks, Isaac, Steve, Ms. Mentor, and everyone else who has recently linked and shared these Chronicle notes.

Haiku on the Horizon

2011-06-03T10:33:00.000-04:00

I returned home from another tired Thursday.

She was happily munching on snack and bottled water in her car seat, so I stopped at the mailboxes to retrieve whatever still gets sent, and low and behold, there awaiting me was the most pleasant surprise, the next issue of Contemporary Literary Horizon.

Busy, tired, fountains, playground, doggy, tired, boats, water boiled or bottled until further notice, and then late at night, I dove into Don Riggs's essay on haiku. It comes with plenty of fun samples and the inside dope that he demands 250 of those 5/7/5 [redacted]ers, 25 per week, when teaching a 10-week creative-writing class. I can hear Don's voice in my head, where with some irony, he is introducing the students to the possibility of writing all 250 the night before the quarter's homework is due.

Thank you, Dr. Daniel Peaceman, for another wonderful issue of your transcontinental, trilingual project.

Thank you, Don for adding a touch of Nicole Kline's haiku, and allowing my nostalgia for past schools and itinerant appointments to blend in with the mix.

Philadelphia, when you're looking for your Poet-in-Residence, and if you're bold enough to consider someone on the margins of the short list--with apologies to all the other less recognized Philly poets, and I'll blog you all up soon--be sure to stop by any class taught by Don Riggs, and you'll see we are dealing not just with a poet but with a scholar who speaks a foreign language and would have a wonderful voice for leading us all further into poetry.

Or, if you prefer, just try the lesson Don mentions in the essay, the one about sitting for a half hour and writing haiku about anything you see. And yes, you're encouraged to choose the same subject twice.

I might just try that
right now. If you don't mind this
rather weak haiku.

Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century

2011-05-22T23:39:00.001-04:00

I've been reading Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March and have stumbled upon another way to assign myself a D

In this case, it concerns the Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century edition I have, a gold and tannish six by nine with quality paper for pages--you've probably seen these around

Anyway, in the beginning they list the twenty books in the series, and as it turns out, I've read thirteen of them--so that's good for a 65, and you can see where this is headed

Well, which ones you ask? The ones by Delillo, Kafka, Pynchon, Kerouac, Golding, Conrad, Morrison, Proust, Steinbeck, Joyce, Marquez, Ford (as in Ford Maddox), and Cather

And who have I failed to read a particular novel of? Wharton, Bellow (as said, am reading, and perhaps ironic that aside from Delillo or possibly Kafka, I've read more of his work than any other writer on the list), Coetzee, Greene (as in Graham), Rushdie, and Lawrence

If you think "Big Book," you can guess the exact title pretty easily for most of these although the Joyce selection is Portrait of the Artist, not what you were thinking, and, yes, this works in my favor

Overall though, to me, this list seems decidedly more "central to the canon" than some of the other lists I've seen floating around the web, and for the most part, the book chosen is absolutely the right one for each author

Or so says this humble D student, relieved to have passed a literature test

PS--My periods have led several other poignant pieces of punctuation on a work stoppage, and I can't have this held against me!

Arghh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (says the man reduced to the exclamation point)

PPS--I feel a need to confess that I was assigned William Golding's Lord of the Flies three times from grades 8 to 12, got it as a birthday present, and also had it assigned once in college and am almost sure I've read that [redacted] five times! Or, one less than the total number of Bellow's novels I've read (but to an extent, I cheated by dallying about the shorter ones here)

PPPS--Palmetto bug spotted--a huge [redacted]--no doubt from Kafka, his way of reminding me he never would have been a blogger! Or at least not one who overused his exclamation points!!!

PPPPS--[redacted] you, Kafka! At least I've read a title by all but three on the list (Greene, Coetzee, and Kesey)--possibly that means I'm counting a short story by D H Lawrence, yes, okay, I see what you mean, but I wanted to point out that I've read Alan Paton's Too Late the Phalarope, and if I expire tonight I wouldn't mind that this would be the last novel I ever mentioned

PPPPPS--Please God, don't turn me off now, when I was just getting warmed up! Pretty please!!!

PPPPPPS--Oy I really feel I've jinxed myself now

IPPY Gold Medal for Fight for Your Long Day

2011-05-21T08:29:00.001-04:00

Breaking new--Alex Kudera tells Times reporter, via blog, that he is literary god lost in the internet with five hundred million howling, scribbling mortals! And, yes, at times, his fingers hurt an awful lot and he's really bad at that
mind-over-matter stuff

And although he did fill up his tank at a lusty three five-niner per gallon yesterday, he is certain the world did not end today, and he eagerly awaits some edgy YA content from a 2012 Presidential candidate on these and other concerns!

Well, if anyone has better ideas, please post, and in the meanwhile, enjoy the lack of periods on this netbook

http://atticusbooksonline.com/fight-for-your-ippy-gold/

Thanks for listening!

friday the thirteenth

2011-05-13T15:11:00.000-04:00

I was born on a Friday the 13th.

The resident who delivered me was born on a Friday the 13th.

My father was born on a Friday the 13th.

In my family, we had math, so there was emphasis on the fact that his half birthday was always my whole birthday. And vice versa.

I'm posting now, at 3:11 p.m. EST.

have a good weekend.

Don Riggs for Philly Poet Laureate!

2011-05-11T12:00:00.001-04:00

Although Don has served with somewhat dubious distinction as the poet in residence of the United States of Kudera (yes, the blog you are reading, currently operating incognito as Big Lao Gu), at the risk of having him accused of double dipping, two-timing, or worse, I do want to nominate him for that larger office, Poet Laureate of Philadelphia.

As respected and talented poet (and mentioned in Heller's Inky column linked to above), Daisy Fried says, "Don would make a great Poet Laureate. He is also a topnotch catsitter." If I'm not mistaken, Daisy delivers those two sentences in iambic pentameter or almost so. And yes, I could be mistaken.

Well, the father topic has been in and about these parts lately, so in closing, here's a Dad sonnet from Don:

Don’t Ask

Unlike John Brooks Wheelwright, I do not ask

my eighteen-years dead Dad to undecease.

The specific way he puts it is come

home, but my father has gone home: ashes

in the base of the crematory furnace.

They offered to let us come pick the urn

up, who knows how long after he’d burned,

but I declined. Of what use that shovel

of gray particulate matter, mantel

adornment when I don’t have a fireplace?

And what about the ashes would be him?

I have what he imposed on me: the task

of being the professor he’d not been.

I’ve grown this beard to hide his lack of chin.

shivani on mcnally

2011-05-11T11:32:00.001-04:00

I'm almost finished John McNally's After the Workshop, and am loving it to the point, where I did what every fan does--namely google the guy and see what shows up. One of the first entries I found was a McNally interview in The Huffington Post from our old friend Anis Shivani (he of Boulevard MFA-trashing fame). Read more here.

(Note: The two cents above came to me seven to ten days ago, but I'm just now catching up, linking, sharing, and ensuring that. . . well, I don't know exactly what I'm ensuring, but I did finish the novel and would recommend.)

pelicans rearrange

2011-04-29T15:40:00.001-04:00

I got some good feedback on the unpublished, "My Old Man," and that got me back into the general area of "remembering Dad"--something I'm sure that many of us are prone to engage in--and so, I ordered a new copy of Joe Kudera's two minutes of VHS fame. I should say I purchased a "like new" copy, for under five dollars total, which when it came, did play in my old VCR just fine.

So the poet Joseph Robert Kudera is depicted as a very calm and happy person, and although the poetry is in no danger of ever finding itself confined within the walls of an anthology or textbook edition, his words sound somewhat spiritual, somewhat philosophical, and well, just encouraging if you are trying to find a way to flee your own office environment or find your peace by the shore. You can hear him briefly in the beginning and briefly at the end, and then also, for a couple minutes, just after the St. Augustine segment.

It looks like dozens of small libraries around the country have the VHS tape available for lending, and I just stumbled upon Tower's offer of a brand new copy at $18.98. In these hard times, I'd advise against purchasing new unless you recognize that the wisdom of Jay Roberts (or the aged beauty of A1A's coastal region?) is worth that much.

Yiyi has enjoyed watching "Grandpa" although as soon as the first man in the program appeared, she smiled and said, "It's Grandpa!" But I've since informed her that not every filmed male Floridian in the 60 minute PBS show would be her grandfather.

She particularly likes the pelicans that are filmed as Joe reads his poems off the screen and then walks with Maria Conchita Alonso onto the deck.

Please pardon me while I frag: the green and brown shoes from our meeting in England, 1989; blue sweater; some blonde and white hair fighting it out for last follicle standing; a laid off, downsized, or otherwise unemployed guy who looks rested and at peace, at least for the two-minute segment.

It's almost amazing how affordable studio apartments by the ocean were in 1996--not many places, perhaps, but Joseph still found one for under $500 in northern Florida. And then he found a job at the Gate Station where the public-television people found him.

submitting to mixed media

2011-04-22T13:55:00.000-04:00

Here's a nifty new location for all of your mixed-media needs as well as an invitation to submit your own work:

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/notes/matt-mullins/call-for-submissions-of-electronic-literature/2011294479678

Note: to the best of my knowledge, i do not mix media when i write, and i certainly don't film it or call my films "writing" or film myself writing, and i only daydream about the movies a little bit during the course of my normal daydreams during fits of writing; furthermore, i do not necessarily condone the people or the work associated with this whole "mixed media" business, but that should not be understood to mean that i fail to castigate them either.

But as the "blind guy" in Carver's "Cathedral" put it, "When I drink whiskey . . . "

2nd note: And don't expect anything that shows up at Atticus Review to possess even half the genius of Fight for Your Long Day!

Hah!

Whoa!

Ouch!

I've been hit. I'm down.

(No, it's not too bad. It'll be okay. I'll be alright, folks.)

Have a good friday and an even better saturday, but please take it easy on the you-know-what on sunday.

peace.

and july in philly

2011-04-16T21:34:00.014-04:00

I'll be back in Philly for the steamiest month of them all and ready and willing to rock, read, or collapse at any venue in your jurisdiction. The Chestnut Hill Book Festival and Faber Books in 30th Street Station are stuck with me on July 9 and 8, but other dates around then are open if you need me. The Fees, Monsieur Finder and his lovely wife Madam Appearance have in fact strayed from my social circle, so I'm sure it won't be difficult for you and I to agree on a lovely moment together should such an opportunity present itself.

Here's the fully updated schedule for May through July:

April 30, Saturday, 1 to 3 p.m. (signing only), Books-A-Million, Anderson Shopping Mall, Anderson, SC

May 6, Friday, 7 p.m., City Lights Bookstore, Sylva, NC

May 7, Saturday, 3 p.m., Blue Ridge Books, Waynesville, NC

May 14, Saturday, 1 to 3 p.m. (signing only), Fiction Addiction, Greenville, SC

July 6, Wednesday, 6 p.m., Lucien E. Blackwell Regional Library, 52nd and Sansom, Phila., PA

July 8, Friday, 4 to 6 p.m. (signing only), Faber Books, 30th Street Station

(Faber has sold 29 copies of Fight for Your Long Day, emphatically crushing the competition and supporting John McNally's point that books are often best sold in locales where they take place. Alas, I can only dream that one day they'll have a book-trading annex in the men's room on the opposite side of the station.)

Chesnut Hill Book Festival
July 9, Saturday, 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., The Stagecrafters, 8130 Germantown Avenue

All of these, of course, are free and open to the public.

Thanks so much if one of them finds its way into your schedule.

spoken words

2011-04-12T15:16:00.002-04:00

This is the first audio book review of Fight for Your Long Day, courtesy of Author Exposure; the reviewer used CinchCast to deliver the spoken goods. Meanwhile, the first European reviewer, with my encouragement, posted on amazon.fr and amazon.de and responded quite favorably.

Last night, the novel got trashed on American amazon by someone who reduced the whole effort to "Bush bashing"; I found this "review" particularly questionable because there is so much satire in the novel of people and ideas that one would associate with opposing our last Bush and his views and actions (such as unions, academics, "guilty liberals," urban mayors, universities, therapists, Afrocentrists, etc.). An irony here is that at least a couple favorable reviews suggested there should have been more directed and consistent "Bush bashing," which I suppose, is just another reason it's all hopeless.

But right after finding that negative review, no doubt lurking late at night to make me feel the full misery of an exhausted sleeplessness, I then chanced upon John McNally's "advice from an unrepentant novelist" on how to treat negative reviews on amazon. Perfect timing, John; thanks! In a nutshell, he advises not to reply to reviews at all, but to encourage more friends who enjoyed the book to post positive reviews so that casual amazon browsers will see many more positive than negative reviews. His idea seems based upon the good sense that, alas, many of us, even when we are looking for something that will take some time to read, will quickly move on if we don't like the very first thing we see.

OK, following McNally's advice, friends (and why not throw in "and fellow countrymen"), if you're reading, and I haven't recently bugged you about some sales shit you could do to support my novel, not yours, please do take a moment to give Fight for Your Long Day that extra star on amazon. Or goodreads. Or shelfari. Or that groovy library thing you do. Or.

Good. Accomplished, John. Thanks for the tip. Me enjoying your self-help for novelists, as impossible as you know that sounds, and in particular the section where I read that you were at one time an adjunct even more unfavorably employed and poorly paid than Cyrus Duffleman. Well, "enjoy" isn't the right word. And I didn't enjoy the part where you tell us that despite the largely rotten deal you've gotten from life from undergrad to age 35, you still have six published books. You're supposed to be encouraging us, not making us feel like lazy incompentents who have wasted too much of our time on public-speaking and freshman-comp course overloads!

But back to spoken news, word on the street is that an audio book of Fight for Your Long Day is at least agreed to in principle by all who might agree to such.

So I guess that's it. We won't make you read ever again.

southern leg

2011-04-11T15:20:00.002-04:00

The Southern leg of the Fight for Your Long Day tour kicks off in sunny Anderson, South Carolina at the most fashionable Books-A-Million in the Anderson Shopping Center. On Saturday, April 30 I'll sign copies there from 1 to 3 p.m. and then sprint to the discount sneaker store to sign autographed pairs of aged Jordans and preowned Answers, all in support of my tired, old man sneaker charity, a specialty program designed to support fallen arches and sore ankles from sea to shining sea. Get your bucket of saltwater ready!

After Anderson, we're taking the show a bit further up the road to scenic southwestern North Carolina, where our version of the home-and-home series means readings Friday May 6 at 7 p.m. at City Lights in the beautiful downtown of Sylva, North Carolina and then on Saturday a trip up the winding highway to a May 7 3 p.m. reading at Blue Ridge Books in Waynesville, North Carolina. These two Indy stores both have a spectacular selection, particularly relative to their square footage, and the Blue Ridge even has a full service coffee shop where you can get caffeinated, sandwiched up, and ready to rock and be read to all afternoon.

But that's not all!

(I imagine some of you are now expecting a stainless-steel fridge offer; alas, it is not to be.)

The following weekend, Fiction Addiction in Greenville, South Carolina plays host to Cyrus Duffleman with a Saturday, May 14 signing event from 1 to 3 p.m. Word on the street is that the Duffler plans to shake it old school and the authorities are closely monitoring the scene!

To recap:

April 30, Saturday, 1 to 3 p.m. (signing only), Books-A-Million, Anderson Shopping Mall, Anderson, SC

May 6, Friday, 7 p.m., City Lights Bookstore, Sylva, NC

May 7, Saturday, 3 p.m., Blue Ridge Books, Waynesville, NC

May 14, Saturday, 1 to 3 p.m. (signing only), Fiction Addiction, Greenville, SC

But for now, back to April 11.

fast food fiction

2011-04-02T17:29:00.001-04:00

It was good to see the immortal Kentucky Fried Chicken making an appearance by Dave Newman's "She Throws Herself Forward to Stop the Fall," published on the Atticus Books website. This was on the same week that I made my at least annual pilgrimmage through Ha Jin's "After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town," my favorite fast food tale of all. It's a story I've taught for at least the past ten years.

I wouldn't want to minimize the brilliance of either Mr. Soul (as in De La) or Mr. Jin (as in Ha) when I fondly also recall my favorite fast food rap, De La Soul's "Bitties in the BK Lounge" and its deconstructive approach to gender and counter service. But of course, all of us in on the true know of all knows realize that a paltry hymn about whoppers and fries could never compare to Jin's ample paragraphs about fleshy fried white and dark meat and the transcontinental, globalized angst such grease could generate.

Years ago, inspired by my days of bussing of dishes, I wrote a meager tale called, "Waiters of the World Unite," but alas, it's either trapped in the lowest, least favorable spot in my storage space or else, sadly, it is gone for good.

Well, the world will go on, and that wasn't a true tale of fast food anyway. In fact, I was working at a middling but decidedly table-service restaurant.

Dinner?

idealism

2011-03-31T11:58:00.001-04:00

If you're looking for some long, lost idealism to add to your working week, here's a healthy dollop served up by Queensborough Community College Professor Charles Neuman. Because he teaches physics and astronomy it is indeed tempting to suggest that this young man has his head stuck in the clouds.

But it's good to know he can at least temper his positive vibrations with a little departmental conflict, or at least tension:

"I am starting to see that idealism is a threat. My colleagues’ simple expressions of idealism invoke disproportionate responses of vitriol. There’s something primal about this hatred. I posit that idealism represents youth, and those who feel they have lost it, or never had it, are so pained they can only respond with fury. It’s sad, really."

To continue Charles's thought, I've noticed that sometimes my collegues' simple expressions of vitriol invoke disproportionate responses of idealism. It's probably just all the headache and disagreement associated with any kind of faculty, and yet another reason to avoid extensive communication with teachers--they always have a minor quibble, ancillary thought, competing notion, neurotic twist, or other intriguing consideration that can make discourse among them positively exhausting. I've heard that lecturers can be the worst.

Educators of the World Disagree!

But may you stay forever young, Charles, Clark Hall, and teaching, that most noble and paradoxical of all the professions.

Charles and I shared an old building during our "frosh" year of college, and reading his words and being reminded of Clark Hall have successfully "youthened" my own working day.

And now, alas, it's back to grading.

rare books

2011-03-29T11:26:00.001-04:00

Over spring break in sunny Philadelphia, I did have opportunity to drive over the glorious Ben Franklin Bridge to scenic South Jersey for a tour of the school house where Between the Covers now stashes thousands and thousands of rare books along with a dozen plus employees, functional urinals in the Boys bathroom, and memories of the second grade.

Over lunch at Five Guys, a first for me and where I winced at the fact that burgers, fries, and cokes can run over $20 for two, I learned of a letter from Melville retailing for $35,000 as well as an original copy of Walker's Appeal that sold to the University of Virginia for close to three times that amount. The history behind David Walker's early nineteenth century publishing is amazing, something we were never taught in American history as best I remember it, and yet it was the Melville letter five inches from my face that kept my attention. In it, he is writing to his publisher later in life when commercial houses have become much more reluctant to publish his writing. And yes, this would be the writing after Moby Dick, "the good stuff," at least from the perspective of how Melville is taught today--Pierre to Benito Cereno to Billy Budd left for dead in a desk drawer.

Well, I suppose as e-books continue to gain market share and paper quality continues to decline and physical books and stores continue to disappear, books currently considered "rare" will become increasingly so by some definitions of the word.

Here's some history of how Between the Covers has evolved as a successful book business over the past twenty-five years. Enjoy.

yes, lawrence, i know i shoot myself in the foot. . .

2011-03-27T23:15:00.000-04:00

Yes, Lawrence, I wish I could book readings in all of the hip independent bookstores all over the country, and it does seem like the natural alliance could or should be between indy publishers and indy stores. And sure, why we're at it, I could or should also wish I were you, Mr. Ferlinghetti, and I guess the lone drawback here is that you're quite a bit older than me, and so perhaps destined to leave this life sooner. Of couse, one could easily twist that into a positive as well.

But my limited experience as a "published author," so far, has shown me that the Indy bookstores in cities don't have a lot of space for a small-press title like Fight for Your Long Day. The shops are small, and they have to stock a lot of mainstream, established stuff they know they can sell, and then they already have their allegiances in place and must help their loyal local author friends and customers, too. And of course, there are just too many millions of books to choose from, so I'm incredibly naive to think any store would put a big stack of my novel near the front door.

In one indy in Philly, I thought I was doing a favor by signing the single copy of my novel in the store, and then I thought I was having a great, engaging conversation with the clerk that would lead to an Ingram order of all Atticus titles in print, at least a single copy of each. But when I returned a few hours later, I was told that they would not be able to commit to such an order or to anything more for my Philly novel. I was disappointed, and even felt some regret that I had signed the copy they had (I know that sounds bad, but it's true). Of course, later in the visit, at another independent, the friendly store owner didn't want me to sign the single copy in case it had to be returned.

Meanwhile, one franchise in Philly that is part of a smaller chain has displayed and already sold 23 copies of Fight for Your Long Day, and in general, the chains are ordering multiple copies--from 5 to 36--and moving them. And they had space for me to sign and read and discuss, and, well, I felt welcome at Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, and Faber, and I'm very grateful for everything they did for me last week.

Also, how antichain could I possibly be when just after college I worked at a Borders as a seasonal temp. It was the only job I could get in a bad economy years ago, and I then even managed a seasonal remainders-only store a couple years after that. It was part of a smaller chain, National Book Warehouse I believe, and that $8.50 per hour manager's job existed temporarily due to recession (dollar books moved well that holiday season), and it's a sad week because the Borders I worked in is closing and a friend who stayed on there and helped sell books for 20 years could be out of work and of course, the focus there has been on reducing inventory so the store I worked in has never carried my book and never will. In fact, the store will become just another empty husk in another American downtown until another chain, with another kind of product, is crazy enough to try to operate at a profit despite the gigantic overhead, city taxes, etc.

Indy bookstores, and independent brick and mortar stores and restaurants in general, are wonderful, and I wish I could afford to patronize them regularly. Regardless, my saying or not saying this has not helped me gain much shelf space in these stores. I'd love for that to change.

Fight for Your Long Day, Lawrence Ferlinghetti!

a lost novel

2011-03-24T00:55:00.003-04:00

Yes, I'm reading the "lost novel" of Roberto Bolano, or at least the first quarter of it, as published and translated in The Paris Review, Number 196. Because I purchased this single copy in a bookstore along with the latest issue of Boulevard, I'm somehow reminded of Bolano's "Vagabond in France and Belgium" from Last Evenings On Earth, a story in part about searching for the only author listed in an old issue of a literary journal whose name B does not immediately recognize. It nags at him and leads to something of a quest but also the classic sad Bolano story. What is it about that man's writing that is so intoxicating?

In the issue of Boulevard, there is a scathing Anis Shivani piece abiout the MFA programs. He basically destroys them with ridiculous generalizations which are also at times entertaining and rather clever. Although I'm hardly an insider at AWP (I have been a member for the past few years, but I don't have an MFA, and I teach business writing and contemporary literature, not fiction writing), it seems worth noting that his main argument about MFA program writing as mediocre and "standardized" (he uses the term "house style") is an unoriginal one, and also that there are some writers who teach and learn in these programs who are absolutely amazing. Would Johns Gardner or Irving be better writers without advanced degrees in creative writing?

One of Shivani's main points is that the "guild" of creative writing programs prohibits extroverted political display in fiction although I'm not sure this is accurate. Or, rather, I suspect common teachings could include "showing" one's politics as opposed to "telling" of them. Another point he makes, seemingly to disparage writers earning their living from teaching, is that they have withdrawn from the marketplace. It seems worth noting that although some great writers were commericial successes at the height of their literay careers, many others were not (Melville, Kafka, Svevo, Nietzsche, and so on).

But I like some of the international writers Shivani wants to recognize as superior; Joseph O'Neill and Chinua Achebe are two he names, for example, and I suspect many professors of fiction writing might fess up to enjoying these two and many more. And yet in recognizing his preferences, Shivani feels a need to bash the programs in one fell swoop. He creates a binarism, a false one, and that's far too easy for any of us. Silly, really. And yet Shivani's invective is fun to read, and I suspect most of us who will read the essay in Boulevard are somehow attached to the programs. I've also read his attack on the "Kirby poet" in the South Carolina Review, and I must say he can draw you in and aggresively lead you to his conclusions.

Ecrasez l'infame, Shivani! I have a feeling that Anis would enjoy Fight for Your Long Day.

Virginia Festival of the Book

2011-03-20T12:30:00.002-04:00

The Virginia Festival of the Book's Annual Vendor Fair was held in the sun-drenched lobby of the Omni Hotel in historic downtown Charlottesville. I drove all morning, sat at the Atticus Books table for a couple hours, took a walk in search of carbohydrates and caffeine, and then drove on. In the car, I listened amost exclusively to FM pop stations, so the "boom boom boom" and other dance songs have now permanently scarred my brain and left me speechless.

In Europe, sales offers of Fight for Your Long Day expand almost exponentially (on amazon.fr and amazon.de, at least as the optimistic quintile of my imagination allows me to believe), but for my two-hour drive stoppage, no one in Charleslottesville took me up on my signed-book offer or anything else. A number of browsers were willing to take a look, but it seems Cyrus's life was not the must-have I told the guy down the street serving espresso it ought to be seen as.

The prominently published writer Jenny White, a professor of anthropology at Boston University, took a considerable peruse through the pages of the novel, but she didn't say a word about it. Perhaps she'll work the adjunct angle into her bestselling detective fiction about Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire. I just read the description of her Winter Thief, and it looks like the kind of book every educated, overworked person loves--well written, suspenseful, with intrigue, a chance to learn about a different culture or historical period (significantly more affordable than a direct flight to Constantinople), and not concerning a here and now that is just too "problematic" or painful to think about. While she was looking at the book, I read her name tag, knew that I knew that name, and twenty minutes later passed her stack of books near the front. I didn't get an autograph or anything else, and the person I thought could be Dorothy Allison turned out not to be.

The publisher of Jaimy Gordan's National Book Award winner, Lord of Misrule, was also present and stopped by the Atticus table after a few hours to say he hadn't sold a single copy of the small press novel that roared. Well, we could chalk this up to Charlottesville's monied snobbery and its unwillingness to look a West Virginia horse in the mouth although the larger truth is that it was just too much of an amazing sunny day to waste too much time indoors on browsing and buying books.

more reviews

2011-03-18T14:37:00.001-04:00

It was a good week for reviews of Fight for Your Long Day from people I don't know. I think this solid one from Author's Exposure makes some valid points about the (mostly) pros and cons. I understand the lack of "logic" he speaks of, and yet, possibly there is some literary misfiring, so to speak, at play in the ending that is.

And then, Aaron at goodreads gave it 3 stars but called it a 3.5 star book. I noticed that he's stingier with the stars than I am, and he even has some 2-star ratings for books seen as respectable to great by just about everyone (Richard Ford's The Sportswriter, for example, although admittedly that's no Independence Day).

And finally, I got the 1-star special from a "reader" who stops on page 75, calls the author "racist," "classist," and then proves doctoral credentials by using the word "problematic" and the phrase "socially structured privilege and oppression." Well, "I'm returning this," why yes, as a matter fact, I am about to enjoy some scrumptious, finger-licking fried chicken on my subway ride back to work. And truth be told, one star is on the mark here, as it was the fried chicken fumes and advertisements all over Seoul, South Korea, where I was writing the first draft, that no doubt led to this inclusion in a Philadelphia story. Anyone with eyes or nose or stomach can clearly see that in a perfectly polished final draft, the fried chicken would of course be chicken cheesesteaks and the kisses Cyrus then procures from the bottom of his satchel in fact would be frayed remnants of salty soft pretzel marooned at the bottom of the bag. Everyday, I know more and more why some "real novelists" never read customer reviews or return to their books that are already in print.

Well, if you're out there "I'm returning this," to be fair, I could reimburse you personally if the book has been such a burden. Alas, as you know or surmise, I can't offer you fair compensation for the contract labor you are about to embark upon, but I could send you up to $14.95. This would not be a problem although I'd prefer you give Fight for Your Long Day a few more hours of your precious time. It is a novel worth reflecting upon, or at least that's what the vast majority of reviewers seem to indicate. The Robert Watts review on amazon could be a good place to start.

And years from now, one star, when we are both safely ensconced among the forgotten millions, and with time on our hands, we can sit down and break biscuits and grumble about white meat, wings, legs, and thighs, and all else beyond the plate.

Peace.

And good luck.

And, well, fight for your long day!

Virginia Festival of the Book, Saturday afternoon

2011-03-17T11:09:00.000-04:00

Thanks to big, bad Dan Cafaro of Atticus Books, Cyrus Duffleman will be making a surprise, guest appearance at the Annual Book Fair at the Virginia Festival of the Book. Look for Cyrus in the Omni Hotel, 235 W. Main Street in Charlottesville, Virginia. If he stays on task, he'll be pounding doughnuts and moving product off the Atticus table into your satchel, book bag, brief case, or hands. If not, who knows where he'll find himself?

shelve your debut novel now, City Lights!

2011-03-15T19:02:00.000-04:00

Hey, if you want to help get some cool debut novels find safe harbor in San Francisco's famous City Lights Bookstore, follow this link http://www.citylights.com/bookstore/ and e-mail about a title or just write to this address:

City Lights Bookstore
Att. Book Buyer
261 Columbus Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94133

And guess what?

I have a list of novels for you to choose from:

Andy Breslin's Mother's Milk
Steve Himmer's The Bee Loud Glade
Nadia Kalman's The Cosmopolitans
Alex Kudera's Fight for Your Long Day (never heard of it)
Kate Ledger's Remedies

Mark SaFranko's Hating Olivia (could be there already)
Ben Tanzer's You Can Make Him Like You
Charles Dodd White's Lambs of Men
Joe Zeppetello's Daring to Eat a Peach
Tommy Zurhellen's Nazareth, North Dakota

OK. Except for Ben and Charles, these are all debut novels, and they are all from new novelist-publisher partnerships. I'm sure any help is appreciated. Tap me on the keyboard if I missed you, and I'll be sure to add you to the list (new novelists or indy book buyers).

Note: for Mark, several novels have already been published in Europe in English and French translation.

What an amazing blogger! What a weirdo.

Wah (translated as "wow" in both Korean and exhausted English).

small press librarian

2011-03-14T18:16:00.001-04:00

I had one of those teaching days that begins with exhaustion, coffee, and thirty thesis paragraphs that could all improve, and then slowly winds its way through everything else--guilt, mozzarella, angst, various pains (most acute in the joints, brain, and lower back), active verbs (for chronological resume), dijon mustard (for, well, what else?), nuclear disaster, oatmeal raisin, more coffee, god's silence (you tell me), and staying late at work.

But then, as if rescued by the world of hope and possibility, Joel Thomas reviewed Fight for Your Long Day at Karen Lillis's Karen the Small Press Librarian blog.

Thank you!

But I'm not sure if I should tell him the "x-ray specs" double entendre was not intended. As best I remember.

Alas.

Betrayal URLs

2011-03-12T23:54:00.000-05:00

Here are the URLs to most links for my dollar burger, The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity:

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/40939 (great review here now)

Amazon (kindle): http://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-Times-Peace-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B004MDLSMK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1299991227&sr=1-1 (same review here)

Apple (i-etc): http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-betrayal-times-peace-prosperity/id421351533?mt=11

B&N (nook): http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Betrayal-of-Times-of-Peace-and-Prosperity/Alex-Kudera/e/2940011191442/?itm=2&USRI=alex+kudera

Diesel (epub): http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/item/SW00000040939/Kudera-Alex/The-Betrayal-of-Times-of-Peace-and-Prosperity/1.html

Sony: http://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/alex-kudera/the-betrayal-of-times-of-peace-and-prosperity/_/R-400000000000000346243

joshua spodek

2011-03-11T23:21:00.000-05:00

And I forgot to thank Joshua Spodek (and others, and you, too, for reading this), but when he includes me in a blog with his other writer friends who just happen to be Zadie Smith, well, frankly, I feel like I'm still more of a busboy, and we're back in the flat, a seven-floor walk up near Gare du Nord, working crap jobs, eating cereal, throwing the frisbee, and wondering what we will be.

the brother k

2011-03-11T22:49:00.001-05:00

The Sixers beat Boston, and then minutes later I learn that an Australian gentleman named Robert Tulip, a guy I don't know, gives The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity five stars on amazon and compares my writing to Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Well, no one could ever live up to that, but by strange coincidence, the protag had plenty of buds but was short on paper, so it was mass market pages of The Brothers Karamazov that fictional John and Jake were smoking in the expurgated scenes.

Mr. Tulip wrote:

Wow, what a superb ten thousand words. I'm not sure if it just because I am reading The Brothers Karamazov at the moment, but this short story reminds me so much of Dostoyevksy in its biting social satire, its acute political insight, its ability to paint pictures in words, and its foreboding of a society that has lost its way and is on a trajectory to catastrophe. The drugs are the anaesthetic for the emotional pain of a fascistic existence in denial, enabling a crazy-brave creative prophetic vision. The description of undergraduate life is realistic if exaggerrated [sic] in a hallucinatory direction for effect, and casts a lens upon wider social trends.

Thank you, Robert. And Isaac Sweeney. And Christina at The Strand. And Kate Ledger, author of Remedies. And new acquaintance Don Ray Pollock, from Knockemstiff, Ohio. And Dan Cafaro especially. All of you brought me some good book vibrations this week and made me feel like the impossible was possible if not right around the bend.

PS--Betrayal is available for free through March 12 at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/40939

exley is still on

2011-03-10T20:36:00.002-05:00

So imagine how annoyed Fred Exley might be if he learned that writers in 2011 don't spend Sunday mornings reading multiple thick print newspapers--sports and book reviews on top--while properly administering the right dosage of foamy pale ale in anticipation of an afternoon spent with pro football on television. Alas, times have changed. The author as honest, smart, drunken sports enthusiast has seen some reversals. This much is true.

But we're still talking about him, at least upon occasion. Dan Cafaro of Atticus Books was kind enough to primp and polish my latest Exley interview here. In it, we meet Atticus author Joe Zeppetello, who in fact grew up near Exley's hometown of Watertown, New York. Although Daring to Eat a Peach is his first published novel, Joe is a seasoned literary veteran, so our exchange nicely complements the first Exley interview with Eleanor Henderson.

And, soon, folks, John Warner, will share his take on A Fan's Notes, a book he has called one that he wished he had written. Warner's The Funny Man sounds like a promising debut and will be available from Soho this September. And John has also braved the waters of courtside analysis, but in the killing fields of literary competition, perhaps not unlike Dennis Miller's year or two on Monday Night Football although Dennis will have to beg for it if he wants in on the Exley action chez Kudera. Well, for now, Warner's interview is mostly written, and all B.L.G. has to do is get off his lazy rump and post.

So, if you are a published novelist who is on the down low, or the up high, or in any other way all about the Exley, please do get in touch. I'll e-mail you a few cyber shots of the good stuff, and we'll compare our notes from northern country.

back in beige

2011-03-09T21:36:00.001-05:00

i'm back in beige and ready to take on the world in my new sartorial display! only vague, neurotic nagging doubts about looking up "sartorial" before i reveal this post. okay. don't try this at home, kids, but let's just [redacted] dictionary.com and "publish post." at some other time, i'll compose a short list of words i never doubt. a very short list.

and alas, i cheated, and googled, and came upon this blog for clothing enthusiasts: http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/

i don't feel like The Only Southern Kudera, but I kind of like the O.S.K. We'll see how long this lasts.

Not very long: I edited out O.S.K. in favor of B.L.G. why, of course, for Big Lao Gu (kind of southern, kind of chinese, and what my daughter has been yelling when i get to the other apartment).

cyrus is stranded

2011-03-08T16:20:00.000-05:00

I've been told I have low standards, but not by my students, not to my face anyway, and it's also been implied that my expectations are too high, in the worse kind of nonhallucinogenic way.

So, low or high, goofy or no, I should say I am positively peachy over the fact, that Cyrus Duffleman has infiltrated the greatest used bookstore of all (with apologies to all the other greatest used bookstores), and he rests snug on shelf, in good condition, at a rather nimble price point of $7.45.

What will be this copy's fate? Will it survive and persist at The Strand until the final disaster for all print media, whereupon the amazing store closes down and the e-world takes over?

Well, I had the good fortune to visit The Strand this past winter, a fine cold, slushy day with dirty piles of ice at every intersection and all manner of Manhattannite traipsing about. What I saw were hundreds of browsers and buyers looking for new and used and used used and other there. Truth be told, the store seemed like a dynamic site for literate commerce.

Alas, I didn't fill out an application, no courage, and I couldn't tell you if Duffy did although the website has no qualms about noting his financial pain.

And so we trudge on.

man with a manuscript

2011-03-07T22:53:00.000-05:00

i did want to add, as a PS of sorts from my previous "content that doesn't suck" hyperlink, that to the best of my knowledge, the esteemed ghost of elberry, whose name i could provide if called upon although i hardly know the chap (as in, we've never met), is not only a transient laborer in the teaching field of Business English, but also a man with an unpublished novel.

So, hey, check out his blog, publishers, and see if this isn't the kind of intellectual morbidity that you've secretly craved despite your Harry-Potter wannabeism and power-of-positive-thinking front and back lists.

Here's an excerpt to get you started:

"i contemplate the prospect of another Kiel-like ordeal with weary resignation. If i go to X-burg i predict i will fall foul of the Director of Studies, a wizened power woman on speed, a type i have met many a time in office work – they instinctively loathe me. i will probably be fired or just given the worst jobs, teaching Business English to 19-year-old engineering apprentices, etc. i’m not sure i can take any more of this. i feel dangerously close to snapping in half; though, then again, it is surprising how much one can take, when one has no other choice. And it is certainly a mistake to suppose life is essentially enjoyable, or that it is arranged for one’s own convenience.

"i should welcome unemployment and destitution and debt, since Kiel was a valuable time, spiritually speaking – forced back on yourself, rejected by the world, you must consider matters without niceties. But in truth i just want a half-way decent job and a flat i don’t have to share with a retarded hippy. However, lacking any worthwhile skills or qualifications (or money), i must make do with what i am given. In spite of everything i am still alive, aged 35, and that seems so improbable as to suggest things might work out, improbably."

and follow this for more from the aske man.

content

2011-03-05T06:34:00.000-05:00

I graded a lot of papers of this week. Fretted. About most of it. Yeah. And sorry I haven't written in a while, but I just don't know what to say to you anymore. And I'm censoring myself at every turn. Of course, it wasn't really worth hearing about anyway.

Alas, I'd tell you I've taken a corporate turn, but in fact, this post has no sponsorship whatsoever.

But thank you for allowing this content into your life. Have a nice day.

PS--On second thought, I thought I'd share someone else's content. Content that doesn't suck. In a best case scenario, it might get Elberry a record deal.

spring and summer readings

2011-02-22T10:35:00.003-05:00

Here's a list of events, times and places, where I'll be reading from Fight for Your Long Day and signing copies available for sale:

March 1, Tuesday, 7 to 8 p.m., The Bengal Tiger, 101 Keith Street, Clemson, SC

March 19, Saturday, 2 to 4 p.m., Virginia Book Festival, Charlottesville, Virginia, courtesy of Atticus Books

Spring Break in Sunny Philadelphia!

March 21, Monday, 6 p.m., Barnes and Noble, Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, PA

March 23, Wednesday, noon, Barnes and Noble, University City (Penn Bookstore), Philadelphia, PA

March 25, Friday, 4 to 6 p.m. (signing only), Faber Books, 30th Street Station, Philadelphia, PA

April 30, Saturday, 1 to 3 p.m. (signing only), Books-A-Million, Anderson Shopping Mall, Anderson, SC

May 6, Friday, 7 p.m., City Lights Bookstore, Sylva, NC

May 7, Saturday, 3 p.m., Blue Ridge Books, Waynesville, NC

May 14, Saturday, 1 to 3 p.m. (signing only), Fiction Addiction, Greenville, SC

And for the July 4 to Bastille Day lull in your life:

July 9 and 10, details forthcoming, Chesnut Hill Book Festival, Philadelphia, PA

I'll revise or add to this as more events are confirmed or appear.

See you somewhere, some day. I hope.

2011-02-18T20:47:00.002-05:00

i feel the same way.

thanks, ben

2011-02-16T19:40:00.000-05:00

When Ben Tanzer changes your book's shelf life, he doesn't [redacted] around. Thanks, Ben, for the rich review and positive energy all around.

And the man is selling (at least) two of his own books this year, with orders already possible for this April release.

OK. In no particular order (so let's make it alphabetical), a list of my favorite novelists with whom I've crossed Ultimate paths:

Abeer Hoque
David Hollander
Kate Ledger
Ben Tanzer

Well, truth be told, I've only read slight sections from their books, but intend to improve upon that. Once in a while, I get a strange vision that it would be possible to jog and then run and then play Ultimate again. Hmmm. I ought to go get some ice cream and think this over.

long weekend

2011-02-14T21:25:00.001-05:00

Friday evening, Ron Rash burned bright at The Bengal Tiger's first reading in the spring series, and it went well enough that we will have at least three more readings (look for details soon), including my own on March 1 (a Tuesday, 7 p.m.). We then saw and heard Ron read again at City Lights in Sylva, NC the following Sunday, as in yesterday, a bright, beautiful day at that.

And so, I'm motivated and in the mood to read from Fight for Your Long Day. In front of an audience, no less. I'm fairly certain I'll have details soon for my spring reading plans. If you want to book me for an event (in a way that doesn't involve electrocution by wet kindle or slamming an unabridged dictionary over my head), please do not hesitate to e-mail, f-book, or t-weet although telepathy remains my e-best mode of communication of course. It looks like I'll be in the mid-Atlantic from March 20 to 27 and the Clemson region (within a couple hours of Asheville, Atlanta, Charlotte, etc.) for the rest of Feb through April.

And now I'm here, too, squatting on Old Man Bezos's land.

Slog Through Your Tuesday!

sample betrayal

2011-02-09T22:38:00.000-05:00

A nice chunk of The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity is now available for your viewing pleasure:

http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/40939/1/the-betrayal-of-times-of-peace-and-prosperity

It just might take you where you want to go.

Gone Dog Press

2011-02-04T21:12:00.000-05:00

Gone Dog Press, a publisher of "awesome e-books," delivers The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity on Superbowl Sunday. This longish story, or shortish novella, has something for everyone--from fatty meat frying in the wok to inadvertent touches that can end a life. It's of a genre that could be termed "college commencement angst" although I'm having trouble thinking of a story or novel that would compare.

The book will be available at http://www.amazon.com/ as well as http://www.smashwords.com/, and eventually it should be compatible with all kinds of electronic book reading devices. At smashwords, you'll be able to read it right off the screen or download it as a printable pdf. Or so I'm told by the e-authorities from the land on book.

So you should be able to download a copy for a buck forty-nine or so. . . graduation angst at bargain-basement pricing!

Happy reading.

Peace.

Cyrus at the Inky

2011-02-01T12:09:00.000-05:00

Cyrus Duffleman breaks through doors and accesses the hometown newspapers--online and off:

http://www.philly.com/philly/business/20110130_PhillyDeals__Should_college_teaching_be_a_full-time_job_.html

Thank you, Joseph N. DiStefano, for your article(s) in the Business section of The Philadelphia Inquirer and http://www.philly.com/.

URL links for Fight for Your Long Day

2011-01-13T13:32:00.015-05:00

Duffleman Does Academe

2011-01-11T22:03:00.001-05:00

And so begins Isaac Sweeney, writing for Academe, the journal of the AAUP, in his review of Fight for Your Long Day:

"I laughed at parts of Fight for Your Long Day, a new novel by Alex Kudera. At other parts of the novel, I felt inspired. But most of all, Fight for Your Long Day made me sad. Part of my sadness came because Kudera writes elegantly and has created an insightful, tragic, sometimes comic protagonist (I dare not call him a hero) named Cyrus Duffleman, whom the narrator calls “Duffy.” He reminds me of Hamlet—a bit of an introverted whiner, but the kind you love to hear whine. I’m sad when Duffleman is sad. I’m even sadder when he has bits of hope, like when there’s the prospect of an affair with an attractive student, because I know it won’t work out for him. As with any other effective tragic character, there’s something satisfying in watching his tragedy unfold."

Thanks, Isaac.

Cyrus Duffleman is a fictional character. The real tragedies in America concern people like Isaac Sweeney--good teachers and hard workers who risk the worst consequences if they try to defend themselves.

Follow this link for the full review: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2011/JF/br/br3.htm

And check out Isaac's short fiction here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/35484

or here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/36908

Southeast Review

2011-01-10T23:07:00.000-05:00

So if I'm so "extremely talented and driven" why do I feel so fat and ineffectual most days? And, yeah, while we're here, prone to lethargy, paranoia, pessimism, angst, and, well, we'll do a whole blog on hypochondria another day, and add an exclusive interview with my daughter, who decided this evening that her first novel would be about her parents. Well, what she really decided was that she wanted to hear the same children's book nine times on a snow day. Thank you, Charles Dodd White, for your fine review of Fight for Your Long Day.

tanzer top tens

2011-01-06T12:49:00.000-05:00

When Ben Tanzer top tens it, he doesn't mess around:

http://bentanzer.blogspot.com/2010/12/tbwcyl-inc-2010-top-ten-lists-are.html

Moving on, here's a great list designed to pump you up to pay cash for hardcovers in 2011:

http://www.themillions.com/2011/01/most-anticipated-the-great-2011-book-preview.html

I'd bet even money I don't read any of them in 2011, but it still warms my heart to know that some lunatic from New York was insane enough to publish fiction at price points above the $20 feeds two at Chili's (http://www.chilis.com/EN/Pages/home.aspx).

two new reviews

2010-12-25T13:05:00.000-05:00

Here are two new reviews of Fight for Your Long Day. Both writers have experience teaching college-level classes, but they are about 1000 miles away from each other, three decades apart by age, and have led radically different lives thus far. (For example, one knows tenure whereas the other knows Philadelphia.) Here's a quote I found to be highly relevant:

"Indeed, this middling nature reflects Duffy’s life as a whole. He exists purely in the middle, unable to move upward, terrified of sliding down."

OK. Here: http://freedomfromthings.com/post/2458438021/book-review-fight-for-your-long-day-by-alex-kudera

and the more recent "Steve" review at goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8612461-fight-for-your-long-day

And yes, "Muriel" on goodreads is the author's mother, but please don't hold that against her.

philly bookstores, Christmas 2010

2010-12-25T10:53:00.002-05:00

Bauman's Rare Books has left Walnut Street but still operates out of New York City. Larry Robin's has used books and speaking events but no longer carries new titles. Book Trader finally chased Big Jar off of Second Street, and the latter now operates a smaller store at the corner of 4th and Bainbridge. The Liberty Place Borders Express has been closed for months now, and the bookstore in the basement of the Bourse is long gone, closed down before I left Philly if I'm not mistaken. Skip at Giovanni's Room described holiday traffic as "slow," but he's open and would welcome a visit.

On the brighter side, as in, if there are bookstores in Philadelphia, there are likely more readers, jobs, etc., the chains I went into were bustling. Both Barnes and Noble and Borders downtown seemed to be moving plenty of "product," as in books, gift cards, games, etc. Joseph A. Fox on Sansom was quite busy too on the Tuesday afternoon before Christmas. Likewise, the Borders in Wynnewood had a long line of patrons waiting to purchase as part of Christmas-Eve routine. (It was tempting to stand outside and hawk discount copies of Fight for Your Long Day, but I resisted such extremes.)

In University City, House of Our Own and the Pennsylvania Bookstore, along with their own friendly deathstar neighbor, the University of Pennsylvania Barnes and Noble, are all open and selling new books, textbooks, and more. House of Our Own made my week because they are the first Philadelphia store to order, stock, and display Fight for Your Long Day. It was good to see familiar smiles in both of the independent locations. (When I grew up in University City, the bookstore scene was up on 38th Street, centered between Walnut and Locust, and you could move quickly from Pennsylvania Book Center to Encore Books to an older, smaller Penn Bookstore. House of Our Own came later, and there were also occasional attempts to book further west, such as Lame Duck Books on 45th Street, on the same side between Locust and Chestnut where used-everything Second Mile thrives today.)

And best of all, where I least remembered it, two underground bookstores in the Gallery seemed to be going strong or at least be ongoing. A Books-A-Million, a chain I associate with the Southeastern region has replaced what was a Walden's and then a Borders Book Express in the Gallery's basement, about where the main, middle escalator descends to a section of kiosks, some plants, and a newstand. And if you walk east toward the 8th and Market Elevated Blue Line stop, you'll see an African American bookstore, Basic Black Books, that looks like a lot of fun--positively an exciting place to book!

I may come back to this post and correct some of the details on names and dates. Feel free to drop me a line for adds or corrections if you like. OK, feel free to return to your Christmas kindle. Peace.

European Horizons

2010-12-23T20:43:00.000-05:00

Don Riggs's review of Fight for Your Long Day can be read in Romanian and English at our favorite bi- to trilingual literary blogspot (and print journal).

At the end of his journey, perhaps Cyrus Duffleman will rest easy, sigh aloud, but in a pleasant way, acknowledge his great debt to not just Romania but all of Eastern Europe.

Dr. Daniel Daniel, you are floating in a most mysterious way--with the Flying Duffler!

Free Book, No Pay!

2010-12-18T16:33:00.001-05:00

Karen the S.P.L. is kind enough to host at her blog's spot a free-for-review contest for three titles from Dan Cafaro's Atticus Books. I'm guessing that if the two books just arrived/arriving are even half as good as Fight for Your Long Day, then this is one contest you can't afford to pass on!

Fight for Your Free Book!

cold kickin' it live with don riggs

2010-12-18T11:23:00.000-05:00

I'm headed North on Sunday, home to Philadelphia, and as scheduled, I'll be reading, discussing, and signing Fight for Your Long Day at Larry Robin's Moonstone Arts Center on December 22 at 7 p.m. Discounted books will be available for twelve dollars (cash only). Don Riggs will also be available, introducing the festivities, but I have no information on his price point at present.

American unemployment

2010-12-15T11:45:00.000-05:00

The New York Times has a somewhat accurate portrayal of the situation in this op-ed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/opinion/14tue1.html?hp

But then again, some of their statistics fail to give us a clear idea of the American economy or the desperation experiencd by millions of American workers. The article tells us that the pay of the median college-educated male is $72,000, but I bet you anything that does not include the millions of college-educated males in America who are no longer counted as working unless they are still counted as unemployed (actively looking for work within the last 6 or 9 months). But discouraged males, willing house husbands, college-educated men who have been "bought" off the rolls with disability, as well as our imprisoned, mentally ill, couched at Mom's, or drunk in older sibling's basement are not counted.

For women, this median is only $52,000, so yes, they most likely experience greater want than men (on average). But again, all the same factors are in play. Not counted? For example, married women with college degrees who might like to work but have become "discouraged workers" or stay-at-home Moms because no one beyond Starbucks and the local collections agency seem to be hiring. So they have accepted not being in the workforce although to call this a "choice" is deceiving.

Another group of workers who just recently rallied to raise the false medians would be Temple University's adjunct faculty, who by trying to protect themselves, lost their employment. Presumably, we'll have to wait 6 or 9 months until they are no longer counted in the employment statistics, but once they and their below-the-median salaries disappear (no, not in the Stalinist sense), we can all rest easy knowing that median American income is on the rise.

If the major American newspapers can not be counted on to give reliable and accurate pictures of American employment, is it any wonder that their employees are also increasingly fortifying the false medians of American employment statistics through layoffs and attrition?

the world made straight

2010-12-14T22:46:00.000-05:00

i'm reading my first ron rash, the world made straight. so far, i can see he is cursed with being able to make something difficult look easy. maybe polished fiction with great transitions is always like that?

this reminds me of ultimate teams with great throws and spacing on their cuts. all the spectator sees is one perfect 40 yard pass after another, with no sense of the endless practice that led to the live performance.

back to rash, he also knows a whole bunch of words--big ones, small ones, rural ones, etc.--that i've never used in my life. and some i've never seen.

free lunch

2010-12-12T02:42:00.000-05:00

In Greenville, South Carolina, we stumbled upon a free lunch at the grand opening of the new Carolina Ale House. There was so much tasty pub food we didn't have to pay for that I left almost certain something bad would happen later in the weekend. I'm not sure of why I believe in such balance, and hey, perhaps the bad thing has already happened?

After lunch, we found a free ounce of wine and French bread with olive oil in the kitchen store. The give-aways reminded me of the precarious economy, how it still seems like we're a couple months removed from revisiting a bottom or creating a new low. Still, it was impressive to see how one restaurant could instantly create 100 jobs or more, and the regional chain has plans to open up several more locations in the Carolinas, Florida, and Georgia. (To the best of my knowledge, Temple U. Freshman English isn't paying to bus their unemployed adjuncts to the next Carolina Ale House career fair.) Our server told us she had five children, and the general manager of the location introduced himself and said he has been on the payroll since August.

With all the worry about saving and the future and everything else, at home in the evening, it wasn't too difficult to decide that all the lunch leftovers would make for a fine dinner. Cyrus Duffleman would not be disappointed in me or in the hot wings we tasted.

Exley and the book resurgent!

2010-12-08T10:14:00.001-05:00

This morning, I read an e-mail about my lone interview on Exley's A Fan's Notes, and it made me feel like the book is alive. Not just A Fan's Notes but books in general. The kind interviewee, Eleanor Henderson, has the galleys for her own first novel, and millions around the world will give and receive novels and other books this holiday season.

How do I know this?

For one, it was what my father gave me in the late seventies, the winter my father couldn't afford more than the upper two feet of a Christmas tree (yes, for ten dollars, he asked the man to cut off the top of the tree), and so A Wrinkle in Time and another Madeleine L'Engle were my gift for that Christmas. I remember that these were mass market paperbacks with green trimming on the sides (back when the edges of the pages could still be colored).

I also know, or at least hope, because I worked in the old Philadelphia Borders Bookshop during the winter recession of '91-'92 and remember how mobbed the store was with people who decided books were the more affordable gift option. Of course, at the register, if paying full retail for multiple hardcovers, they could be in for a rude surprise.

Then, in the winter of '94-'95 with the economy still in the tank (but beginning to show signs of late-nineties life), I managed a seasonal remainder bookstore, and again, I saw business boom. In fact, our Bala Cynwyd Shopping Center location was the top seller in that rinky-dink chain. (If you click the last link, you'll see now it's not just the books for a dollar but the whole strip mall is for sale, part of the much heralded American mall collapse no doubt.) And now, I'm left wondering if only Philadelphians buy books during hard times or in fact this is a national or global trend.

Did I mention that Fight for Your Long Day could be the right complement to all that spirituality, self-help, and Heideggar already settled in your shopping cart?

And happy holidays.

my father the italian

2010-12-07T21:53:00.001-05:00

Mistaking Mark SaFranko for Italian reminded me of my childhood, where for a while there, I thought we were Italian on my father's side. I think this related to all the spaghetti, ravioli, Italian sausage, and meatballs with caesar dressing on the salad along with the many trips to Pagano's for pizza, which if I'm not mistaken was located across from where the R&S Strauss is at 48th and Chestnut. (I believe I could be off a block or two here.) I also remember a white and purple storefront. And then there may have been acquaintances thinking "Kudera" was Italian and perhaps I misunderstood these overheard conversations with my Dad. Or I never really thought we were Italian, or I wasn't even old enough to know this kind of thing could be considered, or I invented this thought years later, after I already knew we weren't Italian but liked this kind of story, or the way I could add it as an interesting section to the memoir (which in fact I would have to write and if written one day will include some sections from his diaries of memories of his father, which in fact, I encouraged him to write).

What are we?

With my father, when we were to head to South Philly, The Triangle Bar was where we would get our pasta. I believe this could have been connected to the affordability of the spirits. There was another place he'd take us to, one I associate with the Whitehorse (or Blackhorse?) Pike and spaghetti. But I'm wandering into weedy memories now.

OK. Mark SaFranko and Joseph Kudera. Two Jersey kids born about 10 years apart who dreamed of writing all their lives and got a lot of it down on paper or screen while raising kids, hell, money to pay the bills, and more. Catholic School? AA? Childhood poverty? I'm not exactly sure of how much there is in common here.

Enough.

delillo on bellow

2010-12-06T16:48:00.004-05:00

Their names share four letters, split between vowels and consonants, and now Delillo has won a PEN award in the more ashen man's name: http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5442/prmID/1865. For lifetime achievement defined by quantity of good to great novels, could there be a post-war American writer greater than these two? Don't give me Roth and don't tell me Bellow isn't only post-war.

Delillo I've read: Americana, End Zone, Great Jones Street, Ratner's Star, Players, The Names, White Noise, Libra, Mao II, Underworld, and Cosmopolis. (I think that's it.) I've also read Delillo's somewhat famous essay on 9/11 as well as a short story or two.

Bellow I've read: Seize the Day, Herzog, Mr. Sammler's Planet, The Dean's December, Ravelstein, and perhaps a short story or two. A short piece by Bellow I like is his introduction to Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, where, to me, he makes it clear that he does not necessarily see things the same way. I'm not sure that the university is still a place where people with even strongly opposing political views might support each other's work or at least respect its place in print. (Well, I guess these days everyone is too busy with their teaching overloads, publication schedules, and "specializations" to read each other's work. And that would more likely be online, yes, indeed.)

OK. In conclusion, I've read more Delillo than Bellow (and I'm willing to wager that you have too) although Bellow would seem to be a more significant influence in my own literary efforts, if either of these guys is any kind of influence at all. (Well, I guess you can't have an alienated male protagonist or antihero in an American novel without implicitly referencing these two.) I've tried to describe Fight for Your Long Day as a cross between novels by Saul Bellow and Dan Fante, but I'm not sure it would be understood that way, and I doubt many of my readers will have read much by those two anyway. (This does not imply I have "many readers" as of this blogging.) I'd probably be better off comparing it to movies. . . ah, humanity.

As an aside on Italian American novelists, I should note that for me, Don Delillo completely kicks Richard Russo's ass and is the undisputed lone heavyweight in the category although Dan and John Fante would be my sentimental favorites on this list and I'm pulling for Dan Fante's buddy Mark SaFranko (who was kind enough to let me know soon after this post that in fact he is not Italian; okay, we'll handle that another time but keep his name under the bright lights of USK) as well as two of the guys Dan Cafaro has signed up for publication at Atticus Books. Maybe we'll Jew-list another day. Oy vey.

(Mark's correction just reminded me of a thought I had on the way to the library. Saul Bellow was born in Quebec.)

kalder, lipsyte, pocket wockets, and misprints

2010-12-02T15:51:00.000-05:00

I finished Daniel Kalder's Strange Telescopes and heartily recommend; I intend to write an assessment of that and Lost Cosmonaut at some point. But for now, I jumped right back into Sam Lipsyte, so to speak, and am now fifty pages into The Subject Steve, his first published novel. I doubt Cyrus Duffleman would have time to indulge in Kalder's longer books, but he might enjoy his recent cynicism on the joys of social-media marketing for writers. And I doubt Sam Lipsyte would mind reading it at all (but this doesn't imply I found Lipsyte's e-mail on the Columbia U. MFA website and spammed him with Kalder's essay, my own malaise, or any other set of steak knives.)

Meanwhile, over Thanksgiving break, I picked up three Dr. Seuss books for the price of two at a Walden Books in Charleston, and although I mistakenly grabbed a misprinted copy of There's a Wocket in My Pocket, we are still enjoying it a great deal at home. The Foot Book is also of interesting although not as amazingly compelling as the Wocket book.

Well, say hello to the Zamp in your Lamp; I intend to get the Zower in the Shower on an exercise regimen soon.

ben tanzer's 99 Problems

2010-11-27T22:11:00.002-05:00

Ben Tanzer, writer-editor of This Blog Will Change Your Life (with its ally This Zine Will Change Your Life) is also a published novelist whose most recent published work is a series of essays on running and thinking about writing stories while running and worrying about the rest of it--health, kids, time, etc.--yeah, while running. But in fact, the book will leave you feeling positive about Ben's life and perhaps even your own. At least, that's how it left me. It's called 99 Problems: essays about running and writing. (Be sure to follow that last link to learn more about the "pay what you want" publishing system and find cool links to the author and publisher's thoughts on producing this book.)

As it turns out, I found Ben's blog through another writer we've both connected with very recently, but Ben and I played on the same team in an Ultimate tournament in 1993, and we know many of the same frisbee players from the New York/New England scene of the late eighties and early nineties (particularly from the Stuyvesant/Bronx Science roots of that extended tree). This includes the ultimate of Ultimate legends Ben Usadi who organized the team for that spring club regionals years ago.

Anyway, I read all of 99 Problems the night I received it. It's in e-book format but short enough to be read in one sitting. Ben's writing style is clear and engaging, and his "I" in these essays is likeable and you want to see him successfully complete the stories he is dreaming up while running--or at least break the eight minute mile and move closer to where he was as a younger runner. I'd say that's one cool juxtaposition contained within these essays, that although Ben might be losing something as a runner, you get a strong sense he is gaining as a writer.

For me, I think it helps that we have the frisbee connection in our past, and that we are both reasonably new to being published writers, and we both have young children and full-time jobs to enjoy and also find as obstacles to our writing and exercising time. Although I played Ultimate for twenty years (local, recreational mostly), I was never a habitual runner, or an obsessive one like Ben, but I should say that these essays will encourage any one of us--who is perhaps, shall we say, less athletically inclined than we once were--to get out there and do something. So I did a short stack of push-ups in two of the past three days, something I'm certain I wouldn't have done if I weren't still under the spell of these essays. (If I had to guess, I could pull a twelve-minute mile if you gave me seven days to train for it.)

Memo to self: take long walk tomorrow.

Ben's essays get at some good questions. A chief one is where will any of us find the time to get stuff done? Lives fill up with jobs, kids, and clutter, and we're left desperate for a free hour to ourselves. At the same time, it sounds like Ben is getting his money's worth in this life--full-time job, kids, publications, a relationship of 20+ years if I understood correctly from the essays. Whew.

Another strange connection I share with the author is one I learned of while reading the essays. His father died in 2000, and my Dad died in 2001, and because I'm pretty sure he is a year older than me, we were the same age when our Dads died. What more, they both died of cancer. Maybe that connection was cooler when I was doing the math in my head when I read about his dead dad in the essays. It seems a little morbid right now. . . ;-) If I had to bet on one of us outliving our father, I'd put my big cash on Ben although, again, his essays are good at reminding me of why I want to get back in a more reasonable form of middle-aged out-of-shapedness.

Well, have no fear if it is just a tad nippy in your region. Ben has some good writing on running in the cold. If I'm not mistaken, most of the runs described in the essays take place during the winter of 2009-10.

Run, Alex, run.

Run, reader, run!

The Dungeon Master

2010-11-21T16:15:00.000-05:00

Sam Lipsyte's "The Dungeon Master" is a pretty good one; like Steve Almond's "Donkey. . .," a mishmash of fathers and psychotherapy, but this one offers more paladins and less poker.

Contemporary Literary Horizon

2010-11-21T16:02:00.000-05:00

It'll only set you back a few euros if you want to read a review of Fight for Your Long Day in Romanian.

good stories

2010-11-19T13:36:00.001-05:00

I'm finding great stories everywhere I look, which currently happens to be the fall issue of Philadelphia Stories and the new edition of The Best American Short Stories (2010). From Philadelphia Stories, here is the full text of "The Sea Crest" by Jeff W. Bens. I'm just realizing that gambling is a theme in this one as well as my favorite so far from the Richard Russo edited 2010 Best of: "Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched" by Steve Almond. I just googled the latter and found a link to this cool short story blog (out of Philly no less). The Almond story is noted (and was presumably read) on October 25, 2010.

bug

2010-11-12T00:00:00.000-05:00

I survived mortal combat with a huge bug by the door. It ticked me off when it slithered under my book bag, and so it's fate was to fail to survive the evening. Papa K defends the hearth! And then feels remorse, mixed in with the usual anxiety and fatigue. All good bugs must come to an end, but where's Hemingway when you need him to "Ca va" the situation and move on to the next scene. Yeah, I could never do for insects what old Hem did for fish. Or old men. So be it.

exley

2010-11-10T16:37:00.000-05:00

My first installment of Exley discussion is available at http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2010/11/09/exley-clarke-and-eleanor-henderson/, and yes, you bet, Eleanor Henderson was kind enough to join in as a kind of guest host.

Is A Fan's Notes in your future?

Don Riggs: "What I Do"

2010-11-07T18:47:00.000-05:00

Don Riggs is back in action at the transnational and trilingual Contemporary Literary Horizon with a poem called "What I Do." If memory serves, it's his answer to all the folks who can't do anything at all but enjoy the age-old saying, "Those Who Can't Do, Teach." Although I must confess I've enjoyed my own ironic interpretive spins on that adage of late, it is also always bizarre and annoying that teachers do all kinds of things in hopes that their lessons might go well and that their students, might, well, um, for example, learn--and then with five words, get dismissed as people who don't do anything.

I suppose that it's all old hat. Anyway, good poem, good journal.