Tuesday, March 10, 2026

afraid of violence

"A few days later, back in New York, I got a call from Walter, an acquaintance in the black high-school movement in the city, who said that he had watched me during the demonstration and that I had 'just been running with the girl' and done nothing violent at all. I had seen him and a partner throw a garbage can through a bank window. He said he now knew I was a phony and couldn't be relied on in the coming revolutionary struggle.

"I was devastated . . . because his criticism was true. Since I was a little kid, I'd been (and still am) afraid of violence. I was always ashamed of not standing up to bullies, even when they directly challenged me. In my family, violence was for the goyim or the trombeniks (hoodlums). I knew no one who hit another person. I did not play football. I had never lost my fear of violence."

Tuesday, March 3, 2026

Mencken's Joyce

"[H.L. Mencken's] the Smart Set published two stories by James Joyce, 'A Little Cloud' and 'The Boarding-House,' in the May issue, the first time that any of any of Joyce's work had appeared in an American publication. (It would also be the last time he appeared in the Smart Set, since Mencken had no use for his later work, dismissing Ulysses as 'deliberately mystifying and mainly puerile. . . . I have never been able to get over a suspicion that Joyce concocted it as a kind of vengeful hoax.)"

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Short Stories by Alex Kudera

"Going to Hell," Russian trans. from Sergey Katukov, East West Literary Forum , Jan. 28, 2026 "A Separate Piece," Cityw...