Alex Kudera’s award-winning novel, Fight for Your Long Day (Atticus Books), was drafted in a walk-in closet during a summer in Seoul, South Korea. Auggie’s Revenge (Beating Windward Press) is his second novel. His numerous short stories include “Frade Killed Ellen” (Dutch Kills Press), “Bombing from Above” (Heavy Feather Review), and “A Thanksgiving” (Eclectica Magazine).
"I feel that discussing story-writing in terms of plot, character, and theme is like trying to describe the expression of a face by saying where the eyes, nose, and mouth are."
~~ from "Writing Short Stories" by Flannery O'Connor
*as quoted in "The Infallible Continuum" by James P. Blaylock,
Poets & Writers, Nov/Dec 2020
Sagging Meniscus's Guillermo Stitch, author of Literature (2018), earned a favorable review in The New York Times for his summer 2020 release, Lake of Urine. In sadder news in experimental literary arts, Dalkey Archive's founder John O'Brien passed on to the next chapter.
"Tracey held the apple aloft. 'We know that it’s the nature of all objects to fall through space. I understand that. I accept it. But one day, in this universe of endless universes, I believe there’s going to be something that doesn’t fall. That doesn’t have to fall. I have to believe that.' She gripped her prop by its stem, and we all looked on, soundlessly, breathlessly, as she let it go. We half expected, half desired, half required with half the fibers in our bodies that the apple would float there once she released it. We watched like children, we idiots. It fell to the floor with a soft crunch as its flesh compacted under the force of its plummet."
"We are, in other words, enamored with The Man Without Talent as one of the premier examples of the "I-novel" (shishosetsu) in comics form, referring to a genre of putatively autobiographical fiction, popular in Japan since the early twentieth century, that typically dwells on the writer/protagonist's struggles with poverty and artistic creation and their less-than-admirable interactions with the opposite sex."
~~ from "Where is Yoshiharu Tsuge" by Ryan Holmberg,
an essay included in the English translation of
Poet Ben Mazer posted a curious sales item in his Delmore Schwartz social-media group. It's a complete run of The Partisan Review from December 1937 to December 1959, and many of the issues are in excellent condition. "The Partisan crowd" also received good mention in Joseph Epstein's recent writing in Commentary Magazine. The essay concerns his early days among the New York Intellectuals when, as a subscriber, he'd avidly read Commentary, The Partisan Review, and Encounter.
Auggie's Revenge is currently available at a strong discount as a new trade paperback from you-know-who, and both Auggie's Revenge and the Classroom Edition of Fight for Your Long Day remain available wherever books are sold by independent bookstores.
