"Twenty years ago in the hands of the law, he had wrestled with the cops. They had forced him into a straight jacket. He had had diarrhea in the police wagon as they rushed him to Bellevue. They were trying to cope, to do something with a poet. What did the New York police know about poets! They knew drunks and muggers, they knew rapists, they knew women in labor and hopheads, but they were at sea with poets. Then he had called me from a phone booth in the hospital. And I had answered from the hot grimy flaking dressing room a the Belasco. And he had yelled, 'This is life, Charlie, not literature!' . . . [W]hen Humboldt cried, 'Life!' . . . [h]e only meant realistic, naturalistic life. As if art hid the truth and only the sufferings of the mad revealed it."
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).
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