Happy Thanksgiving

May your Thanksgiving be filled with dinner and peace.

Rabbit's last stop (sort of)

 

from Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

several solitaries of the highest genius

"'That's just it. There never was such a literary world,' I said. 'In the nineteenth century there were several solitaries of the highest genius—a Melville or a Poe had no literary life. It was the customhouse and the barroom for them. In Russia, Lenin and Stalin destroyed the literary world. Russia's situation now resembles ours—poets, in spite of everything against them, emerge from nowhere. Where did Whitman come from, and where did he get what he had? It was W. Whitman, an irrepressible individual, that had it and that did it.'"

~~ from Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow

Philip Roth is dead, but you and I are still alive.

Auggie's Revenge at American, British and Canadian Studies

An excerpt from and a book review of Auggie's Revenge appears in the June 2017 issue of the European academic journal American, British and Canadian Studies. The excerpt is behind a paywall but the full issue--Volume 28, Number 1 (June 2017)--is also available as an open-access publication. I'm very grateful for any support I receive in the form of book purchases or asking a public or university library to acquire a copy. Thank you!

Interview in American, British, Canadian Studies

American, British and Canadian Studies Journal, an open-access journal out of the University of Sibiu in Romania, published an interview with me on Fight for Your Long Day. Once you get to the site, click "Download Full Text PDF."

launched

Today was the official date of publication for Auggie's Revenge, so thanks so much if you celebrated by picking up a few copies at your favorite online e-tailer of books. Also, this afternoon I was reminded that Fight for Your Long Day would get consideration in a special issue focused on the academic novel for the American, British, and Canadian Studies Journal (the official journal of the Academic Anglophone Society of Romania, based at Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu, Romania).

Bellow short stack

Saul Bellow published 100 years ago this month: http://t.co/D1ufz2rzBh #Birth of the #Writer

— Alex Kudera (@kudera) June 4, 2015

3 favorite Saul Bellow characters or scenes 1) Ravelstein watching Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls 2) Sammler observing, famously & 1/2

— Alex Kudera (@kudera) June 4, 2015

3) Saul Bellow's depiction in Humboldt's Gift of Delmore Schwartz as "the first poet with power brakes"; fav prose, opening para. of Herzog.

— Alex Kudera (@kudera) June 4, 2015

Over Fifty Billion Served. . .

. . . but no longer in Moscow, at least not for now:

“We will be healthier,” Mr. Aksyonov told reporters in Simferopol, the Crimean capital, according to the Interfax news service. “This food does not suit. Look at people who regularly eat McDonald’s food. Some of them have to turn sideways to squeeze through a door frame.” 

According to this CNN video, the now closed Moscow McDonald's opened in 1990 and was once the largest in the world. Here's the famous first customer queue for burgers and fries "fresh" from fast-food freezers and deep friers.

We'll wait and see if this closing leads to a next wave of Russian immigration to the United States, a land where we are all somewhat free to spend our afternoons in any fast-food establishment we please.