the author's house

An old stone house where Fred Exley wrote sections of A Fan's Notes is on the market for $69,000.

Zen and the Art of. . .

Because I recently checked out a copy of the 25th anniversary edition, I could pull a Fred Exley and commemorate Robert M. Pirsig's passing as Exley did with Edmund Wilson's writing after Wilson died (see Pages from a Cold Island). Exley made reading Edmund Wilson a religious experience after his North Country neighbor passed on. Although I appreciated Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I wasn't as completely enamored of it as Exley was of Wilson's work. All the same, it's a death worth noting, and Zen is a great book I may reread this summer. Philly.com has a nice obituary.

And here's a Pirsig quotation that the writer Jenny J. Chen found among a selection at Literary Hub:

"Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you are no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow."

- The Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Rest in peace, Robert M. Pirsig

Exley, Almond, End Zone, and a 3rd round pick for Frank Gifford and future considerations

On Sunday, fittingly, I read that Frank Gifford passed on, and soon after that I googled to learn that many were commemorating Fred Exley's A Fan's Notes for helping keep the legend of Frank alive. Dylan Stableford's piece for Yahoo News captures many of the tweets that recognize Exley's contribution to Gifford lore, and quite possibly, of course, vice versa.

Earlier this summer I read Steve Almond's Against Football and learned that his favorite football novel was Don DeLillo's End Zone (I briefly evaluated the Almond at Goodreads). It's a very understandable selection, and it's also a shame DeLillo's "big books" often crowd out this early slim volume when it comes to shelf or blog space, but I was also disappointed Almond didn't mention Exley in the back section with DeLillo and other writers he acknowledged. So it was with some relief, even satisfaction, when I did see consideration of Exley in the middle of Almond's book. As you might imagine, I recommend all three books.

Since Gifford's passing, I've also considered how there is somewhat of an analogy between Exley's narrator (fictional Ex)'s relationship to Gifford and "Frade Killed Ellen"'s narrator Alan's relationship to Roger Frade (although Alan is no Alex, and Alex no Alan, not even in their dreams). In case that's not clear, what I mean is that Alan is to Frade as Exley is to Gifford. Anyway, I'd recommend my story too.

I may return to this to edit and add more.

exley is still on

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.

somber city?

We're in Chicago--with no periods, semicolons, or colons on this netbook--but we're here, at the Association for Business Communications Conference, hobnobbing with the B-School and Communications crowd, perhaps unlike creative writers, they can discern a career path in the near and far terms, so now I feel like a paragraph from Jean-Philippe Toussaint's Camera, stopping with commas, and then moving on, it's life in windy weather, indeed

but i wanted to drift back to the bit of Saul Bellow quoted by Fred Exley, the "somber city" of Augie's first paragraph if I'm not mistaken, and truth be told, I've read four or five Bellow novels but not that one and yet I think of it a lot, think of reading it, own it in fine trade paper, and have already named a central character in a future novel Auggie in recognition of Bellow's fellow and also the Harvey Keitel cigar-store photographer in Paul Auster and Wayne Wang's Smoke

But back to Chicago--is it a somber city? it certainly is a windy one, so much so that our flight was delayed three hours due to strong gusts and then receiving luggage straight from the plane, outside on the runway became an exercise in survival of the most sensibly dressed, and it helped if you hid behind the other passengers and let their bodies break the wind (so to speak)

Chicago hasn't seemed so somber, it's seemed cold, and we haven't really been very far from the hotel, just one trip to Chinatown, which seemed quite empty, and this could be due to the economy or the cold although there were people inside the restaurants, we were told by the concierge to take a taxi because they don't want guests walking by the government housing on the way to Chinatown, a "for your own safety" kind of thing, so we passed the projects in a taxi minivan (seeing more of those for whatever reason), and we saw some people but neither the buildings nor the citizens looked particularly somber although at the restaurant, Old Sze Chuan, it was more or less, "first to knock, first admitted"

OK, maybe we gather more data and report back later, we're hoping to see University of Chicago later and will report back on the ghosts of Bloom and Bellow if such are seen preparing for their Halloween spooking

PS--amazon recently notified me that bellow's letters are available there at discount