An Interview with Jean-Philippe Toussaint

"One summer long ago after reading Crime and Punishment I began to write. I don’t know if there’s a direct link, a perfect cause and effect relationship, who knows, a theorem (people who read Crime and Punishment start writing a month later), but in my case that’s how it was: one month after finishing Crime and Punishment I started writing—and I’m still writing. . ."

with a side of Celine

A few days ago, I finished Charlotte Mandell's French-to-English translation of Mathias Enard's Zone, which has several wonderful references to and anecdotes about Celine, and then, this evening I began Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, and it takes me only to page 19 to find Celine once more:

My other book was Erika Ostrovsky's Celine and His Vision. Celine was a brave French soldier in the First World War--until his skull was cracked. After that he couldn't sleep, and there were noises in his head. He became a doctor, and he treated poor people in the daytime, and he wrote grotesque novels all night. No art is possible without a dance with death, he wrote.

The truth is death, he wrote. I've fought nicely against it as long as I could. . . danced with it, waltzed it around. . . decorated it with streamers, titillated it. . . 

Time obsessed him. Miss Ostrovsky reminded me of the amazing scene in Death on the Installment Plan where Celine wants to stop the bustling of a street crowd. He screams on paper, Make them stop. . . don't let them move anymore at all. . . There, make them freeze. . . once and for all! . . . So that they won't disappear anymore!

*Note: On Monday, between Enard and Vonnegut, I read and enjoyed Jean-Philippe Toussaint's Self-Portrait Abroad.

Interviews (Answer and Ask)

Answer:

American, British and Canadian Studies Journal
"An Interview with Alex Kudera, Author of Fight for Your Long Day" by Merritt Moseley (June, 2016)

Chronicle Vitae
"The Novelist Who Chronicles Life as an Adjunct" by William Pannapacker (January 8, 2014)

Word of Mouth (New Hampshire Public Radio)
"Fight for Your Long Day" by Rebecca Lavoie (April 4, 2013)

Foreward Reviews
“One of a Kind: A ForeWord Interview with Alex Kudera” Atticus Books Online (May-June 2011)

The Next Best Book Blog
"In Conversation: Lavinia Ludlow Interviews Alex Kudera" by Lavinia Ludlow (April 26, 2016)

This Podcast Will Change Your Life
"This Podcast Will Change Your Life is the Alex Kudera" by Ben Tanzer (August 17, 2016)

Psychology Today
“Darkly Funny Debut Novel Exposes Adjunct Abuse” by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D., Creating in Flow (January 7, 2012)

Karen the Small Press Librarian
"Writer on Writer: Dave Newman Interviews Alex Kudera" by Dave Newman (September 8, 2013)

Clemson University
“English lecturer’s book explores the plight of the adjunct professor” by Angela Nixon, Clemson University media relations (October 11, 2011)

The Chronicle of Higher Education
“An Award-Winning Author on Adjuncts” by Isaac Sweeney, The Chronicle of Higher Education (June 1, 2011)

When Falls the Coliseum
“The Life of an Adjunct: An Interview with Novelist Alex Kudera” by Robert Anthony Watts, When Falls the Coliseum (November 1, 2010)

We Who Are About to Die
“We who are about to breed: Alex Kudera” by Patrick Wensink, We Who Are About to Die (September 27, 2011)

Smarts and Culture
“How One Author Finds an Audience: Part 1″ by Maryann Devine, smArts and Culture (October 27, 2010)

“How One Author Finds an Audience: Part 2″ by Maryann Devine, smArts and Culture (October 26, 2010)

Atticus Books
“Interview with Alex Kudera, Part 2 of 2′” by Dan Cafaro at Atticus Books Online (August 2, 2010)

“Interview with the Author of ‘Fight for Your Long Day, Part 1′” by Dan Cafaro at Atticus Books Online (July 22, 2010)

The New Dork Review of Books
“The Blogger/Novelist Relationship, with Alex Kudera (Part 2)” by Greg Zimmerman, The New Dork Review of Books (August 8, 2011)

“The Blogger/Novelist Relationship, with Alex Kudera (Part 1)” by Greg Zimmerman, The New Dork Review of Books (August 4, 2011)

And Ask:

"Chinese Gucci: The Interview": Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4, The Less United States of Kudera,
May 12, 15, 19 and 22, 2020

"An Interview with Rebecca Schuman" When Falls the Coliseum, April 13, 2017

"Bay Area Blues: An Interview with Lavinia Ludlow" JMWW, February 29, 2016

"Writer on Writer: Part Two, Alex Kudera Interviews Dave Newman" Karen the Small Press Librarian, September 16, 2013

"An Interview With Nancy Peacock" plus Part 2, and Part 3, The Less United States of Kudera, March 31, 2013 to April 3, 2013

"John Warner on Frederick Exley" When Falls the Coliseum, May 13, 2011

"The Exley Influence: A Riff Between Two Authors 'Falling Inward'" Atticus Books Online, February 25, 2011

"Exley, Clarke, and Eleanor Henderson" When Falls the Coliseum, November 9, 2010

"Interview With Mark SaFranko" When Falls the Coliseum, October 19, 2010

"Interview With Dan Cafaro of Atticus Books" When Falls the Coliseum, August 9, 2010

"An Interview With Lee Konstantinou" When Falls the Coliseum, May 13, 2010

"An Interview With Jean-Philippe Toussaint" When Falls the Coliseum, April 19, 2010

"Returning 'Home': An Interview With Jayne Anne Phillips" The South Carolina Review, Spring 2010 (link to table of contents but not the interview)

"Interview With Olga Gardner Galvin" When Falls the Coliseum, June 22, 2009

"An Interview With Author Dan Fante" When Falls the Coliseum, May 21, 2009

"The Writing Life Starring Iain Levison" The Less United States of Kudera, May 4, 2009

"An Interview With Cassendre Xavier" The Less United States of Kudera, March 15, 2009

"Don Riggs on Writers and Writing" The Less United States of Kudera, March 9, 2009

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

"to each his own p---"

Jean-Philippe Toussaint was kind enough to respond to these questions, and yet I must confess that his partner in crime, or at least literary translation, John Lambert, may have gotten in the best one liner. The semester is over save for finals; the Endgame hyperlink approaches.

If only Sammy B. had broadband access... I'm so happy we can retire this week.

9 days left in national novel-writing month!

With 9 days left in national novel-writing month, I imagine you are freaking out! But no fear, there are novels (well, yes, short ones mostly) that have been drafted in a month. For inspiration, I'll drop a dime on a couple: Paul Auster's Portrait of an Invisible Man and Jean-Philippe Toussaint's The Bathroom. I suspect in both cases that is the first draft alone, and we don't have the hard facts, the exact data as it were. Okay, I'll admit the Auster is packaged with another memoir and is more or less a long story told in fragments (but a good one).

Fans of Jack Kerouac's On the Road are no doubt already aware that the original scroll was produced "during a three-week period in the spring of 1951" (see http://www.ontheroad.org/ for the words surrounding this quoted bit). I've heard that Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 was first drafted in three weeks, but I've also heard this disputed.

But back to your novel. What to do?

Quit work, boycott Thanksgiving, and write your ass off! And if you are writing twelve to fourteen hours a day on November 30, let the momentum carry you into December and make that month your writing month too.

You need your novel in your life.

Happy word choice, writer.

running away

If you've been waiting for the English translation Jean-Philippe Toussaint's Fuir, then your wait is over... I think. Amazon.com lists November 10, 2009 as the publication date of Running Away, and various new and used copies are already available from other sellers on JB's website. At amazon.com's $9.20 after discount, that's a mere 20 cents more than the new Sarah Palin biography! I'll let you decide which offers more fiction for your buck:

http://www.amazon.com/Running-Away-Jean-Philippe-Toussaint/dp/156478567X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258598923&sr=1-1

I taught Toussaint's The Bathroom last week, and it seemed to go well.

I'll let that thought resonate before resuming this entry.

Nabokov with Trilling Smoking on TV

At this point, it is all coming together in a whirl. Italo Svevo's warns us away from smoking and Jean-Philippe Toussaint warns us away from television; Toussaint names Vladimir Nabokov as one of his five favorite writers, Nabokov names James Joyce as one of his five, and Joyce taught English to Svevo when their lives crossed in Trieste. So it should come as no surprise to find Vladimir Nabokov on live television interviewed beside a chain-smoking Lionel Trilling! I'm fairly certain Trilling tokes the true-blue cancer stick and not the funky weed in this scene.

Behold part one, here, and if that is not enough, then beware part two.

Oh how Nabokov reclines! You would think he'd rather be Humbert Humbert at play with an apple on the couch with Lolita. But nooooooo! He gets a prim, proper, and scholarly old Jew best known for passing at Princeton, playing the WASP game. Indeed.

And so it goes. . .

Ten Reasons for Toussaint's TV

Ten reasons to thrust Television in front of your nose:

1) In your adult years, you have felt like a fern trapped inside a refrigerator.

2) "Man Against A Ledge" best describes your morning disposition.

3) In these years of heightened euro purchasing power, you cannot afford Germany.

4) The Hasidim of Antwerp have aroused your intellect although they do not appear in Toussaint's novel.

5) You've quit watching television, but you cheat.

6) You've seen wider and wider screens in your 'hood, and although the Dalkey Archive paperback is lightweight and lean, you have been practicing your fastball and imagining "book through window" type escapades. A chuck and run?

7) You do not condone violence, and in fact, you prefer to read a good book.

8) You stand in solidarity with all sandwiches, no matter the nature or weight of haunches destined to smash them.

9) You procrastinate.

10) In your fantasy life, you fly too close to the glass.