Do stories have something to say?

“Do stories, apart from happening, being, have something to say? For all my skepticism, some trace of irrational superstition did survive in me, the strange conviction, for example, that everything in life that happens to me also has a sense, that it means something, that life speaks to us about itself through its story, that it gradually reveals a secret, that it takes the form of a rebus whose message must be deciphered, that the stories we live compromise the mythology of our lives and in that mythology lies the key to truth and mystery. Is it an illusion? Possibly, even probably, but I can’t rid myself of the need continually to decipher my own life.”

~~ from The Joke by Milan Kundera

home

I think of the opening of The Joke by Milan Kundera whenever I return to Philadelphia.

Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera died in Paris. 

So here I was, home again. . .

"So here I was, home again after all those years. Standing in the main square (which I had crossed countless times as a child, as a boy, as a young man), I felt no emotion whatsoever. . . During those years, there was nothing to attract me to my hometown; I told myself that I had grown indifferent to it, which seemed natural: I had been away for fifteen years, had almost no friends or acquaintances left here (and wished to avoid the ones I did have), my mother was buried among strangers in a grave I had never tended."

~~ from The Joke by Milan Kundera

Kundera's birthday, not mine

I'm very grateful to honor Kundera's 90th birthday by appearing as Kundera in several online locations. Happy birthday, Milan!

Kundera in Romania. . .

Then and again, I'm listed as "Kundera," as in, Milan, we can suppose. It's a mistake that's been made a few times, this last one in a Romanian library entry where a short story collection was printed with extremely limited circulation. My fiction has little in common with Kundera's although there is an allusion to The Joke in Fight for Your Long Day that not one reader has ever mentioned. At least in German Wikipedia, the only encyclopedia in which I appear as an "author," I'm in an entry for Kuderas, not Kunderas. I only wish I could tell you that I was the Kudera who fought the Nazis.

books: 20 + 1

Lying on my couch at an uncommon angle, I looked up at a shelf with a small selection of paperback fiction and saw these ten titles in order: Lorrie Moore's Anagrams, Toni Morrison's Beloved and Sula, Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland at the End of the World, Arthur Nersesian's The Fuck Up and Chinese Takeout, Chris Offutt's Out of the Woods, Yuri Olesha's Envy, Pynchon's V, and Roth's The Human Stain.

I have so many books in storage and in piles on the floor or shelves in other rooms, yet, possibly, these ten represent in exacting proportion all the fiction I read. Having said that, I soon realize that 30% women might be high, sadly enough, and 20% in translation is low, I think, and it would be weighted more toward fiction from Europe and Russia, not 50/50 between Europe/Russia and Asia. Also, because I anticipated teaching contemporary literature, after 1945, when I drove down to South Carolina, I left most of my titles written before World War II in storage space in Philadelphia.

I do have the white whale and friends, Pierre, etc. on hand, at least a couple of the same Penguin paperback editions I read in college. Of the ten I just named, only Olesha's Envy is one I was assigned to read as an undergrad, but the copy on the shelf is one I procured years later. The British Picador paperback V is one of two editions I've owned, and I bought it in England when I was working as a busboy in Paris and then traveling in Europe the summer and autumn before the Berlin Wall fell. The Crying of Lot 49 rests on a different shelf where I keep the books I've been teaching most recently.

What's on the shelf above the first ten, you ask?

Ha Jin's Waiting, Denis Johnson's Angels and Jesus' Son, Edward P. Jones's Lost in the City, two different editions of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and then four Kafka Schocken Classics w/Dad's Kunderas leaning against them. Kerouac's On the Road rests horizontally on top the paperbacks just named.

When Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served, my bilingual stack of stories, arrives from Romania, I'll let the copy I keep rest in its alphabetical place, between Kafka and Kundera, on the higher plane of shelf.

April 18 (drizzling Kunderas)

It's drizzling outside, a fitting complement to this evening's early a.m. insomnia. Earlier in the evening (in the yesterday part of tonight), I scribbled a few pages of the rough stuff and called it "My Life as Kundera" although I may ultimately use "Think and Grow Kundera" as the title, taken from my earlier tweet in support of the idle twoughts of Alexander Chee. Anyway, the topic was my meandering musing on the Kudera-Kundera likeness, my father's interest in Milan's writing, me not being him, etc. It could become a section of The Book of Jay (see bottom links for rough-draft excerpts), but of course, I'll have to improve it a lot before it becomes anything at all.

It passed the time, though.

Speaking of J. Robert's engagement with the K., here's a photograph of some of my father's Kunderas, the paperback copies he discovered in bookstores decades ago:

The photograph is from earlier today, or I should say yesterday, but this copy of The Joke as a Penguin edition (1970) was his purchase decades ago and is the one I read when I finally read a Kundera novel in 2004. It's the third English translation of the book, but not the "definitive" one that includes Kundera's criticism of the previous translations of the book. That would be the Harper Perennial edition originally published in 1992. In the "Author's Note" at the end of the HP ed., Kundera's main expressed criticism of the Penguin edition concerns the editor's efforts at sabotaging the writer's punctuation.

Milan I feel your pain and I must confess that I have had similar feelings that I've never expressed formally in any Author's Note not yet and I've also tried to come to terms with allowing for such differences over commas and periods and even the possibility that the author does not and cannot know what is best in every way for his completed book while also recognizing that it is not only the apostrophe and the semicolon that must all be part of the joke

or no?

Happy Save Bookstores Day!

Happy Save Bookstores Day! Rumor has it is that the thing to do on Saturday, June 25 is to visit an Indy bookstore or two and buy something--most likely, a book. We plan to get to at least one over the weekend, and I wish I could easily get back to all the Indy stores that have been generous in supporting Fight for Your Long Day. If you care to hit up your local Indy store for a copy of the [redacted], it's most likely they'll order it all special, just for you!

I guess, in truth, it's hard for me to know or say if owners of independent bookstores are any worse off than adjunct faculty, the fifteen million without work, or anyone else in this economy staring at a double dip that does indeed have the fancy ice creams on sale at our local American-owned Ingles (which means they are priced just a bit over regular Wal-mart prices). It could indeed be better not to own anything brick and mortar unless it is one of those magically affluent recession-proof places. But do those mirages exist?

Well, I guess it's still fun to browse and blow coin on books on any given Saturday. . . and so I offer:

READER-CONSUMER, ACTIVATE! SHAPE OF A BOOK BUYER!

PS--What I wrote below in February, 2010 seems connected to the here and now of book, but of course, the actual holiday proved only to be a false rumor and thus not part of our shared mythology:

Yes, it is true. February is national "Shelve Your Indy Novel in the Superbookstore" month. This means that sneaking into a local big-box store known for housing book product and in clandestine fashion placing your independently produced novel on the shelf, with sticker price affixed, is the thing to do. No dark glasses, trenchcoat, or other disguise is required; a hidden camera might make things more interesting, but of course, the store most likely already provides those. Alphabetical order is expected, but the organizers of this month's theme have not yet arranged to check up on folks. I'm assuming this means it can also be "Pretend Your Last Name Begins with a Q Even if it Begins with an X" month.

Reminder: It is absolutely NOT national "Sneak Strong Coffee for Free in the Superbookstore Cafe" month, and as per usual, shoplifters will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Ah, humanity, and the way of all fiction. . .

PPS--There are so many new authors these days that my dream of being snug against and sold because I'm mistaken for Kundera is nowhere near 2011's reality. Not only is my title most likely not in your store, but at any store with a decent selection of K and then Us, there are now a half dozen fine books standing between us. I'm sure this is not quite as troubling to Milan. . .

A Joke? No Kundera's birthday is April 1

So Milan Kundera, author of The Joke--yes, you could add "among other titles"--was born on April Fool's Day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milan_Kundera.

Tangential at best, but I'm reminded of the opening of Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project, where he informs us that Bosnian Independence is celebrated on its official February 29 every four years and on random nearby days for the other three.

Back to Milan, it looks like 81 is in his immediate future... unless I am counting incorrectly from April 1, 1929.

Well, happy birthday, Milan Kundera. Stay healthy and keep writing! If the truths or rumors about your informant youth are true, don't sweat it. People have all kinds of blemishes on their official, unofficial, and other dust-strewn records. A bit guilt or shame always beats a significant jail term in this regard. To make amends (if the informed upon is still alive), you could buy the guy a modest but well-crafted automobile; if he has passed on, then buy his descendants some shares of stock along with a long personalized letter. I've heard people do these things.

Indeed, my own motives for blogging could be seen as less than pure. Believe you me, I am counting on all of these people misspelling your name as "Kudera" for them to possibly learn of and purchase this book: http://atticusbooksonline.com/forthcoming-titles/fight-for-your-long-day-by-alex-kudera/ I suspect this occurs in 1000s of blogs and personal pages; yes, Milan, you are the second entry if one googles Kudera without the quote marks. So again, keep writing!

Peace.