this outhouse of a city

"I went outside, sat on the steps, and fired up a Marlboro from the pack I'd bought from the machine near the front door. I was through for the day. I'd had my fill of defeat. But the late spring afternoon was sublime. I watched two sleek ravens on the asphalt a few feet away as they tore apart the flattened carcass of a dead squirrel. The thoroughfares were glutted with cars and trucks and buses going who knows where. It came to me at that moment that one day I'd have to skip town myself. Where I'd go. I didn't know, but it would have to be far away. It wasn't working out for me in this outhouse of a city, and my gut told me it never would."

~~ from God Bless America by Mark SaFranko

never once having to punch the clock

"When I thought about it, I had to marvel at how lucky our employers had come up in the cosmic lottery. Inheriting a factory, for example, was nothing to sneeze at—that was Sir Schonenstein . . . or bring sent to Europe for an advanced degree—we had one of those . . . or being groomed to take over daddy's medical practice.

"Never once having to punch the clock is a sweet way to spend seventy or eighty or ninety years . . . and then there were those scintillating evenings at the Trenton Country Club, where all the elite gathered for play . . . and the winter vacations down in the islands . . . the Harvard class reunions . . . 

"No matter what the wise men said, time is not an illusion, and life can be long and hard if you happen not to be one of the chosen few."

~~ from God Bless America by Mark SaFranko

draft in progress: over a hundred favorite novels (and novellas) not in order

      A Fan's Notes by Fred Exley

      The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

Brothers Karamazov by F.D.

The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever

Chump Change by Dan Fante

The Sell-Out by Paul Beatty

The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner

Light in August by William Faulkner

Hunger by Knut Hamsun 

Candide by Voltaire

Lolita by Nabokov

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon

Nanjing Requiem by Ha Jin

War Trash by Ha Jin

The Joke by Milan Kundera

Petersburg by Andrei Biely

Envy by Yuri Olesha

Native Son by Richard Wright

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

2666 by Robert Bolano

Home Land by Sam Lipsyte

The Ice Storm by Rick Moody

The Music of Chance by Paul Auster

White Noise by Don DeLillo

Americana by Don DeLillo

End Zone by Don DeLillo

Libra by Don DeLillo

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow

Herzog by Saul Bellow

Ravelstein by Saul Bellow

Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow

The Ghostwriter by Philip Roth

I Married a Communist by Philip Roth

Caucasia by Danzy Senna

Native Speaker by Chang Rae Lee

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

Too Late the Phalarope by Alan Paton

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

The Human Stain by Philip Roth

Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner

Water Music by T. C. Boyle

World's End by T.C. Boyle

Budding Prospects by T.C. Boyle

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins

Another Roadside Attaction by Tom Robbins

Rabbit is Rich by John Updike

Rabbit at Rest by John Updike

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Nun by Denis Diderot

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Television by Jean-Phillippe Toussaint

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano

The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Revulsion by Horacio Castellanos Moya

Zone by Mathias Enard

Journey to the End of Night by Celine

Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante

Ask the Dust by John Fante

The Brotherhood of the Grape by John Fante

Outline by Rachel Cusk

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Correction by Thomas Bernhard

Extinction by Thomas Bernhard

Camera by Jean-Phlippe Toussaint

The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint

Concrete by Thomas Bernhard

Immortality by Milan Kundera

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard

The Trial by Franz Kafka

The Castle by Franz Kafka

Confessions of a Lady Killer by George Stade

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

Independence Day by Richard Ford

The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford

The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

Memory of Departure by Abdulzarak Gurnah

Afterlives by Abdulzarak Gurnah

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames

The Extra Man by Jonathan Ames

The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald

A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul

Shame by Salman Rushdie 

I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabel

Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabel

Firmin by Sam Savage

Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt

The Seven Madmen and the Flamethrowers by Roberto Arlt 

V by Thomas Pynchon

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

Billy Budd by Herman Melville

Benito Cereno by Herman Melville

Crime and Punishment by F. D.

The Possessed (Demons or The Devils) by F. D.

A School for Fools by Sasha Sokolov

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Washington Square by Henry James

Sula by Toni Morrison

Their Eyes Were Watching God

A Separate Peace

My Antonia by Willa Cather

Giants in the Earth by O. E. Rølvaag

Run Me To Earth by Paul Yoon

White Mythology by W.D. Clarke

Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu

The Story of My Wife by Milan Fust

The Incorporation of Eric Chung by Steven C. Lo

Straight Man by Richard Russo

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Ice Storm by Rick Moody

Hating Olivia by Mark SaFranko

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke

Fight for Your Long Day by Alex Kudera

Auggie's Revenge by Alex Kudera

A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

A Passage to India by E. M. Forrester

All Quiet on the Western Front by E. Remarque

The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Roughing It by Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

Mark and Dan

 

Mark SaFranko's Nowhere Near Hollywood and Dan Fante's Chump Change

Nowhere Near Hollywood

"Everybody had heard of The Radioactive Vindicator, even if they hadn't seen it. It was, of course, nothing but a steaming pile of offal, eighty minutes of junk for glue-sniffing teenagers, but in America that's what grabs attention. It's a strange country, America. It claims to be the world's arbiter of taste and culture, but it mostly sells horse manure. Occasionally a great artist or a masterpiece somehow slips into view, but like a blue moon they are few and far between."

~~ from Nowhere Near Hollywood by Mark SaFranko

One False Step

"One False Step is the story of Clay Bowers, a philanderer, whose wandering eye lands him into trouble when, in an instance of darkly humorous irony, he falls off a roof while ogling the lady of the house, rendering him a paraplegic. As he is recovering in the hospital, he realizes that 'The thought that he might not be able to do anything (sic)…that he might only be able to lie there and think for the rest of his life, would eventually drive him over the edge.'"

~~ from "The Rage of Impotence: a review of Mark SaFranko’s One False Step" by Zsolt Alapi

New Interview with Mark SaFranko

Our friend, the late Dan Fante, was encouraged early in his writing career by supportive words of Hubert Selby Jr.  Was there anyone who significantly did the same for you? 

It’s still hard to believe that Dan is gone. I miss hearing his voice. To answer your question, there was my wife. She believed in me and was supportive from the beginning. One writer who was supportive was the late mystery writer Mark McGarrity, aka Bartholomew Gill. But on the whole I had to rely on myself. And it wasn’t easy much of the time, especially in the early days when I had no belief whatsoever in myself.

Follow the link for the full interview from Steven Brodsky at delcoculturevultures.com.

Mark SaFranko at 3 a.m.

No Future: An interview with Mark SaFranko https://t.co/nN2ZdQDMWz pic.twitter.com/U1OR15q1Tu

— 3:AM Magazine (@3ammagazine) January 8, 2016

Turquoise Truck for Mendicant Bookworks

I'm excited to announce that in addition to published paperbacks of Over Fifty Billion Kafkas Served and Auggie's Revenge, I'll also have "Turquoise Truck," a car-lot story, published as a stand-alone e-book at Mendicant Bookworks by summer of 2015. Mendicant is known for gritty realism and has published Gerald Locklin, Mark SaFranko, Ben Tanzer, and other small-press stars in the past. This will be my second foray into the world of e-book singles; my first was a short novella (or long story), The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity.

44

Another thing I liked about Dan Fante's Point Doom is that the narrator is 44 years old when the action takes place. It made me feel like a bit less of a failure, reading about this other 44-year-old who can barely stay sober and off his mom's couch. (It should be noted that I'm writing this from a soft chair in my mother's living-room area although that isn't my permanent residence.)

Also, I'm almost certain there was a 44-year-old lurking in the shadows of the next novel I read, Dave Newman's excellent Pittsburgh novel, Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children, but I don't think it was Richard, a background character and officemate who I could relate to somewhat in his sensitivity to the meanness of an aggressive student (I should say, thankfully, no student has ever thrust a pen at my head). I also just found this great review of that book that mentioned Fante and his buddy Mark SaFranko in the first paragraph.

My daughter knows I'm 44, and for fun, she told a 66-year-old that I was 88.

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

dollar store realism

If Raymond Carver's dirty realism is K-Mart realism, then perhaps Barry Graham's The National Virginity Pledge could be called Dollar Tree realism. His short, spunky stories arrived in my mail slot with Ben Tanzer's This American Life. Tanzer hasn't told me that his new marketing strategy is to get sued by NPR and made famous thusly, but his title story does tackle this concern in part. I did get a chance to tell Ben that his productivity and pace of publication is amazing. He's written a lot of books. And he just burst through the doors of Powell's and got all of his paperbacks on the shelf. He's an animal. I fear for his wife.

But back to Graham, a couple writers his dirty themes and spare prose remind me of would be Dan Fante and Mark SaFranko, and both of these guys were recently seen in the cyberworld. SaFranko's No Strings Attached, a new novel, arrives this fall from Black Coffee Press:

And Dan Fante was found signing books in Barcelona this week:

And then it was time for writers all over the world to have a relaxing weekend that includes at least one good, long nap. I'll go out on a limb and call that a code for success.

Fight for Your Long Nap!

shelve your debut novel now, City Lights!

Hey, if you want to help get some cool debut novels find safe harbor in San Francisco's famous City Lights Bookstore, follow this link http://www.citylights.com/bookstore/ and e-mail about a title or just write to this address:

City Lights Bookstore
Att. Book Buyer
261 Columbus Avenue
San Francisco,  CA  94133

And guess what?

I have a list of novels for you to choose from:

Andy Breslin's Mother's Milk
Steve Himmer's The Bee Loud Glade
Nadia Kalman's The Cosmopolitans
Alex Kudera's Fight for Your Long Day (never heard of it)
Kate Ledger's Remedies

Mark SaFranko's Hating Olivia (could be there already)
Ben Tanzer's You Can Make Him Like You
Charles Dodd White's Lambs of Men
Joe Zeppetello's Daring to Eat a Peach
Tommy Zurhellen's Nazareth, North Dakota

OK. Except for Ben and Charles, these are all debut novels, and they are all from new novelist-publisher partnerships. I'm sure any help is appreciated. Tap me on the keyboard if I missed you, and I'll be sure to add you to the list (new novelists or indy book buyers).

Note: for Mark, several novels have already been published in Europe in English and French translation.

What an amazing blogger! What a weirdo.

Wah (translated as "wow" in both Korean and exhausted English).

my father the italian

Mistaking Mark SaFranko for Italian reminded me of my childhood, where for a while there, I thought we were Italian on my father's side. I think this related to all the spaghetti, ravioli, Italian sausage, and meatballs with caesar dressing on salad along with many trips to Pagano's for pizza, which if I'm not mistaken was located across from where the R&S Strauss is at 48th and Chestnut. (I believe I could be off a block or two here.) I also remember a white and purple storefront. And then there may have been acquaintances thinking "Kudera" was Italian and perhaps I misunderstood these overheard conversations with my Dad. Or I never really thought we were Italian, or I wasn't even old enough to know this kind of thing could be considered, or I invented this thought years later, after I already knew we weren't Italian but liked this kind of story, or the way I could add it as an interesting section to the memoir (which in fact I would have to write and if written one day will include some sections from his diaries of memories of his father, which in fact, I encouraged him to write).

What are we?

With my father, when we were to head to South Philly, The Triangle Bar was where we would get our pasta. I believe this could have been connected to the affordability of the spirits. There was another place he'd take us to, one I associate with the Whitehorse (or Blackhorse?) Pike and spaghetti. But I'm wandering into weedy memories now.

OK. Mark SaFranko and Joseph Kudera. Two Jersey kids born about 10 years apart who dreamed of writing all their lives and got a lot of it down on paper or screen while raising kids, hell, money to pay the bills, and more. Catholic School? AA? Childhood poverty? I'm not exactly sure of how much there is in common here.

Enough.

delillo on bellow

Their names share four letters, split between vowels and consonants, and now Delillo has won a PEN award in the more ashen man's name. For lifetime achievement defined by quantity of good to great novels, could there be a post-war American writer greater than these two? Don't give me Roth and don't tell me Bellow isn't only post-war.

Delillo I've read: Americana, End Zone, Great Jones Street, Ratner's Star, Players, The Names, White Noise, Libra, Mao II, Underworld, and Cosmopolis. (I think that's it.) I've also read Delillo's somewhat famous essay on 9/11 as well as a short story or two.

Bellow I've read: Seize the Day, Herzog, Mr. Sammler's Planet, The Dean's December, Ravelstein, and perhaps a short story or two. A short piece by Bellow I like is his introduction to Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, where, to me, he makes it clear that he does not necessarily see things the same way. I'm not sure that the university is still a place where people with even strongly opposing political views might support each other's work or at least respect its place in print. (Well, I guess these days everyone is too busy with their teaching overloads, publication schedules, and "specializations" to read each other's work. And that would more likely be online, yes, indeed.)

OK. In conclusion, I've read more Delillo than Bellow (and I'm willing to wager that you have too) although Bellow would seem to be a more significant influence in my own literary efforts, if either of these guys is any kind of influence at all. (Well, I guess you can't have an alienated male protagonist or antihero in an American novel without implicitly referencing these two.) I've tried to describe Fight for Your Long Day as a cross between novels by Saul Bellow and Dan Fante, but I'm not sure it would be understood that way, and I doubt many of my readers will have read much by those two anyway. (This does not imply I have "many readers" as of this blogging.) I'd probably be better off comparing it to movies. . . ah, humanity.

As an aside on Italian American novelists, I should note that for me, Don Delillo completely kicks Richard Russo's ass--although Russo is said to be a wonderful person, and Straight Man is fun--and is the undisputed lone heavyweight in the category although Dan and John Fante would be my sentimental favorites on this list and I'm pulling for Dan Fante's buddy Mark SaFranko (who was kind enough to let me know soon after this post that in fact he is not Italian; okay, we'll handle that another time but keep his name under the bright lights of USK) as well as two of the guys Dan Cafaro has signed up for publication at Atticus Books. Maybe we'll Jew-list another day. Oy vey.

(Mark's correction just reminded me of a thought I had on the way to the library. Saul Bellow was born in Quebec.)

UPDATE 03/04/2023: Only this past summer, I read Bellow's Humboldt's Gift, and at some point after I wrote this blog entry, I read The Adventures of Augie March.

Interview with Mark Safranko

My interview with novelist Mark Safranko has arrived at http://www.whenfallsthecoliseum.com/. Hating Olivia looks like strong stuff but could be worth it.