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

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.

1 avril

some of my father's Kunderas

It's Milan Kundera's birthday, of course, and that's no joke.

Happy 85th, Milan!

I consider that a rather mind-boggling anniversary that I have almost no chance of seeing, but poor Kundera must not only continue to endure, but he has to spend his last years in disguise, hoping no one recognizes him as me.

Here at L.U.S.K., we grow older and more ridiculous on a month-to-month basis. Or sometimes all at once.

26 fictions and 3 memoirs that stayed with me (and then more than 9 others)

(For my favorite novels and short story collections, I limited myself to fiction but cheated so I could add Richard Wright's Black Boy and Iain Levison's A Working Stiff's Manifesto. I listed no more than one work per author.)

1) A Fan's Notes by Fred Exley
2) The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
3) Brothers Karamazov by F.D.
4) Chump Change by Dan Fante
5) Like Life by Lorrie Moore
6) Moby-Dick by H. Melville
7) Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
8) Hunger by Knut Hamsun 
9) Candide by Voltaire
10) Lolita by Nabokov
11) Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
12) The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
13) The Bridegroom and Other Stories by Ha Jin
14) The Middleman and Other Stories by Bharati Mukherjee
15) A Working Stiff's Manifesto by Iain Levison 
16) The Joke by Milan Kundera
17) Petersburg by Andrei Biely
18) Envy by Yuri Olesha
19) Black Boy by Richard Wright
20) Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

and then I thought of some more (and cheated more with memoirs, Offutt and Pham):

21) The Music of Chance by Paul Auster
22) White Noise by Don DeLillo
23) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
24) The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
25) Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow
26) The Same River Twice by Chris Offutt
27) Catfish and Mandala by Alexander X. Pham
28) Caucasia by Danzy Senna
29) Native Speaker by Chang Rae Lee

And because this is such a highly professional blog, I'll come back later and add some links.

30) Hard Times by Charles Dickens
31) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
32) The Cliff Walk by Don J. Snyder
33) The Human Stain by Philip Roth
34) Mickelsson's Ghosts by John Gardner
35) Water Music by T. C. Boyle
36) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
37) Television by Jean-Phillippe Toussaint

and saving the best for last

38) The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano although Last Evenings on Earth is an extremely close second for me

Until I remembered to also include these:

39) Selected Stories by Andre Dubus
40) The Overcoat and Other Tales by Nikolai Gogol
41) Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver
42) The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth

So with that final four, until I remember others, I still kind of have a saving-the-best-for-last thing going on.

Feel free to find me at Goodreads for star ratings and a few reviews.

A fine final correction would be

43) The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Okay, then, until I add more. . .

44) Revulsion by Horacio Castellanos Moya
45) Zone by Mathias Enard
46) Journey to the End of Night by Celine
47) Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski
48) Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante
49) Outline by Rachel Cusk
50) Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
51) Correction by Thomas Bernhard
52) The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
53) Confessions of a Lady Killer by George Stade
54) Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
55) Independence Day by Richard Ford
56) The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley
57) Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

58) Memory of Departure by Abdulzarak Gurnah

There were others I should have added, and then new ones appeared.

59) Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon

60) Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

61) Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames

Note: I do not see W. G. Sebald above, and I believe that I doubted it fit into categories such as "the novel," "fiction," or "memoir," so below I am adding it with other favorite titles that might not easily fit although I'm not ready to add Thucydides, Foucault, Nietzsche, and so on.

62) The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald

63) The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing

64) A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul

65) Shame by Salman Rushdie 

66) I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabel

67) Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt

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.

Kundera on memory and forgetting

Milan Kundera, a minor “Franco-Czech” novelist—not at all to be confused with the author of the Less United States of Kudera—has written new non-fiction called The Curtain and subtitled An Essay in Seven Parts. In the seventh part, he describes great obstacles to our reading of novels—memory and forgetting. For those who read Kundera, the ideas will seem familiar:

The novel, on the other hand, is a very poorly fortified castle. If I take an hour to read twenty pages, a novel of four hundred pages will take me twenty hours, thus about a week. Rarely do we have a whole week free. It is more likely that, between sessions of reading, intervals of days will occur, during which forgetting will immediately set up its worksite... Someday, years later, I will start to talk about this novel to a friend, and we will find that our memories have retained only a few shrouds of the text and have reconstructed very different books for each of us. (148-9)

Kudera’s point is an excellent one; I suspect we all remember conversations with friends about shared favorites, and how it turned out we could not remember each other’s favorite scenes, and in fact, it was even unclear if we had read the same book.

Despite Kundera’s clarity, his ideas are so pessimistic that I thought I’d dish some optimism for the day. After all, we do want to encourage our wandering youth to read!

According to my 11th grade English teacher, the trick to remembering much more of the novel is to read in great chunks. Give yourself a few solid hours with your book and try to avoid picking up the book for a few minutes at a time. A couple years later, my freshman history professor taught me that we are mistaken if we believe the more we read the more content we will have fighting for space in a limited brain. In fact, according to Professor Morgan, the brain works in the opposite way. We will remember more if we read more. My first two years of undergrad were two of the greatest reading years of my life, and I believe Professor’s Morgan’s encouragement was part of the reason.

So all thee young and old, before you submit to the boob tube or the Belgian beer, sit very still with book in lap, read for a few hours, and then sit back and savor the company of your memories. Need a good title? Immortality and The Unbearable Lightness of Being are said to be Kundera’s best books, but I recommend The Joke. If you like short stories, check out, “The Hitchhiking Game” or “Let the Old Dead Make Way for the Young Dead.”