I woke up too early, neither exhausted nor rejuvenated, and went downstairs to heat water and prepare corn flakes with milk.
Now it's back to thin herbal tea and Dave Newman's Two Small Birds. The book is trucker fiction, heavy on the fried chicken and poetry.
A facebook comment suggested that Cartilage and Skin author Michael James Rizza picked up some match boxes at the Atticus table at the Book Fair.
On his way to the conference, Dan Cafaro of Atticus walked by a musician busking on the street in Seattle. The guitarist may or may not be Charlie Parr of Austin, Minnesota, but Rizza will understand when I say that it looks like Parr has gotten beyond Duluth.
I'm not at the conference, but the Seattle Public Library system has five print copies of Fight for Your Long Day.
I may soon add swimming or stationary bicycle to my regular walking routines, but for now, I'll count as additional exercise an unease I've experienced, during turbulence, on the smaller planes of my recent flights.
Of course, everything will be fine.
Alex Kudera’s award-winning novel, Fight for Your Long Day (Atticus Books), was drafted in a walk-in closet during a summer in Seoul, South Korea. Auggie’s Revenge (Beating Windward Press) is his second novel. His numerous short stories include “Frade Killed Ellen” (Dutch Kills Press), “Bombing from Above” (Heavy Feather Review), and “A Thanksgiving” (Eclectica Magazine).
Friday, February 28, 2014
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Pittsburgh lit
I've been reading prose from Pittsburgh, first the memoir When Skateboards Will Be Free by Said Sayrafiezadeh and now the novel Two Small Birds by Dave Newman.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
libertie, equalitie, selfie
Portrait of the blogger with a copy of Keith Hoeller's Equality for Contingent Faculty:
Vanderbilt Press is on it. Are you?
Monday, February 24, 2014
Letter from China
I'm happy to report that Contemporary Literary Horizon has included "Letter from China," published online as "First Impressions of Xi'an, China," in its 2013 print anthology of poetry and prose from around the world. As always, I'm wishing Dr. Daniel D. Peaceman the best this year.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Frank Conroy
On social media, the writer Michael Leone posted this quotation from Frank Conroy's Stop-Time:
It was as if all the saints, martyrs, and mystics of human history were gathered into a single building, each one crying out at the moment of revelation, each one truly there at the extreme of joy or pain, crying out with the purity of total selflessness. There was no arguing with these sudden voices above the general clamor, they rang true. All around me were men in a paroxysm of discovery, seeing lands I had never known existed, calling me with a strength I had never known existed. But they called from every direction with equal power, so I couldn’t answer. I stood balanced on the pinpoint of my own sanity, a small, cracked tile on the floor.
It was as if all the saints, martyrs, and mystics of human history were gathered into a single building, each one crying out at the moment of revelation, each one truly there at the extreme of joy or pain, crying out with the purity of total selflessness. There was no arguing with these sudden voices above the general clamor, they rang true. All around me were men in a paroxysm of discovery, seeing lands I had never known existed, calling me with a strength I had never known existed. But they called from every direction with equal power, so I couldn’t answer. I stood balanced on the pinpoint of my own sanity, a small, cracked tile on the floor.
Friday, February 21, 2014
turning his buck
In the screenplay, I'm depicting myself as a marginal man turning his buck by analyzing the marketing strategies of short films from Passenger and the owner of La Colombe.
A key is to say you're doing something you love and that it's not about the money.
But hey, what's not to like about good music and coffee?
If while sipping your La Colombe coffee in Rittenhouse Square, you hear the strumming of the world's happiest busker, be sure to think of L.U.S.K.
And have a good weekend.
A key is to say you're doing something you love and that it's not about the money.
But hey, what's not to like about good music and coffee?
If while sipping your La Colombe coffee in Rittenhouse Square, you hear the strumming of the world's happiest busker, be sure to think of L.U.S.K.
And have a good weekend.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
How Iowa Flattened Literature
I'm so tired I can't even remember if I've read the entire article, but I did reflect a bit on the following two quotations from it:
"If your central motive as a writer is to put across ideas," the writer Steve Almond says, "write an essay."
I found this interesting because one reason I enjoyed Almond's excellent lead-off story from the Richard Russo 2010 Best of American Short Stories is that it does have ideas we can play with. They relate to the analyst v. analyzed, caution v. risk, card games and gambling, and fathers and sons among other things. I also appreciated the ideas in Almond's intro to the story, about the link between autobiography and fiction. Of course, "Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched" has many other things going for it, such as strong flow, timing, and characterization. Anyway, I do like novels with ideas, if not precisely of ideas, and for me that's partly what I get out of Voltaire, Nabokov, Pynchon, Dostoyevsky, and others.
And then "How Iowa Flattened Literature," in a quotation taken out of context, makes Frank Conroy sound like the kind of teacher I hope I never become. Similar to John Gardner, Conroy is a man intent on validating realism at the expense of the experimental, postmodern, or other unusually good stuff, and it sounds like he would steer his students away from emulating some of the greatest American fiction.
When I was at Iowa, Frank Conroy, Engle’s longest-running successor, did not name the acceptable categories. Instead, he shot down projects by shooting down their influences. He loathed Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis, Barthelme. He had a thing against J.D. Salinger that was hard to explain. To go anywhere near Melville or Nabokov was to ingest the fatal microbes of the obnoxious. Of David Foster Wallace he growled, with a wave of his hand, "He has his thing that he does."
I've never felt a lasting need to uphold one kind of literature at the expense of another, but I hope if I'm ever accused of having "a thing" that I do, it means I've sold some books and not that I've done the unconscionable "thing" of 2014, namely criticizing another writer on my blog. Ugh!
Literature, that almost dead cult from which there's never any escape, while we're all stuck in sentence fragments, desperately waiting for James Patterson to send cash to keep us afloat.
(By the way, DFW is the only writer mentioned in the second quotation that I've never read although I've never finished anything by Gaddis. I love at least one novel or story by all the others.)
"If your central motive as a writer is to put across ideas," the writer Steve Almond says, "write an essay."
I found this interesting because one reason I enjoyed Almond's excellent lead-off story from the Richard Russo 2010 Best of American Short Stories is that it does have ideas we can play with. They relate to the analyst v. analyzed, caution v. risk, card games and gambling, and fathers and sons among other things. I also appreciated the ideas in Almond's intro to the story, about the link between autobiography and fiction. Of course, "Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched" has many other things going for it, such as strong flow, timing, and characterization. Anyway, I do like novels with ideas, if not precisely of ideas, and for me that's partly what I get out of Voltaire, Nabokov, Pynchon, Dostoyevsky, and others.
And then "How Iowa Flattened Literature," in a quotation taken out of context, makes Frank Conroy sound like the kind of teacher I hope I never become. Similar to John Gardner, Conroy is a man intent on validating realism at the expense of the experimental, postmodern, or other unusually good stuff, and it sounds like he would steer his students away from emulating some of the greatest American fiction.
When I was at Iowa, Frank Conroy, Engle’s longest-running successor, did not name the acceptable categories. Instead, he shot down projects by shooting down their influences. He loathed Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis, Barthelme. He had a thing against J.D. Salinger that was hard to explain. To go anywhere near Melville or Nabokov was to ingest the fatal microbes of the obnoxious. Of David Foster Wallace he growled, with a wave of his hand, "He has his thing that he does."
I've never felt a lasting need to uphold one kind of literature at the expense of another, but I hope if I'm ever accused of having "a thing" that I do, it means I've sold some books and not that I've done the unconscionable "thing" of 2014, namely criticizing another writer on my blog. Ugh!
Literature, that almost dead cult from which there's never any escape, while we're all stuck in sentence fragments, desperately waiting for James Patterson to send cash to keep us afloat.
(By the way, DFW is the only writer mentioned in the second quotation that I've never read although I've never finished anything by Gaddis. I love at least one novel or story by all the others.)
Monday, February 17, 2014
Iowa Writers' Workshop
"How Iowa Flattened Literature" has been around the interwebs recently, about the CIA and the workshop, and in fine blogging fashion, I've only skimmed parts of it so far. Nevertheless here are more than ten things, mainly books and writers, I think of when free-associating about the Iowa Writers' Workshop:
1) The Stone Reader a documentary about a forgotten Iowa writer that the director determines to find
2) The Same River Twice by Chris Offutt
3) After the Workshop by John McNally
4) Fred Exley at Iowa in Pages from a Cold Island
5) drinking stories about Raymond Carver and John Cheever at Iowa
6) stories I've assigned by Bharati Mukherjee, Nam Le, and Sana Krasikov
7) John Gardner and T.C. Boyle, wildly successful, prolific novelists with PhDs from Iowa (if I'm not mistaken, Gardner was one of America's first PhDs in creative writing although this is perplexing as I've always been under the impression Iowa does not offer such a degree)
8) John Irving, one of my father's favorites
9) Kurt Vonnegut, Ralph Ellison, Philip Roth, Richard Yates and other literary greats who passed through Iowa
10) my rejection in '93 or '94; in retrospect, I'm sure it was a weak application (no publications, undergrad workshops, or thorough references, and a hurried seven semesters of college; my creative writing sample was likely somewhat experimental and weird)
11) need to get to work but plan to add hyperlinks and Jesus' Son, Joy Williams, and others
12) shouldn't forget Alexander Chee
13) Henry Israeli, Philly poet and publisher of Saturnalia Press
14) Jayne Anne Phillips, kind enough to answer my questions about her "Home"
15) for posterity's sake, of course, it's worth noting that none of the writers listed above are at my level, so to speak, and particularly not in the categories of sloth, fatigue, generalized failure, and penchant for procrastination (and for all their sakes, I hope they are also weaker than me in neuroses, doubt, angst, and occasional chest pain). ps--and it goes without writing, until I do, that I'm also better at my patented process for blog of editing, publishing, and then editing again. and again. . .
*#12 once included Steve Almond, but in a local library on 6/26/14, while reading from one of his nonfiction titles, I chanced upon his insistence that he attended the MFA at UNC-Greensboro. . . no doubt, another reason Almond has felt awkward and out of place with all the other nuts.
1) The Stone Reader a documentary about a forgotten Iowa writer that the director determines to find
2) The Same River Twice by Chris Offutt
3) After the Workshop by John McNally
4) Fred Exley at Iowa in Pages from a Cold Island
5) drinking stories about Raymond Carver and John Cheever at Iowa
6) stories I've assigned by Bharati Mukherjee, Nam Le, and Sana Krasikov
7) John Gardner and T.C. Boyle, wildly successful, prolific novelists with PhDs from Iowa (if I'm not mistaken, Gardner was one of America's first PhDs in creative writing although this is perplexing as I've always been under the impression Iowa does not offer such a degree)
8) John Irving, one of my father's favorites
9) Kurt Vonnegut, Ralph Ellison, Philip Roth, Richard Yates and other literary greats who passed through Iowa
10) my rejection in '93 or '94; in retrospect, I'm sure it was a weak application (no publications, undergrad workshops, or thorough references, and a hurried seven semesters of college; my creative writing sample was likely somewhat experimental and weird)
11) need to get to work but plan to add hyperlinks and Jesus' Son, Joy Williams, and others
12) shouldn't forget Alexander Chee
13) Henry Israeli, Philly poet and publisher of Saturnalia Press
14) Jayne Anne Phillips, kind enough to answer my questions about her "Home"
15) for posterity's sake, of course, it's worth noting that none of the writers listed above are at my level, so to speak, and particularly not in the categories of sloth, fatigue, generalized failure, and penchant for procrastination (and for all their sakes, I hope they are also weaker than me in neuroses, doubt, angst, and occasional chest pain). ps--and it goes without writing, until I do, that I'm also better at my patented process for blog of editing, publishing, and then editing again. and again. . .
*#12 once included Steve Almond, but in a local library on 6/26/14, while reading from one of his nonfiction titles, I chanced upon his insistence that he attended the MFA at UNC-Greensboro. . . no doubt, another reason Almond has felt awkward and out of place with all the other nuts.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Throwaway Americans, 10th Anniversary Edition
In "Throwaway Americans," Stu Bykofsky has the audacity to wave a white race card and get the reader to sympathize with a guy who went to private schools, once owned an airplane, and even has a part-time job, and, alas, maybe because the guy is 54, just as in my 1994, non-airplane-owning, flat-broke father's experience as fictionalized for "My Father's Great Recession," I do, at least somewhat, even as I wonder where I'll be in ten years. In 2024, just as in 1994 and 2014, it seems likely a majority of the folks making the "hiring decision" will be other white men.
At least that was certainly true in my dad's situation 20 years ago when he finally found his way back into the world of employment. I've noted this before at L.U.S.K., that he wound up getting his 15 seconds of fame as "the poet, Jay Roberts" while working at a gas station convenience store off A1A in Ponte Vedra, Florida after his downstairs neighbor in the beach bungalow they split a low rent on was kind enough to bring back an application and help return him to work. My father did about 20 to 30 hours a week at minimum wage, $5.05 at the time, I think, and enjoyed the job because playing cashier reminded him of working in a liquor store thirty-five years previously. He had time to walk on the beach and write his poetry, and he was quite happy for those reasons.
"My Father's Great Recession" is included in the limited edition paperback published in Romania (and available in English, Romanian, and Spanish soon), and we are looking for an American publisher to produce an e-book version of these texts.
At least that was certainly true in my dad's situation 20 years ago when he finally found his way back into the world of employment. I've noted this before at L.U.S.K., that he wound up getting his 15 seconds of fame as "the poet, Jay Roberts" while working at a gas station convenience store off A1A in Ponte Vedra, Florida after his downstairs neighbor in the beach bungalow they split a low rent on was kind enough to bring back an application and help return him to work. My father did about 20 to 30 hours a week at minimum wage, $5.05 at the time, I think, and enjoyed the job because playing cashier reminded him of working in a liquor store thirty-five years previously. He had time to walk on the beach and write his poetry, and he was quite happy for those reasons.
"My Father's Great Recession" is included in the limited edition paperback published in Romania (and available in English, Romanian, and Spanish soon), and we are looking for an American publisher to produce an e-book version of these texts.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
2014-15: inequality, unemployment, poverty
One reason Fight for Your Long Day is worth reading is that the novel clearly predicts the direction we are heading in--toward contract work (35% of all U.S. Workers), increased inequality, and global "flattening" for most of us even as the elite prospers. In 2014, from Robert Reich's "Why There's No Outcry" to Stu Byfosky's "Throwaway Americans," inequality, unemployment, and poverty articles remain the easiest ones to find between Miley, Bieber, and Sochi headlines. Apologies again for pasting in URLs, but I'll update this list as I see them, and I'm sure it will prove impossible to capture even "the 1%" of the total. So to speak.
Inequality:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-state-low-wage-america
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-03/how-401-k-plans-have-fueled-inequality-in-america?campaign_id=yhoo
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-us-income-inequality-is-bad-20141024-column.html
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/24/tale-of-two-cities-new-york-inequality-john-tim-freeman?CMP=fb_gu
http://mashable.com/2014/09/25/this-really-depressing-graph-about-the-u-s-economy-is-turning-heads/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/upshot/how-are-american-families-doing-a-guided-tour-of-our-financial-well-being.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0
http://news.yahoo.com/americas-wealth-gap-unsustainable-may-worsen-harvard-study-110255435--business.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-08-great-recession-americans-unhappy-pessimistic.html
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/25/6063831/two-numbers-that-show-how-badly-america-s-middle-class-is-hurting
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-theres-no-outcry_b_4666330.html
http://barrygrahamauthor.com/post/74927339360/guest-blog-post-a-brief-primer-on-inequality-by-larry
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/business/the-middle-class-is-steadily-eroding-just-ask-the-business-world.html?action=click&contentCollection=Europe&module=MostEmailed&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/how-inequality-hollows-out-the-soul/?_php=true&_type=blogs&hp&rref=opinion&_r=0
http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2014/02/gender-inequality-costing-global-economy-trillions-dollars-year
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/opinion/krugman-inequality-dignity-and-freedom.html?_r=0
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/21841-paul-krugman-redefining-the-middle-class
Unemployment:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/31/america-unemployment-map_n_5744656.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
http://news.yahoo.com/30-percent-retirees-return-labor-093000852.html
http://news.yahoo.com/long-term-unemployed-improving-us-economy-39-hope-155005064.html
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20140214_Throwaway_Americans.html
http://www.ibtimes.com/us-january-jobs-report-2014-unemployment-rate-falls-66-nonfarm-payrolls-rise-113k-1553925
http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/business/20140213_ap_97aa78f9a8514fc2a176869f28786b75.html
Poverty:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/majority-children-us-public-schools-are-low-income
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-child-poverty-20141021-story.html
http://qz.com/282841/who-and-where-americas-poor-people-are-in-charts/
http://news.yahoo.com/us-losing-generation-poverty-094500940--politics.html
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/nation-jan-june14-povertysuburb_01-11/
http://www.freep.com/comments/article/20140818/NEWS07/308180088/Hunger-America-1-7-rely-food-banks
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-hunger-crisis-americas-universities#
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20140822_Hunger_survey_shows_46_5_million_Americans_hungry.html
Inequality:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-state-low-wage-america
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-03/how-401-k-plans-have-fueled-inequality-in-america?campaign_id=yhoo
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-us-income-inequality-is-bad-20141024-column.html
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/24/tale-of-two-cities-new-york-inequality-john-tim-freeman?CMP=fb_gu
http://mashable.com/2014/09/25/this-really-depressing-graph-about-the-u-s-economy-is-turning-heads/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/upshot/how-are-american-families-doing-a-guided-tour-of-our-financial-well-being.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0
http://news.yahoo.com/americas-wealth-gap-unsustainable-may-worsen-harvard-study-110255435--business.html
http://phys.org/news/2014-08-great-recession-americans-unhappy-pessimistic.html
http://www.vox.com/2014/8/25/6063831/two-numbers-that-show-how-badly-america-s-middle-class-is-hurting
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-theres-no-outcry_b_4666330.html
http://barrygrahamauthor.com/post/74927339360/guest-blog-post-a-brief-primer-on-inequality-by-larry
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/business/the-middle-class-is-steadily-eroding-just-ask-the-business-world.html?action=click&contentCollection=Europe&module=MostEmailed&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/02/how-inequality-hollows-out-the-soul/?_php=true&_type=blogs&hp&rref=opinion&_r=0
http://www.newstatesman.com/economics/2014/02/gender-inequality-costing-global-economy-trillions-dollars-year
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/opinion/krugman-inequality-dignity-and-freedom.html?_r=0
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/21841-paul-krugman-redefining-the-middle-class
Unemployment:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/31/america-unemployment-map_n_5744656.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
http://news.yahoo.com/30-percent-retirees-return-labor-093000852.html
http://news.yahoo.com/long-term-unemployed-improving-us-economy-39-hope-155005064.html
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20140214_Throwaway_Americans.html
http://www.ibtimes.com/us-january-jobs-report-2014-unemployment-rate-falls-66-nonfarm-payrolls-rise-113k-1553925
http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/business/20140213_ap_97aa78f9a8514fc2a176869f28786b75.html
Poverty:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/majority-children-us-public-schools-are-low-income
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-child-poverty-20141021-story.html
http://qz.com/282841/who-and-where-americas-poor-people-are-in-charts/
http://news.yahoo.com/us-losing-generation-poverty-094500940--politics.html
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/nation-jan-june14-povertysuburb_01-11/
http://www.freep.com/comments/article/20140818/NEWS07/308180088/Hunger-America-1-7-rely-food-banks
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-hunger-crisis-americas-universities#
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20140822_Hunger_survey_shows_46_5_million_Americans_hungry.html
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