Survivor Man
shermanalexie.substack.com
Here's a fact: Some people want to live more than others do. Some can withstand any horror while others will easily surrender to thirst, hunger, and extremes of weather. In Utah, one man carried another man on his back like a conjoined brother and crossed twenty-five miles of desert to safety. Can you imagine the hurt? Do you think you could be that strong? Yes, yes, you sing, but you're probably wrong.
Im 78. If spend the rest of my life reading the comedians,I will be very happy. This include all the hilarious ive only read once or twice- about half of your books, Ive read Lone Ranger and Tonto t hree times, Business of Fancy Dancing and First Indian On the Moon Three times, The Toughest Indian Aliive two, and all the others once. But you get the drift. Ive read most of Amos Tutuola only once, Grace paleys short stories always twice, Dead Souls only twice, Rabelais and Pantagruel and TheGoldn Ass of Apelius only once, the novels of the brilliant Jorge Amado only once, Confessions ofl Felix Krull by Thomas Mann only most,same with Cynthia Ozick, and a number of writers ffrom India and Eastern Asia, Richard Brautigan believe it or not. some o Ernest Hebert, beliievetor not and thegreat Chilean Nicanor Parras Antiin Poems and Emergency poems, and doh yea, reread all of Ismahel Reed's sstuff ( or most it ) and thegreat class srltruggle disgusied as mystery novels of Chester Himes who also has a pretty funny bunch of short stories. More later.
I just get very tired of sitting mud puddles with Samuel Beckett. Trying to outlast last calls with Sanuel Beckett, Faaulkner all tlhel bottled up Amrican men with a few "ladis" thrown in all wanting praise becauseosay, they have heartstring yanked whenevrer Holden Caulfield wants to feed the duck at the pond or what is essentiallly MFA writing about dorm angst in bejeweled hacks like Godlffinc, Krassner and all the bullshitbig chill post sixties ingenues but inside I smelll stained pants cuffs and whateverthe goddam gender or "hybrid genre) I hear this weird murmur " we are the hollowmen, we are the stuffed men" and, as my mother used to quip, "Yes,s you aaretheholloe men in the toomuchlight letsget thell. out of here. more later. also am ignoring world literature or am i ignoring what the power that be, perhaps even internationaly, allow to be published and marketed as "international literature". How do you know that herehavenot been scores of lpoets and novelists whose never "ccame to light" because their country's rc and their henchman had their hands on the light switches, the stages, theprinters ink kekktc???????
Think of all the wrters all over the world wh o have already paid high prices. And lists keep getting thrown out, bu what is being',H
Ill have more to say about this tomorrow. about the history of radical writers all over the world killed and or savagely stifled. way way back to Cervantes, Dante, To Fu Hi bothkmet in Turkey, Lorca in Spain his friend Marcos Ana, Otto REne Castillo of Guatamala burned at the staake by eitherttfascistss, USA agents or BOTH.dd,the horrendous treatment of two of the greatest poets of the twentiethcentury= Pablo Nruda. Be well.
The two opposites when it comes to Holocaust survivors: Frankl, who believed that one had to find a meaning in life in order to survive the camps and Primo Levi who wrote: LThe worst survived, the selfish, the violent, the insensitive, the collaborators of the ‘grey zone’, the spies. It was not a certain rule… but it was, nevertheless, a rule… The best all died.”