Andrei Codrescu
Andrei Codrescu
Andrei Codrescuis a Romanian-born American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and commentator for National Public Radio. He was the Mac Curdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1984 until his retirement in 2009...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScreenwriter
Date of Birth20 December 1946
CountryUnited States of America
acquired candy cliche history internet itself mom pocket protect remembered shirt smart somebody strangers wish
I wish somebody told me don't take candy from strangers when I made my first tax-free Internet purchase. I wish that I had remembered the first one's free, which is how dealers make new junkies. I wish that every cliche humanity acquired to protect itself from its history of bamboozlement and trickery was sewn on every shirt pocket by a smart mom.
call city culture feed myths orleans people
Two-thirds of what we call New Orleans culture is really myth-making, ... People feed myths of the city back to the city. These myths are now in pieces.
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Most artists don't get paid for what they do, and they are lucky if they can persuade a friend to let them show something at a kid's birthday party.
accustomed creating refugees
Americans are accustomed to welcoming, or at least receiving, refugees from other countries, not creating our own.
express immediate larger
Even the greatest poets can't express tragedy in a way that is larger than their immediate circumstances.
romania
New Orleans reminds me of Romania because New Orleans is very corrupt politically.
artists money society tedium
Real artists free of the tedium of money can use, now, all of society as an idea factory.
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My mother and I were part of a deal in the mid-'60s between Romania and Israel. Israel bought freedom for Romanian Jews for $2,000 a head. Ceausescu made a bundle in hard currency. He also 'sold' ethnic Germans to West Germany. Instead of going to Israel, my mother and I came to the United States.
closer society turkey
Romanians are culturally European, very close to the French. Socially, they are now building a society that is emotionally closer to the Balkans, Turkey and Greece.
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Romanians have a particular love for poetry and have a beautiful, vivid language. The poets they love are not versifiers like Vadim Tudor, but genuinely complex mystical souls like Mircea Cartarescu.
night new-orleans air
There is a velvety sensuality here at the mouth of the Mississippi that you won't find anywhere else. Tell me what the air feels like at 3 A.M. on a Thursday night in August in Shaker Heights and I bet you won't be able to say because nobody stays up that late. But in New Orleans, I tell you, it's ink and honey passed through silver moonlight.
falling-in-love thinking new-orleans
How did you fall in love with New Orleans? At once, madly. Looking back, sometimes I think it was predestined.
past collages
In the grand collage that is Dada, past and future are equally usable.
idiot guides needed
There is no ´Complete Idiots Guide to Creationism,´ but perhaps one is not needed.