Andrei Codrescu Is a Writer

Andrei Codrescu is a writer currently living in New Orleans. He is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist who has adopted English as his medium, though he was born in Romania in 1946 end emigrated to the United States in 1966. he became a citizen in 1981. he isd well-known as a poet and essayist though his literary journal Exquisite Corpse, for which he is editor. The journal has been published as a paper journal but is currently online. He is also well-known for his commentaries on "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio. He also wrote and appeared in the film Road Scholar in 1994. He also holds a professorial chair in English at Louisiana State University ("Andrei Codrescu Bio").

Codrescu celebrates the written word and any means of self-expression in his journal and his writings. In a recent article he writes, was born in a place where people were forbidden to read most of what we consider the fundamental books of Western civilization. Being found in possession of a book such as George Orwell's "1984" could land one in prison for years. (Codrescu, "The Shameful Silence on Cuba by America's Librarians" para. 1)

In America, he has the freedom he was denied in Romania and recognizes its importance. He is an observer of American life and tends to take a wry and humorous approach to what he sees, writing about contemporary life as if he were always a traveler from some other culture. He has been in the U.S. long enough to be part of its culture, but he and many of his characters act as observers, strangers in a strange land, anthropologists studying the life they find here.

Richard Collins notes that Codrescu fled the Stalinist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in the mid-1960s and then traveled to a number of European countries before embracing America, stating that America was "then in the throes of a mostly benevolent revolution, as the country most likely to listen to what he had to say, in the language that he was most likely to say it in. Since then, he has published twenty volumes of poetry (including translations of Max Jacob and Lucian Blaga), four volumes of fiction (including the recent bestseller, the Blood Countess), several collections of his commentaries for National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" program, and four volumes of memoirs. He has also starred in the documentary cult classic film, Road Scholar, in which he wanders across America in search of alternative lifestyles, appeared on the Nightline and David Letterman shows, and become a Professor of English at Louisiana State University, where he edits the lively literary magazine, Exquisite Corpse" (Collins para. 5). Collins notes that throughout Codrescu's various travels and adventures, he has carried with him certain traditonal ideas and themes from Romanian literature, seeing Codrescu as an exile who expresses his particular status in stories like "The Disappearance of the Outside" in which he tells a story of Mioritza, a story that Collins says is reflected in Coderescu's life and that also carries with it the idea both of Romanian culture and of exile. Codrescu starts the story as follows:

One August evening in 1956, when I was ten years old, I heard a thousand-year-old shepherd wrapped in a cloak of smoke tell a story around a Carpathian campfire. He said that a long time ago, when time was an idea whose time hadn't come, when the pear trees made peaches, and when fleas jumped into the sky wearing iron shoes weighing ninety-nine pounds each, there lived in these parts a sheep called Mioritza. (Collins para. 7)

The story is based on a Romanian fable that Collins explains as follows:

In the Romanian folk poem Miorita, a shepherd boy is warned by his beloved ewe, Miorita, that his fellow shepherds plan to murder him and take his flock. Instead of resisting, he accepts his fate, asking only that Miorita go in search of his mother and tell her the story not of how he was betrayed, but of how he was married to the daughter of a powerful King. Thereafter, wherever the ewe wanders, she tells the story -- not the true, unadorned facts of death and betrayal, but a beautiful fiction of a transcendent wedding. (Collins para. 1)

The paallels with the flight of Codrescu from the Ceausescu regime is obvious, though Codrescu has not himself told a fictional story sicne but has sought to find the truth in all that he observes.

Codrescu sees the world through eyes that have experienced the sorts of oppression he fidns in much of the world today, and this separates him from those who only see what the corporate media tends to report. In looking at Iran, for instance, the media tends to see nly the leadershp and to allow antipathy to that leadership to color what is said about the Iranian people as a whole. Codrescu, on the other hand, finds hope in the actions of the people and is fearless in expressing this view, as he does in an article a few months ago in which he writes,

Young Iranians are dying for liberal values we take for granted in the U.S.: democracy, freedom of speech and assembly, women's rights, plurality of views, the right to peaceful dissent. (Codrescu, "Liberal Help for Iran" para. 1)

In this article as in several others, Codrescu takes the liberal establishment to task for failing to see the struggles of those under dictatorial regimes and to support those struggles openly, perhaps out of a fear of backlash in a period in which the fear of terrorism is affecting judgment.

Codrescu's celebration of the dissidents in Iran is in keeping with his celebration of all learning and specifically of the value of books to bring about change. Codrescu often sees books as organic beings, as when he writes,

Books don't like to move much after their first big move, equivalent to human birth, which is out of a bookstore into a house. They don't mind being dragged from a shelf to a couch, but that's their maximum allowance for distance. Books are bourgeois, like cats; they mostly like sleeping and being leafed through. (Codrescu, "A Moving Moment for Me and My Books" para. 4)

Amy Havel refers in a review to Codrescu's "style of rambling consciousness" (para. 4), though she also notes that the essay form he uses is strong and well-developed. His commentaries on NPR follow the same pattern, for what may seem rambling in his speech is carefully shaped to make a point and to create a picture in the mind of the listener. This same style is evident in his narration in the film Road Scholar, a visualization of his style and his approach to social investigation as he literally wanders the landscape and observes behavior.

The range of Codrescu's writings can be seen from a list of his works (see below), and he has also contributed to anthologies and collections edited by others. He is closely associated with New Orleans through his NPR commentaries and his journal, and he has written extensively about the damage to that city and its recovery since Hurricane Katrina. As Codrescu writes, "The American dream came unmoored in New Orleans" (Codrescu, "The Iconography of Hell and Our Guilt" para. 11).

Andrei Codrescu has created a particular place for himself in contemporary literature as an exile with a strong point-of-view and a discerning eye. His humorous approach to his subjects is especially appealing, and in terms of his essays, his sensibility is such that he extols the importance of literature and education, of self-expression, of liberal political views, and of a real anti-Communism that makes the right-wing knee-jerk vision of totalitarianism seem tepid and uninformed.

Works by Andrei Codrescu

Essays

The Life and Times of an Involuntary Genius, G. Braziller, 1975

In America's Shoes, City Lights Publishers, 1983

Craving for Swan, Ohio State University Press, 1986

Raised by Puppets, Only to Be Killed by Research, Addison-Wesley, 1989

Disappearance of the Outside: A Manifesto for Escape, Addison-Wesley, 1990