An Interview with Andrei Codrescu

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AN INTERVIEW WITH Andrei Codrescu Andrei Codrescu ß Susan Datoli Andrei Codrescu was born in Sibiu, Romania, and emigrated to the United States in 1966. He became a U.S. citizen in 1981. Codrescu is currently a professor of English at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and has been a columnist on National Public Radio since 1983. He is also the editor of Exquisite Corpse, a journal of books and ideas, as well as the author of numerous works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. His works include The Blood Countess, The Repentance of Lorraine, The Muse is Always Half-Dressed in New Orleans and The Disappearance of the Outside. This interview was conducted by Kay Bonetti and Walter Bargen in March 1996, at KOPN radio in Columbia, Missouri. Bargen is a widely published poet and Bonetti is Director of the American Audio Prose Library. An Interview with Andrei Codrescu/íCay Bonetti and Walter Bargen Interviewer: How did you come to the United States? Codrescu: Let's see. I swam across the Danube through miles of barbed wire. ... I ran into people holding hand grenades. . . . No, I came on an airplane with my mother in the mid-sixties, 1965. We left Romania. We were bought by the state of Israel, which at the time was happUy buying freedom for Jews from Romania for the princely sum of five thousand dollars a head. The government paid ten thousand doUars for my mother and me. We were supposed to go to Israel, but we never did. Interviewer: The arrangement wasn't conditional on going to Israel? Codrescu: I'm sure that the Israelis would have liked for us to go there, but my mother had a boyfriend in America; we came here instead. And I didn't want to go to Israel. Interviewer: You also went to Italy and France first, didn't you? Codrescu: Those were transit places while we were waiting for our visas. Interviewer: Why was Detroit the first United States city that you Uved in? Codrescu: The Jewish Health and Family Services was helping immigrants settle in the United States, and Detroit was where our number came up. They had an apartment and some help for us, and we moved there. The Missouri Review · 73 Interviewer: Did you speak any English at the time? Codrescu: None at all. Interviewer: Did you speak other languages besides Romanian? Codrescu: Yes, I spoke German, Hungarian, Russian, Italian and French, but not English. My friend Julian in Rome, another Romanian refugee, and I put together a great sentence in English: "Why don't you kill yourself?" We took the sentence around and were asking people in Rome, walking up to them and saying, "Why don't you kill yourself?" They had no idea what we were talking about until we ran into these guys by the train station, and we asked them. They pointed us to the train station, toward the self-service machines that give you Coke and sandwiches. That was my first sentence in English, and I came here fully cognizant of the fact that the self is a vending machine, and if you put a quarter in it, out pops a new self. Interviewer: Is it true that at one point you went to New York and presented yourself to Allen Ginsberg? Codrescu: Yes. I'd met a guy in Rome who had Allen Ginsberg's address, and he gave it to me. So as soon as I could, I left Detroit and went to New York City, to the Lower East Side, to live there. I went up to Third Street, where Allen lived, and knocked at the door to present my credentials of East European poet-dissident. The door was opened by a totally naked Peter Orlovsky dripping water, who said, "Allen's not home, but come talk to me in the bathtub." I sat on the toilet seat, and Peter didn't say anything, and I didn't say anything. I was about to leave when Allen came home. He turned out to be tremendously generous and gracious, and made me feel right at home. Interviewer: How did you negotiate English at that point? Codrescu: Allen and...

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