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M.T. Karthik

~ works, thoughts, events of 1977 – 2017

M.T. Karthik

Tag Archives: writing

Book Review – Lincoln in the Bardo

16 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by mtk in Book Review, reviews

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Bardo, book, form, George, Karthik, Lincoln, Lincoln in the Bardo, m.t., m.t. karthik, mtk, novel, review, Saunders, structure, the, writing

The originality of the structure of Lincoln in the Bardo immediately sets George Saunders’ debut novel apart. It’s composed of stacked lists of quotations attributed to the souls occupying Oak Hills cemetery in the Georgetown section of our nation’s capitol in 1862; to the President at the time, Abraham Lincoln, and to his son, Willie, recently deceased; and to the night watchman and manager of the cemetery, neighbors, historical figures and eyewitnesses to the events of the time.

I plunged into this work thinking these crazy quotes would continue for a few pages and then return to a normal third or first person narrative. Not only did they not, the form became its own sort of thing with hilarity and piety. The quotations interact, finish one another’s sentiments.

Saunders’ approach from his short stories in Pastoralia, where letters and notes and faxes between characters move plot and create conflicts, is here in fuller effect. This “debut novel” thus actually resides somewhere between the novella and the norm of long-form fiction. Almost as if Saunders still isn’t ready to write one of those “novel” things.

It was initially off-putting because pretty quickly quotes from real historical sources reside in equanimity with a tumbling invention of the thoughts of the dead.

The first time several quotations are used to describe the same person and there are wide disparities implying unreliable reportage, forcing the reader to flip back-and-forth to separate quotes from actual historical texts from made-up ones, it’s a hilarious reminder that we’re in a novel, and it doesn’t matter.

Fiction and Non-fiction swim together.

In the mid-90’s, in San Francisco, it was the fashion among serious young (read: unpublished) writers like me to read the postmodern fiction of structuralists like Harry Matthews, the only American member of the Oulipo, with great love. The Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle bears consideration in advance of talking about Saunders as constructionist.

There is a confidence and ease I love about George Saunders. He really is in command of his craft. With this form, within a matter of a few chapters, you are in his world. If a person were to come over to you and look over your shoulder while you’re reading this novel, it would look to them like insane gibberish.

Saunders’ effort is totally original but like Matthews and the Oulipo before him, uses structure to train you into his narrative – isolating you from being able to “tell” this book.

It was immediately apparent an audio book of this work is basically impossible without dozens of actors and a unique method for attribution, audibly. It’s another thing, a book.

I wonder how the e-versions look/read?

Once aboard, the form establishes a rhythm and momentum that sends this richly imagined exploration of death, life and loss, forward with vigor.

The historical facts surrounding the 16th President and the death of his son at the White House and the Civil War that raged with the nation’s history in the balance are the nest in which Saunders crafts a re-imagining of purgatory. He does so to examine our sense of purpose and meaning – in life and after death.

But rather than a staid, dusty exploration of our historical understanding of the deaths of the time, Saunders populates his work with real people – everyday people who lived and died normal and un-extraordinary lives, filled with sins and loves and hates and pettiness. It is part of his charm in the short form that his characters are easily believable and admirable for their flawed, utterly human qualities. They are our guides to the mind of our beloved Lincoln, and nation.

Saunders’ exceptional understanding of people and compassion for their desires, dreams and regrets is again on display as this diverse collection of souls from many walks of life reveal themselves and the stories of their lives.

The population of the cemetery includes slaves but the book fails to really plunge into the national sin. I read a review that felt the opposite, that the recrimination and oppression of the slaves in the cemetery by the whites was clearcut and evocative, giving voice to the horror, but it was disappointing to me.

As I reflect on the role the slaves do play, it is once again as from a position of rectitude, to be able to look back at slavery and racism to contain it in the national narrative.

There are some serious and violent points of intersection between the black and white population of the cemetery and one particularly poignant one never ends, an eternal struggle. But I can’t help but feel this could have been developed. Slaves and masters in the same cemetery, with only the masters in marked graves, seems a rare territory and an opportunity to explore racism more deeply.

The conceit does fruit into a tangential reference into Lincoln’s conclusions on the matter, conclusions that led to years of bloody war over ending slavery. This book isn’t about that though, nor about the civil war.

It seems to be about how we, all of us, think of ourselves and our lives more than Lincoln or anyone else in 1862 does. It seems to be about how we think of our lives in advance of, and even after, death – whether it’s the death of someone we know or ourselves. In that, Lincoln in the Bardo succeeds with sensitivity and compassion.

Saunders understands un-requite, failure, desperation and the longing we all feel. He also knows how to craft this understanding into an incredibly direct narrative. It’s amazing.

Apparently he has said about his process that the narrative tells him how long it is to be, what it is to be. In this case it became something wondrous.

I am left with so much after this novel. I find I cannot describe it very well. It’s like a magician’s deception. What you find within is worth much more than the conceit.

It is clear though, the magician knows his audience inside and out.

Impressive.

mtk

Reading and Writing

30 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by mtk in beliefs, thoughts

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Tags

blog, Karthik, m.t., mtk, reading, writing

Reading

I am reading Ismail Kadare’s The Accident, and it’s pretty great. Taking me a little longer to finish, because his riddling, nested, suspenseful style requires more effort. I wonder what it’s like in Albanian?

I’ll post a review when I’m done, but one note on a line that made me laugh aloud.

The Accident begins with and concerns a car accident in Tirana, Albania, that results in the deaths of two people about whom little is known but much becomes suspected. Agencies from neighboring countries are – perhaps paranoically – worried these seemingly accidental deaths are part of a larger plot and they come to Albania to investigate. Then amidst the descriptions of each of the interested parties’ procedures, Kadare segues thus:

“As usual, the Albanian intelligence officers took a long time to reach a position which the others had already abandoned.”

which caused me to erupt in my first lol of this finely crafted novel.

The Accident, I. Kadare, Onufri Publishing, Tirana, 2008.

Writing

I haven’t been blogging or writing in a journal in some time and I think it has had an effect on my mind and my behavior which is suspect for its simplicity and uninspired plodding lately.

The fact of the political circumstance I am now living in is no small part of this situation.

I am a brown-skinned, South Asian immigrant to the United States who has been a naturalized U.S. citizen for 36 years. I am routinely subject to racism and discrimination because of my appearance and name.

Before I open my mouth and speak, no one around me knows I have lived in the U.S. since I was two, have attended all public elementary, middle and high schools and the largest public university in this state – that I am as or more local than anyone in the room. This is a racist and bigoted place.

The two-faced behavior which is taught, encouraged and rewarded by the masters – the ones who seek to maintain their pre-eminence – as equally seeks to contain liberated thought and free will, which are discouraged and ultimately punished, through disconnection and isolation. They hope to drive out those who would not agree.

And now the Slum Lord is the Driver Outer in Chief .

Ultimately the way immigrants like myself behave – the things we say, do and write – are not judged in and of themselves as expressions of a free mind, but rather against an “Americanism” that is shifting, biased, calculated and profoundly racist. Freedom to speak out is curtailed through this and other subtle means.

As Octavio Paz wrote decades ago,

“the North American does not tell lies, but he substitutes social truth for the real truth which is always disagreeable.”

– O. Paz, Labyrinth of Solitude, 1950

… this has grown into a fantastic parallel history in which the North American social truth denies – via the mechanism of retelling the story – the genocide and slavery of its historical real truth, denies and marches on with pipelines and religious intolerance and banning people and ideas.

Sitting here, being me, it is thus, hard to write. I know I’m marginalized. Though less than most because I have worked at some of the biggest publication and broadcast entities in this country. I’m both educated to and have experience of how it works – after years in New York, LA, Silicon Valley.

I also know I need specific and intelligent support to write what I want to write, a supremely competent agent, lawyer and contract with a publisher with power. Sticking it here free for the world without support is just stupid and pointless.

So yeah, back to writing reviews then. I will finish the Kadare and have a full review of The Accident next week.

For decades, in bars at this time of year I have raised a glass and told people,

“It is said that most suicides happen on a Monday and that most suicides take place in the month of January. Therefore if you can get through the last Monday in January, you’ve increased your odds already.”

 

– M.T. Karthik, date unknown, some time in mid-1990’s, in San Francisco

 

Today being that last Monday in January,

I wish you all happy travels to the great beyond

and to the rest of you,

congratulations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MTK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why I’m Doing This and Who It’s For – apologies, explanations and a request for readers

15 Thursday May 2014

Posted by mtk in Commentary, etiquette

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apologies, baseball, blog, do, explanations, for, form, Francisco, giants, henry, i, is, it, it's, long, magowan, muchal, Peter, readers, request, San, schulman, sf, this, urban, who, why, writing

Every day or at most every couple of days, I set aside my responsibilities as a father and all my work as an artist and a writer to create the entries on this blog. It costs me time and, arguably, money.

So, recently I’ve wondered why I do it at all. Today, I want to answer that question as an attempt to invite you, dear reader, to read, follow and engage with me.

I do this because I love the Giants and I love to write. I think I have novel ideas about the state of play and the team itself, that are NOT being expressed in the social media realm. I express them on the radio as “M.T.” and on this blog, and in tweets @giantsbaseballc as an attempt to get my two cents in sure, but more, hoping to improve the team and the discourse.

I’ve been a fan of the Giants longer than many of the current fans I read on twitter have been alive. As a 47-year-old, my view is informed by three decades of watching this team, not just the four years since we won our first World Series in SF. I’m no bandwagoner.

Coincidentally, one of my high school friends married into the Magowan family in 1994, so I was lucky to be able to meet Peter and his family and to be a part of the Giants family in a small way, too. I’ll never forget running into Peter Magowan out in front of the park on a gray day in November of 2010. He was just walking on King street toward the parking lot with his brief case in his hand. I looked up and said, “Peter.” (stupidly … I mean I should have said, “Mr. Magowan” .. I was just taken aback ’cause he was standing right in front of me). I’d only met the guy once 15 years earlier, but he stopped, remembered me by name and had a thrilling chat with my son and I about our deliriously exciting World Series win. It felt like we were part of the family.

The same happened in 2012 when SFG productions asked my son and me to participate in the “Together We’re Giant” campaign, following us through the NLCS and World Series games. When they were done editing it, we were amazed to find we were the first people fans hear and see in the critical episode. That was so cool. Our episode even won an Emmy!

So I do this because I want the team to win, but because I believe that can only happen if the fan base is smart, analytical and keeps a high tenor to the discourse. I believe I occasionally make avant-garde analysis in an attempt to push the team and our fans toward a deeper, more nuanced view. I’ll just give you one example fans from 2010 may remember.

In the summer of 2010, when Jeremy Affeldt was blowing starts, I went on a radio and text campaign to praise and push for the employment of Javier Lopez in all of Affeldt’s would be starts until Affeldt could rectify whatever was wrong. I did this loudly, as M.T., and for a time was the only one doing it in early July of that year. I have recordings of the first times I went on KNBR to discuss this.

Mychal Urban picked it up and gave me some air time. The discussion picked up steam … and we all know what’s happened since. The two lefty relievers compliment each other perfectly. Affeldt used the push of Lopez to improve. Instead of competing they worked together. It’s one of the reasons I use a quote from Lopez as this blog’s tagline: “focused on the relentless flow of the positive river.”

Of course, I am not so narcissistic as to believe I changed team chemistry or team management. I do believe however that a lot of fans discussing it may have helped let it seep into staff ideology.

I try to do this kind of thing all year long, to come up with a way we aren’t looking at it or that’s different somehow and push it into the discourse. It’s fun and makes me feel like I am part of the collective will of our team, our fans. I am occasionally provocative and just plain wrong. It’s an inevitability of trying to be avant-garde, to think outside the box. This turns a lot of people off on twitter and elsewhere. But it’s like a prototypical swing-for-the-fences guy … lotsa homers, lotsa strikeouts.

In my opinion, in recent times, the quality of coverage of the Giants has been significantly reduced by the demands of a sportstainment complex that seeks to equate all fans – bandwagoners and old-timers, fans who know little about the game and those with lots of knowledge, the young and the old.

All of this takes place in the social media realm in a very commercially driven way … so diversity of coverage has dropped and reiteration of the same (sometimes banal) points goes on ad nauseum.

The very language of coverage has changed so much that Henry Schulman, whom I admire, has changed his style to suit the social media demands. The beat writer changing good, journalistic, analytical language for petty, social media chit-chat is only one example of something I lament and last year, it got me in trouble.

I went out drinking with some friends who bought too many rounds, more than I usually indulge in. I came home and read one of Schulman’s particularly offensive stretches into what he obviously must do as the beat reporter to keep followers in this new era, and foolishly, I berated him and tweeted that he “only had his job because of the Giants.”

This was misinterpreted by him and others as a critique of his fine work and I paid a price socially (social medially?) for it. People thought I was mean-spirited. IN FACT THAT WAS NOT WHAT I MEANT AT ALL.

What I mean, and I really, really wish Henry would understand this, is that the San Francisco Giants in 2010 saved the SF Chronicle. They were forced to fire and lay off dozens of people. They were going to shutter the paper … close it down.

Then … the Giants went on the epic tear we now celebrate as our first World Series victory in San Francisco. The team saved the paper.

That is what I meant.

I tweeted it, and taken out of context (granted coupled with my criticism of Henry’s work being reduced to inane social media blather), it read all wrong.

I don’t think I owe Henry any more apologies than I have already exchanged with him, but I never got to explain what I meant, that I hate when he is forced to do stupid work to stay “social.” Of course, I appreciate Schulman when he does great work, I have for a decade. I simply meant he and the rest of the workers at his paper are lucky they still have a place to go to work, and it is in large part due to the Championship team that sold papers all summer and autumn of 2010. Their winning ways help to this day.

From the Comcast producers’ ideas of spending so much time covering people’s hats, outfits and behavior in the stands, to the utterly pathetic non-baseball blather of Gary and Larry on KNBR, much of the coverage that seeks to mollify the half-interested under an umbrella of “social-ness” has gotten base and/or way too social, and so it’s often unreadable or unlistenable to me. I enjoy it sometimes of course, but I long for something … else.

So I do this because I want coverage like the kind I produce here: text driven, summative, analytical, long form, which takes critique seriously; instead of the sycophancy of a social media insider’s crowd. I think there is way too much glad-handing and empty critique. The result is that all of the coverage is filled with social media asides, petty complaints about irrelevancies, catty chat, and, increasingly, less baseball analysis and discussion.

As an aside, I do credit Marty Lurie, who joined us only recently – 2010 – and whom at first, I disagreed with considerably more than I do today. He is a true fan of the game and it is a pleasure to talk about it with him … most days 😉 … I hate when you are dismissive of my wilder suggestions, Marty, but I get it, you’re a lawyer.

I wrote this in 2012 about my experiences with Marty Lurie.

So I am writing this for people who agree with me about some of these complaints or attitudes, if you will, and who seek another positive, but honest fan’s perspective. I don’t mean to condescend or to be naive or to offend.

Recently I offended a twitter follower and Giants fan simply by suggesting a statistical response to her single word critique of Bruce Bochy. He pulled a pitcher and she wrote “WHY???”

I replied that the next batter was particularly good against lefties and so management probably was looking to odds. I listed the batting stats in the reply. I was just trying to provide a stat that might explain the skipper’s actions.

What I received in return for this was vitriol and accusations that I was condescending to her. It was totally uncalled for and very representative of what I hear on the radio more and more, and read on twitter, FB and elsewhere. It’s over-emotional, with way too much “homerism” and often devoid of perspective.

I know for a fact I’ve been a fan of the team longer than this particular person has been alive. In fact, I suppose I am on twitter just so I can find some other way to relate to younger people.

But I was just trying to contribute, to take the conversation to another level. I asked her why she had me on blast … and got a loud, defensive reaction. We unfollowed each other promptly afterward. I don’t think I need to apologize, but I will here, since you know who you are. I hope we can re-follow one another someday and this explanation of my somewhat eccentric methods helps to explain my approach.

I just don’t like the way the new media is affecting coverage of the game. I’m old school, I guess. The beauty of a blog is that I can do whatever I want here. … so I have been.

But it takes a lot of time, and unlike Henry, Kruk, Kuip, Dave, Jon, Alex, Baggs, Marty, Haft, BASG, Brisbee or the others I enjoy, I’m not being paid for my efforts. That’s not a plug, just a fact … I don’t seek to make money from this blog … I seek to be taken seriously as an analytical voice in the Giants community. It’d be nice to be invited to contribute.

I am disappointed in much of what I read and hear and see, so I want a place were I can write and re-read the season with analysis that’s leaner and more focused on the overall trending of the team. My own view.

Here I must say guys like Henry, Kruk, Kuip, Dave, Jon, Alex, Baggs, Marty, Haft, BASG and Brisbee are all good at a lot of things. That’s why I read and listen and have read and listened to them all so often, but the overall language, in general, is changing in a way that doesn’t make it enjoyable to a guy like me.

I know there are fans out there who, like me, think of the players as numbers and positions more than personalities; who like to indulge in aggressively calculated second-guessing and deeper analysis of management decision-making; who like to READ longer sentences, more poetic and prosaic approaches to the game itself.

If so, that’s who this blog is for.

I really hope you will join me, but if not, that you will pass this address on to someone else who might. It would be comforting to know there are at least a few out there who like looking at the game for the game it is, talking positively about opponents when they make good plays or perform well; admiring the state of play; and being capable of critique while supporting the Giants as fans and analysts.

Maybe this is all just a long-winded way of saying I don’t think my stuff is working the way everybody else’s is. But I think I am also saying, I don’t really want or expect it to. I’m not a kid-journalist trying to get a job. I’ve already had careers as a sports journalist, a news correspondent, a published author, a collected artist. I’m in mid-career. This is a labor of love for me to try to get back something I miss. If you miss it too, please join me.

Best,

MTK

Tim Lincecum Analysis Articles Collected in One post

03 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by mtk in pitchers

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about, angeles, baseball, debut, dodgers, Francisco, giants, important, ink, Lincecum, los, media, mlb, press, San, sf, sfgiants, start, Tim, writing

POSTSCRIPT:

Tim Kawakami added this after Timmy’s start, but it’s a good read

PREGAME:

Tim Lincecum’s season debut evokes ink including national press like Senior Baseball Columnist Scott Miller at CBS and ESPN’s David Schoenfield calls it an important start. but Bay City Ball’s excellent two pieces analyzing Lincecum’s numbers over the past few years are best

about what to look for tonight

and

about fastball speed’s decay

Alex Pavlovic’s take in the Merc is here,

McCovey Chronicles post by Bisbee is here and some guy called Dylan Kruse adds drama with Tim Lincecum a Giant Question … in that rag the Examiner

I’ll add links to this post as they appear.

But for now, #RallyTimmy Go Giants! #BeatLA

Concerning the Author’s Previous Attempts at Fiction

05 Tuesday May 2009

Posted by mtk in Berkeley, Commentary, essay, journal entries, Letter From MTK, novel, self portrait, thoughts

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fiction, history, Karthik, m.t., m.t. karthik, mtk, nobels, novel, stories, story, writing, writings

Between 1995 and 1997 I wrote my first novel, Mood. Because digital printing and imaging were nascent technologies, and because I was growing increasingly interested in doing art myself, in making visual art myself, Mood was conceived and designed specifically, with a graphic element that drove the creative engine of the work: the passage of an image of the changing moon moving through the margins, and the presence of the night sky on the pages by making the pages dark and the letters light, with the slightest alteration of color and contrast of the pages and letters as the book progresses to correspond to the light provided by the moon as it passed through a fortnight of phases during the course of the narrative of the novel. The pages were to be the night sky and the letters the stars – paragraphs were constellations.

The timing of the narrative takes place during the fortnight represented by the physical pages and artwork, and as a conceit, the main character’s name changes with each phase of the moon. Set in San Francisco, I employed many contemporary businesses – bars, restaurants – that were popular among scenesters then. I punnishly changed names, or not, on a whimsical basis. Anyone who went out to hear live music or DJs or art in The Mission, North Beach, SOMA or elsewhere in the mid 1990’s would recognize many locations by their descriptions in the novel, Mood.

I physically took Mood to New York City in August of 1997, and attempted to have it published. I hand delivered copies to Sonny Mehta at Random House and at all the major houses. This was the exact moment when many of NYCs oldest and most famous publishers were being bought out by large German corporations.

Response to Mood was almost negligible. Only one agent wrote back at all, a handwritten note to say he liked the style but that the work was too experimental. The book was never produced as imagined and for a dozen years has existed as only a single, 187-page hardcopy, bound in 1997 (which may be lost in India), and as files stored on floppy disk. In January 2000, one chapter of Mood was published as a short story by the Conde Nast women’s monthly, Jane magazine. That story, Shanti, was roughly 1500 words long and represents my first published work of fiction that had a national audience. More than 50 readers wrote to an e-mail established to receive feedback. All the feedback was good.

I stayed in New York to attempt to write more and address the publishing industry, but grew increasingly disappointed in the changing face of the industry and writing in general. The New Yorker rejected seven of my submissions between 1997 and 2009, though once they wrote by hand that I was on the right track, “this one is more like what we might run,” the unsigned note read.

In 2001, my short story, Close the Piano, was published in an anthology of South Asian writers out of Toronto, Canada, under the pseudonym Raj Balas. I did a public performance as Raj Balas reading a part of that story aloud to a group gathered at the Asian American Writers Workshop in Manhattan, in April of that year – four months before the September 11th attacks which changed my career trajectory, somewhat, as I began and have been doing much more art, performance, news and journalism rather than fiction writing, ever since.

After 9/11, I nearly stopped writing fiction altogether. This has been an intense period in my life that includes the birth of my son and years of writing hard news and politics for Pacifica Radio, as well as anti-war essays and e-mails for a half decade. I was very politically active during the Bush/Cheney era. I also completed a lot of art, performance and installation work that was politically motivated in response to our changing world.

My explorations into visual art – which began in 1996 with Rigo 23 in San Francisco – began to fruit in New York in part as a result of collaboration with Christopher Wilde, Marshall Weber, Mark Wagner, Sara Parkel, Amy Ferrara and others at Booklyn Artists Alliance, and also because, on an irregular but intense level, I began assisting Rigo 23 with large scale art and installation projects all around the world. I became a working artist somewhere between the year 2000 and 2003 – when most of my placed work found its home in educational and arts institutions in the U.S.A. This is also when I founded Fifty Foot Pine Tree Press (Los Angeles, April 25, 2002) to begin producing limited editions, artist’s books, prints and digital art, now on the web at www.ffptp.org

In the 21st century, I began to make artists books and to do collage, drawing and painting more than to write fiction, however, I did write one more novel and five more short stories while in New York City. None of this work was published, though the novel was posted page by page, online, in its entirety, by a now defunct website. That novel remained online for a full year, December 1999 to January 2001.

I have only finished one story since 9/11, as raising my son has made it nearly impossible to find the mental space and time to write what I want to write. The only fiction I have finished in the last 3 years is Before You Came, the opening chapter of a novel with the working title, The Outsider Inside.

M.T. Karthik

Berkeley, California

May 2009

What Motivates My Writing

17 Monday Feb 2003

Posted by mtk in beliefs, Commentary, essay, journal entries, Letter From MTK, Los Angeles, thoughts

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What motivates you in your work?

In a slow, measured and lucid way, a way that has revealed itself to me with heaviness over the past fifteen years, I have come to believe I am seeing the end of something.

Humankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to humankind.

To isolate oneself in contemplation, no matter how comfortable it may seem a position from which to view the world, is simply unacceptable; costly.

We must use the extremely complex tools we have invented for this purpose: to focus our energies and work toward more equitable and efficient distribution of the earth’s available resources.

We must put an end to warmongering.

We must disarm and then de-militarize first the United States.

It must be held accountable for its excesses and waste. It must assume responsibility for the Colonial Era and the good U.S. Americans, who know the truth, must begin the task of admission of the ongoing genociding of cultures in USA, of the economic reality that the current power structure has been built on slave’s labor [for the Millennium?]

Rampant, bloated overdependence as a result of the Era of Capitalism must be tamed and harnessed to bring the world together peacefully.

Those incapable of diplomacy should be jailed until they have calmed down and seen the error of their course.

I am motivated to aid those who see that thieves and dacoits have stolen the greatest of the earth’s resources for the last five hundred years and are not through yet and must be held to task for such barbaric idiocy; that seeks to interfere with the great continuity of human thought.

The USA is the world’s greatest impediment to peace, stability and progress; it must be told by humanity to stand down in the exact manner that international humanism told South Africa, “Aparteid will not stand.”

M.T. Karthik, February 17, 2003, Los Angeles

How Long Have I Been Writing

21 Tuesday Jul 1998

Posted by mtk in beliefs, Commentary, essay, journal entries, Letter From MTK, NYC, philosophy, thoughts

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answer, esay, essay, how, Karthik, long, mtk, new, NYC, question, Rhae, t., writing, york

July 21st 1998ce

Q: “How long have you been writing?” – T. Rhae Watson, question posed by e-mail – July 17th, 1998ce

A: I have never answered this question before. I include here a discussion only of the things I still possess – that are thus verifiable.

I began writing a journal entry to myself about my own life as I perceived it at the age of 9. It was in a small (maybe 5″ x 5″), square journal given to me by my mother. It had a plastic laminated cover that was mostly white. It had green-bordered edges. There was an image of a yellow, sparrow-like bird on the cover. It sat on a twig or branch of some tree. Inside I made drawings of Snoopy, the dog from the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz, riding his doghouse as a WWII pilot chasing “The Red Baron”.

I wrote in it that at night I was listening to classical music on the radio before I went to sleep. I wrote about the San Antonio Spurs basketball team and about other sporting events. I wrote about what we did after school i.e. “built a fort … went caving.” I wrote in it that I had been watching different television shows and of how my sister and I were getting along. I wrote about being afraid to bring home a report card to my father with a grade of b minus in one of my math classes.

I wrote my first short story when I was 8. It was called, “The War of the Saturnanians and the Jupiteranians and other Space Stories” It was typewritten by Ms. Hutzler, my second grade teacher and the first teacher I had in Texas, in the United States. It had drawings that I made myself. I still have it.

The journal entries continued and I began to write about pubescence – about girls in school I had crushes on who rejected me (Jill Prather in the 6th grade) or who took an interest (Michele something-or-other … is it significant that I can’t remember her last name but can remember Jill’s?). I wrote about my teachers and friends whom I felt separate from, separate because of my appearance as an Indian kid.

I began writing more serious journal entries and poetry in the autumn of my 14th year. That year I became an American citizen by oath and against my will and that same year, my parents, after years of bickering and fighting became one of the first Indian families in the US and the first in my ancestry to divorce.

I wrote about loneliness and disaffection from the society in Texas where I lived. I was depressed. Writing helped me to feel less alone. But more than the writing – which I showed to no one, reading helped a great deal. Listening to Jazz was deeply influential to my writing.

I read “Music is My Mistress” (the autobiography of Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington) that year. I also first read the Autobiography of Malcolm X. I was listening to Ellington, Strayhorn, Monk, Miles, Coltrane and other jazz musicians avidly. I had taken an interest in Russian literature in this time, too. In particular the work of Anton Chekhov – I can remember that at that time I read “The Bet” and it “changed my life”. I also read a great deal of Kurt Vonnegut’s work, whom I admired.

I wrote more and more short stories and poetry in the next ten years. In high school, I wrote stories and poems – which again I showed to no one, save a few friends, and by young adulthood to one or two lovers (though the use of that term for what we were then is laughable). I wrote a couple of stories for a class in high school – Mrs. Garner’s Honor’s English class. The first one was a fantasy story about an E.R. Burroughs’s Conan-like character who traveled into a mine shaft. The second was a rip-off of “Miracle on 34th Street,” save that it was stupider and less interesting – it was called totally unoriginal by Jessie Burstein, the most talented writer in my class, who had her own column in the school paper called, “Jabberwocky”. I heard the class comment on the story from outside the window. Mrs. Garner who was a great English teacher, told the class who the author of the story was though she promised the readings would be anonymous. Later, she told me she revealed me because she thought, “I could take it.”

In college I wrote about many things. I wrote a paper on the Kurds in Turkey (this was before the big American press blow-up). I wrote about Civil Disobedience and Constitutional Law. I wrote a short story about a guy named Joe who had the most boring job in the world because he was assigned to watch the world’s most accurate clock, to be sure it stayed accurate. Then one day it stops and time stops and alien creatures land and tell him they have been stopping time and visiting all along and that the clock is totally inaccurate but that we all don’t know it because time is a relative concept. Joe is flabbergasted and amazed. It was a stupid story with a bad ending.

I was deeply influenced at this time by the works of Howard Fast, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Lewis Carrol and other writers of the “fantastic.” I had been reading science fiction for years. I also began my first serious pursuit of the writings of Buddhists. Prior to this time I had been reading only casually works by Paul Reps and other translators.

After college I worked for a while in Austin, Texas and then made the decision that I needed to leave the United States.

I moved to Asia on a one way ticket and with $10 US on September 6th of 1990. For the next three years I wrote journals and stories. I wrote journal entries about my travels and changes in perspective. I learned Chinese and went back to India. I traveled in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and India. I wrote a great deal about language and about my withering and often depressed self. I felt free and alone for the first time in my life. I felt very alone and depressed.

When I returned to the US – again against my will – I went back home to Texas, took the Graduate Record Exams with my mother and then made a series of blunders – moved to Washington DC for four months, then to New Orleans for two years to study for my Graduate degree at Tulane, a “mistake” that cost me $40,000, which I haven’t yet paid back. I left New Orleans in December of 1993 in a driveaway car, with $1000 in cash and up to my ass in debt. I arrived in San Francisco on December 24th, 1993 – Christmas Eve.

I walked and walked and thought a great deal that night. There was a crescent moon over the Transamerica pyramid. I went back to a friend’s place where I was staying temporarily and wrote a list of goals for the time to come. This list included the first practical discussion of my desires to write. I made a list of items I wanted. A novel and a collection of short stories appeared on that list. I intended to use my time in San Francisco to create a body of work.

I worked for ten months at Genentech, Inc. with Dr. Don Francis on an AIDS vaccine project. I saved about $3000. I wrote three short stories in that time – all of which sucked because work was a distraction. One was called The Plan and was about a marathon dance contest. On January 9th of 1995, I met Jonas Salk at a meeting regarding the prophylactic AIDS vaccine project upon which I was working at Genentech. The next day I quit and moved to Ecuador. I arrived on January 15th and began writing what would become a novel and the journalistic experiment I would finish two years later. Jonas Salk died while I was in South America.

For four months I wrote journal entries, some poems and a handful of story ideas while in South America. I spent the time considering what I wanted to achieve. I moved back to the US (again) and sublet an apartment in Austin, Texas. I gave myself a test period, telling myself I would try to write for two months. I reasoned that if I spent the two months just hanging around Austin, enjoying myself and lounging then writing wasn’t for me. If however I actually spent the time writing then I would see into what it would grow. I stopped cutting my hair.

Those two months were the birth of the novel.

I moved back to San Francisco, couch-surfed homeless for ten months, entered the 1995 Anvil Press 3-Day Novel Writing Contest on Labor Day, placed in the top ten, continued writing and writing and writing and finished a skeleton of the novel by January. By February shit was pretty lame – I was broke and homeless.

My friends and family assisted me in getting a room in an apartment on Hayes Street. That was April of 1996. I set myself a deadline of January 15th, 1997, to finish the novel and the writing experiment. In August I was extremely depressed, writing a lot and feeling alone.

That month, I gifted a story I wrote called Eulogy, to my friend Missy as a birthday present. I read it aloud at a party at her house while having my hair, which had grown long by then, braided by you, an editor. You called and expressed interest in my work and between then and January you know the story: you edited fifteen of my works.

On January 17th, two years and two days after I began, I ended the novel, produced a copy and took it to Chronicle Books in San Francisco. It was a sunny Friday afternoon that I chronicled carefully. I walked the book to Chronicle and dropped it off. The receptionist was reticent to accept it because she said it should have been mailed. Then, after consultation by telephone to the inner sanctum, she finally took it.

It was rejected within ten days without being read. I have a confession from the person who signed the letter of rejection that the book was never read. I wrote a reply to the rejection, sealed it in the book and closed it up.

Over the next five months I turned thirty years old and produced the books “Mood”, “Truthful Conceits”, “Sucka Free” and “An Examiner’s Chronicle” – self published texts all: a novel, collection of short stories, of essays and journals.

On June 6th, I decided I would move to New York. During the time I spent in SF, South America, Austin and back in SF, I had created four novels, fifteen short stories, a collection of essays and hundreds of thousands of words in journal entries. I had made a body of work. Megan Sapperstein cut off most of my hair and then I shaved my head.

I moved to New York in summer – writing a novel called “Incognito” on the way across the country – and sending post cards to Sonny Mehta, the president of Knopf publishing as we traveled. I told him I would arrive in New York and deliver my novel to Random House publishing on September 1st. I arrived Sept. 1st and went to Random House. It was closed for Labor day.

I returned on September 2nd and delivered the book, which Mr. Mehta subsequently saw. He suggested I pass it to two other editors. I also gave him a copy of the novel “Incognito” which I wrote while traveling. The novel was a post-modernist collage of flyers and text and characters created in the spirit of “On the Road.” It was written by hand during the summer of the 50th anniversary of India’s independence and the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s travels with Cassady that became “On The Road.” Incognito is comprised of four journal-sized books and a Compact Disc which I made in Seattle – it is intended to be a disc of one of the characters of the novel singing and telling a story. It is 60 minutes long.

Once “Incognito” was returned by Knopf, I sent it back out on the road by passing it to a reader without my name in it, in a shoebox. “Incognito” is presumably still traveling from reader to reader.

Since that time I have heard nary a word from Random House about my book. The company has been bought by Bertelsmann. I never again heard whether my book was accepted or rejected. I have written three stories in New York City. The first two were called “Mahmoud Singh,” and “The Rubric of Philpot Dot Doc”. The most recent piece I have written is called “Close the Piano”.

I am alone in New York. … and that is the story of my writing career. … I have never written that down nor said it aloud before. Now I have a job I hate – in administration at The New School University in Manhattan. I can be reached at 212/ 229-5662 x286. Messages may be left for me at 212/ 229-5662 x286. Every word I have written here is true to the best of my knowledge.

M.T. Karthik

This blog archives early work of M.T. Karthik, who took every photograph and shot all the video here unless otherwise credited.

Performances and installations are posted by date of execution.

Writing appears in whatever form it was originally or, as in the case of poems or journal entries, retyped faithfully from print.

all of it is © M.T. Karthik

a minute of rain

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