CURATION
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from this page:
by Augmented Matrix
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
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Name:
Amitava Kumar
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City/Place:
Poughkeepsie, New York
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Country:
United States
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Hometown:
Patna, India
Life
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Bio:
Amitava Kumar is a writer and journalist. He was born in Ara, and grew up in the nearby town of Patna, famous for its corruption, crushing poverty and delicious mangoes. Kumar is the author of several books of non-fiction and two novels. He lives in Poughkeepsie, in upstate New York, where he is the Helen D. Lockwood Professor of English at Vassar College. In 2016, Amitava Kumar was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (General Nonfiction) as well as a Ford Fellowship in Literature from United States Artists.
Kumar’s latest book is Immigrant, Montana: A Novel, published by Faber in the UK, Knopf in the US, and in translation by other publishers worldwide. It was named a notable book of the year by The New York Times, a book of the year by The New Yorker, and listed by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2018. The book came out in India under the title The Lovers: A Novel.
Kumar is the author of Lunch With a Bigot (Duke University Press, 2015, and Picador India, 2015); A Matter of Rats (Duke University Press, 2014 and Aleph Book Company, 2013), A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm A Tiny Bomb (Duke University Press, 2010; also published as Evidence of Suspicion, Picador India, 2010); Nobody Does the Right Thing (Duke University Press, 2010; also published as Home Products, Picador India, 2007); Husband of a Fanatic(The New Press, 2005 and Penguin-India, 2004), Bombay-London-New York (Routledge and Penguin-India, 2002), and Passport Photos (University of California Press and Penguin-India, 2000). His forthcoming nonfiction is entitled Every Day I Write the Book, also appearing in the Indian subcontinent as Writing Badly Is Easy.
Lunch with a Bigot was included in a list of “ten best books of 2015 published by university presses”; A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm A Tiny Bomb was adjudged the best nonfiction book of the year by the Page Turner Awards in 2011; in 2007, Home Products was short-listed for India’s premier literary award, the Crossword Award; Husband of a Fanatic was an “Editors’ Choice” book at the New York Times; Bombay-London-New York was on the list of “Books of the Year” in The New Statesman (UK); and Passport Photos won an “Outstanding Book of the Year” award from the Myers Program for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America.
Kumar has edited five books: Class Issues (New York University Press, 1997), Poetics/Politics (St Martin’s Press, 1999), World Bank Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 2002), The Humour and the Pity: Essays on V.S. Naipaul (Buffalo Books and British Council, 2002), and Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate (Routledge and Penguin-India, 2003).
Amitava Kumar’s non-fiction and poetry has been published in The New York Times, Granta, NPR, The Nation, New Yorker.com, Harper’s, Bookforum, The Guardian, Kenyon Review, Vanity Fair, Guernica, New Statesman, Transition, American Prospect, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Toronto Review, Colorlines, Biblio, Outlook, Frontline, India Today, The Hindu, Himal, Herald, The Friday Times, The Times of India and a variety of other venues. He is the script-writer and narrator of the prize-winning documentary film, Pure Chutney (1997). In 2013, Amitava Kumar collaborated with Teju Cole on an ekphrastic project entitled “Who’s Got the Address?”
Kumar’s academic writing has appeared, among other places, in the following journals: Critical Inquiry, Cultural Studies, Critical Quarterly, College Literature, Race and Class, American Quarterly, Rethinking Marxism, Minnesota Review, Journal of Advanced Composition, Amerasia Journal and Modern Fiction Studies.
He has been awarded writing residences by Yaddo, MacDowell Colony, Norman Mailer Writing Center, Writers Omi at Ledig House, and the Lannan Foundation. He has also been a Barach Fellow at the Wesleyan Writers Festival; he has received awards from the South Asian Journalists Association for three consecutive years, and been the recipient of research fellowships from the NEH, Yale University, SUNY-Stony Brook, Dartmouth College, and University of California-Riverside.
Contact Information
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Email:
[email protected]
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Management/Booking:
Amitava Kumar is represented by the literary agency David Godwin Associates Ltd.
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
On Immigant, Montana
“a bold and provocative counter-narrative… We live in a world of #MeToo; this novel fearlessly unmasks some great men, making political stalwarts and revolutionaries stumble down from their pedestals.”
—The Guardian
“As cerebral as it is sensual… Immigrant, Montana is intelligent, melancholy, quirky. At a time when feelings run high over which immigrants get to call themselves American, Kailash’s idiosyncratic voice adds a welcome tonic note to the debate.”
—Boston Globe
“… Immigrant, Montana is razor-sharp, told meditatively and youthfully, and is just as entertaining as it is serious.”
—PEN America
“…consistently surprising and hilarious… This novel is an inventive delight…”
—Publisher’s Weekly (starred review.)
“an intelligent and intimate novel”
—The Millions
“thought-provoking”
—Entertainment Weekly
“There is originality in Kumar’s use of the autofictional mode, a form which coheres nicely with the novel’s overarching message; in particular, the issue of how migrants are forced to fictionalize about, and to, themselves. This is not to mention, of course, the grotesquerie of state authorities demanding accounts of ‘sufficient’ depredation as a prerequisite for treating migrants with basic dignity… a rich, allusive exploration of immigration and selfhood.”
—Totally Dublin
“Amitava Kumar’s Immigrant, Montana is a beguiling meditation on memory and migration, sex and politics, ideas and art, and race and ambiguity. Part novel, part memoir, this book is as sly, charming, and deceptive as its passionate protagonist, a writer writing himself into being.”
—Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizers, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
“Amitava Kumar’s Immigrant, Montana is romantic, natural, gorgeously detailed, and painfully truthful about exile, grad school, sex and the South Asian man. Few novels have captured the mental texture of immigration so accurately.”
—Karan Mahajan, author of The Association of Small Bombs
Amitava Kumar’s new novel brings to mind W. G. Sebald’s work, but Kumar has a deeper curiosity in the borderless-ness of storytelling as a confrontation to all kinds of borders imposed upon his characters by the external and the artificial, as we see more and more in today’s world. Audacious in its scope yet with refreshing attention to detail, Immigrant, Montana is one of those novels that, with each rereading, a reader will unlock another treasure box of joy.
—Yiyun Li, author of Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life
There is a buoyant energy and hilarity to this account of an Indian student seeking the wide world through the women he meets, but one laughs with growing unease as a darker undercurrent is slowly revealed. An unusual, brave twist on the migrant’s tale.
—Kiran Desai, winner of the Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss, winner of the Booker Prize
Immigrant, Montana is a delight.
—Hanif Kureishi, author of Intimacy and other novels
In Immigrant, Montana, Amitava Kumar pushes at the boundaries of the novel in the best way— reminiscent of Ben Lerner and John Berger—to open up a completely new, thrilling exploration of a particular immigrant experience, one that is fearlessly cosmopolitan and witty in its natural appropriation of cultural materials.
This is a deeply American novel, one that delves into the messiness of love (and sex!), and the meeting point between identity, character, place, and the constant cultural stuff floating around. I was reminded, strangely, reading it, not only of our contemporary explorers—Teju Cole and Ben Lerner and Lydia Davis—but also … Philip Roth, and so many others who had the skill and talent and, above all, the humor to do whatever was necessary to delve into the lives of their characters, even if it meant breaking with traditions and incorporating new ways of using the materials of the culture: we are, their work says, not only internal beings struggling for love and meaning in our lives, but also complex amalgamation of cultural and historical information. Above all, Kumar’s novel was uproariously funny and deeply moving.
—David Means, author of Hystopia
Clips (more may be added)
Most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other (see Wolfram below). To put the Bahians within reach of the whole world, include them in a small-world network.
Wolfram MathWorld
If God is a mathematician, the Matrix is a miracle.
There are certain countries the names of which fire the imagination. Brazil is one of them, an amalgam of primitive and sophisticated, jungle and elegance, luscious jazz harmonics and complex rhythms... The Integrated Global Creative Economy (we invented the concept) uncoils from this sprawling Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix — concatenating branches of a virtual rainforest tree rooted in Bahia, canopy spreading to embrace the entire planet...
Ex Terra Brasilis
Ground Zero for the project was the culture born in Brazil's quilombos (in Angola a kilombo is a village; in Brazil it is a village either founded by Africans or Afro-Brazilians who had escaped slavery, or — as in the case of São Francisco do Paraguaçu below — occupied by such after abandonment by the ruling class):

...theme music for a Brazilian Matrix, from an Afro-Brazilian Mass by
Milton Nascimento
Celebration of this Mass was prohibited by the Vatican and four songs on the recording were forbidden by Brazil's censors (the dictatorship was still in force).
Like a trick of the mind’s light, different places scattered across the face of the globe seem at times to almost exist in different universes, as if they were permeated throughout with something akin to 19th century luminiferous aether, unique, determined by that place's history. Standing on beach or escarpment in Salvador and looking out across the Baía de Todos os Santos to the great Recôncavo...the sertão — backlands — ranging beyond...and mindful of what happened in both, one must be led to the inevitable conclusion that one is in a place unique to history, and to the present:

The Bahian Recôncavo was final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place throughout the entirety of mankind’s existence on this planet.
Brazil absorbed over ten times the number of enslaved Africans taken to the United States of America, and is a repository of African deities (and their music) now largely forgotten in their lands of origin.
Brazil was a refuge (of sorts) for Sephardim fleeing an Inquisition which followed them across the Atlantic (that unofficial symbol of Brazil’s national music — the pandeiro — was almost certainly brought to Brazil by these people).
Across the parched savannas of the interior of Brazil’s culturally fecund nordeste/northeast (where wizard Hermeto Pascoal was born in Lagoa da Canoa — Lagoon of the Canoe — and raised in Olho d’Águia — Eye of the Eagle), much of Brazil’s aboriginal population was absorbed into a caboclo/quilombola culture punctuated by the Star of David.
Three cultures — from three continents — running for their lives, their confluence forming an unprecedented fourth. Great culture is great power. And in a small world great things are possible.
—founders
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
The Brazilian Matrix has been accessed from these places over the past month (a marker can represent multiple accesses):

I opened the shop in Salvador, Bahia in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for magnificent Brazilian musicians.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix, then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC (I've lived here in Brazil for 32 years now) I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
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