Books, Publishing, India, etc.

At the Heart . . . Manifestos of a Literary Freedom Fighter

2012-01-30T09:43:00.000-08:00

Below is the blurb for the book that has been edited and republished at Smashwords:

AT THE HEART OF THE EMPIRE: Manifestos of an Indian Literary Freedom Fighter
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/43072

The author, Richard Crasta, has campaigned for equal freedom of expression for all people, and refused to be patronized and pigeonholed by the Western establishment as an "ethnic writer" who must follow a different set of rules and behave differently--a system he describes as literary apartheid. This collects the ballsy Prefaces to his major books, including a few unpublished versions.

Prefaces were once considered to be a high art form, on occasion more important and memorable than the book itself. This 11,000-word book, composed almost entirely of Prefaces, is a window into Richard Crasta's mind and constitutes in effect his literary manifesto, his philosophical position on what it means to be an Indian, colonial, or nonwhite writer in the world. It shows how his thinking evolved over 20 years of writing, he having now arrived at the point where he simply considers himself to be a citizen of the planet, with loyalty only to humanity. This collection includes the Preface to the fiery "The Unauthorized India", of which only 200 copies were printed, and most destroyed. It also includes the never published original preface to "The Killing of an Author"--passionate, vulnerable, warm. One of the most lively prefaces in here is the "Anti-Literary Manifesto" that forms the preface to "What We All Need". The alternative view, the non-mainstream view, the literary criticism you have not been exposed to, because it is not Establishment-sponsored. To ignore it is to collude with the Establishment and its fascism, to be a hater of minorities and minority viewpoints, and to accept the Establishment viewpoint like good sheep.

William Faulkner on Writing, and The Revised Kama Sutra

2012-01-29T20:20:00.000-08:00

I have to admit that this quote, which I read well before I had published a single book, has had an outsized influence on my writing career and my life:

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much that he can't get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies.--William Faulkner, Paris Review Writers at Work Interviews.

If "The Revised Kama Sutra," "Impressing the Whites," and "The Killing of an Author--three books that some of my champions have regarded as having more balls than an entire shelf of Indian writers (while also honoring a few other courageous writers who belong on a higher shelf)--were at all written and published, I owe it to these lines from William Faulkner

So, to all those people who have known me, and didn't quite understand my passion and single-mindedness, and therefore didn't quite know me--you now know the secret.

For a child who came from a middle to lower middle class Indian family in a small Indian town, who did not meet a real author until he was around 18, and that too just briefly, and who had no family or other connections in the literary world, this was the only way the 10 books I have published could have been written. And they exist, and at least three of them will last for many, many years--of that I am sure. But it isn't over yet: I do have an obligation: to my remaining ten books: the ones that are sitting in my computer, waiting for me to finish them and give them to the world.

Obama Rules The World, but not The Whole World in HIs Pants

2012-01-24T20:23:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama gave a terrific speech, in effect announcing that he (through America) rules the world. (And yes, he is head and shoulders above all his opponents.)

But does he (or any male) rule THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS PANTS?

This comic novel, adapted from "The Revised Kama Sutra", goes free on Amazon for 24 hours . . . in about an hour. It argues otherwise: that the world in our pants rules us.

Here is the amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006FJNV9M
Here is the link:

Father, Rebel, Dreamer: An Excerpt

2012-01-20T18:34:00.000-08:00

An Excerpt from this Eclectic, surprisingly varied book:

This is why every act of injustice matters, is important. For injustice is like a cancer, like a hundred thousand cancers growing in the different body parts of society.

Just the other day, legendary Indian editors N.Ram and Vinod Mehta were on a television show discussing journalistic ethics. But do they truly care and ensure that they and every employee of theirs, while wielding their enormous power, try to be just in every instance? And what about in publishing, which is an arm of the Press, a tool of freedom of expression and the democratic process of debate and of intellectual enquiry: does it not too deserve an Ombudsman?

To return to the story of Beauty Queens, Children and the Death of Sex: About two months before the launch date, the editor who had embraced the original manuscript and concept so enthusiastically was suddenly determined to suppress a few chapters. I resisted those attempts, but did not have the energy or the heart to withdraw a book that had been growing for seven months in my womb, and within two months would be out and alive in the world, a loveable if somewhat defective creature. So I compromised and accepted some cuts, though not all the cuts I noticed when the book actually came out.

So the baby that emerged was a book in which some parts had been ripped out: a baby missing an arm, say. However, because the ripping out was hurried, not all and indeed not most of the dangerous elements of the book had been cleanly ripped out. Which is not so easy to do with my work; a fan of my next book, Impressing the Whites, remarked that if I had submitted it to a regular Indian publisher, the final printed work, after the publisher had cut out the dangerous material, would have contained just two pages: the title page, and the Acknowledgments page So the end product was still dangerous, though somehow damaged, bleeding, not whole, lacking its integrity, a flawed child.

And this snippet about Mangalore:

And now, twenty-four tumultuous years later, I was on my way to see Dennis, a little nervous yet excited about the beans he might spill.

At the bus stand, where yellow-plastic-enclosed copies of "Rati Shastra" (the poor Indian's "Sensuous Man"—but this is a post‑1970 development) are still sold side-by-side with oranges and jasmine flowers, I took an autorickshaw past Kirti Mahal, St. Mary's Convent, and St. Joseph's Bakery to the path through dense tropical foliage—you had to walk now, assuming you could pick up your pulverized bones and step out of the auto‑rickshaw—and you were now in front of the bamboo‑obstacle that was the gate to Dennis's house.

This was pretty much the route I had traversed as a child. Things hadn't changed all that much since then. Dennis's house, an old, tiled affair with a veranda and a porch, enveloped in a leafy cocoon of tropical darkness, recalled that very time. As did the cobwebbed yellow walls, on which stained gloomy, framed photographs of various dead relatives lying in state alternated with occasional wedding photographs of assorted relatives, the newlyweds seemingly in a state of shock. A single, dominant steel cross completed the picture: Mangalore's obsession with death, marriage, and religion. Dennis, a lean man in a chocolate-brown sweater, lungi, and crudely cut leather sandals, his scarecrow frame topped by a shock of white Bertrand Russell hair, his glass-magnified eyes, Dr. Spock ears, and bony, accusing fingers magnifying the impression of eccentric intensity, looked most of his ninety-five years—until he started to hold forth from his "easy chair" pulpit in the manner and voice of an ancient but impassioned priest.

Also on Apple, Amazon Kindle, Nook, etc:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0051OEQPA

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/64287

http://amzn.to/jr03jW

Daddy, Am I A Black?

2012-01-16T07:54:00.000-08:00

In honor of Martin Luther King Day, I publish this excerpt from IMPRESSING THE WHITES:

DADDY, AM I A BLACK?

One day, my five-year-old son came home from kindergarten with a look of concern on his face. “Daddy, the other children in my class said to me today that I am a black. I told them, ‘No. My grandmother is black, but I am white.’ Daddy, am I black?”

James, like my two other sons, is an American citizen, and the son of Indian parents—parents from the real sub-continent India, ten thousand miles away on the other, darker side of the planet. From his Indian parents he has developed a love for dosas, tandoori chicken, and boiled rice mixed with yogurt.

James is also, despite his light brown skin, one of the most splendid and seductive Americans I have known: an innocent, a helper, a sharer, unquenchably enthusiastic for knowledge and life, one who had gone through two years of pre-school being universally loved by his classmates and never for a moment considering himself different. Obviously, the kindergartners in his nearly all-white school in this middle-class Long Island neighborhood had now become aware of a color scheme dividing God’s children, a two-tone color scheme in which you were either black or white.

My first impulse was to react the way most Indians do, the way I myself have responded once or twice, unthinkingly and perhaps with cowardice, to a misinterpretation of my skin color: “We are not black, we are not white. We are Indians.”

But the involvement of my child now endowed the question with a wicked complexity, making me hate the question itself, bringing forth memories, making me want to tell him the truth of my experience . . . that color causes pain. That color causes condescension. That color causes invisibility. That, even though I knew many racist Indians and many extraordinarily anti-racist Americans, it didn’t make me feel any better whenever a white American, to whom I had been introduced on a previous social occasion, obliterated my existence with a blank look of non-recognition (“All you coloreds look the same”?). Or that once, at a convention of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, I was told firmly by a literary agent that I would be unlikely to be able to write English the way an American did.

But James was just an innocent child, gloriously free of my prejudices—and America had been good to him. In five years of life, he had run through more than a hundred toys, whereas in the first twenty years of life, his father had about five, mostly cheap thingamajigs that lasted about three days. He had a chance to get a wonderful education, free. And he was that sacred, awesome thing, the unattainable dream of many unfortunate millions around the world: an American citizen entitled to a crack at the American way of life. For which many an American President was and is willing to rush spunky troops and smart bombs halfway across the world.

So it would be unkind to contaminate his rosy innocence with my agonized, passionate feelings about the color standard. And if I couldn’t corrupt him with my experience, could I at least give him an upbeat philosophical lecture on blackness, on how color is neutral, that color has no moral value, that color is a state of mind, that color is just God’s scheme for diversity.

I couldn’t, because he wanted a concrete answer. And wasn’t this, after all, a matter-of-fact question about color?

But the precise color of my skin is rather imprecise. I am often mistaken for Arab, Latin American, or Iranian (“Go back to Eye-ran! A—hole!” passing motorists had yelled at me during the hostage crisis). After many months without exposure to the sun, as at the end of a vacationless winter, I may even be asked—admittedly by the not-too-perceptive—if I am Greek or Italian or Turkish. Which goes to show that color in itself doesn’t tell too many tales. Despite its ghastly importance in human affairs, skin color is pretty unreliable as a teller of stories. Still, your color had better not tell the wrong tale.

Continued in IMPRESSING THE WHITES, which can be obtained at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004VNMBLI

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52468

Your Favorite Authors and How to Support Them

2011-12-30T04:02:00.000-08:00

Hi,

I would like to link this blog to a blog post by my friend Faith Mortimer. Please don't miss reading Point 3, 4, 7, 8, and most importantly, Number 10: in which she explains why independent authors are crucial, and what has changed in the book universe..

http://www.faithmortimerauthor.com/5/post/2011/12/your-favourite-authors-how-to-support-them.html

Yes, I would love to get some "likes," some reviews, and some checking of tags on my books.
Thank you all, and Happy New Year
Richard

Enter the New Year Laughing

2011-12-26T08:22:00.000-08:00

Enter the New Year with a smile on your face. If you or your friends haven't read these, these books are comprised of both silly and sophisticated laughter on many levels: social, political, cultural, satire, parody, sex. One magazine's review of my writing said, "This is not your everyday humor."

I WILL NOT GO THE F**K TO SLEEP : the print edition(for those who must have it in printed format!): http://www.createspace.com/3714495

and here: http://www.amazon.com/Will-NOT-Go-Sleep/...

THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS PANTS: a short, highly readable and accessible adaptation of my widely published novel (called "very funny" by Kurt Vonnegut) The Revised Kama Sutra, containing the juicy middle parts. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006FJNV9M

Only 200 pages versus 440 pages for the full novel. It has already received a 5-star review on Amazon: "Hilarious. . . .Highly recommended."

A SHORT HISTORY OF PECKERS
http://www.amazon.com/Short-HIstory-Peck...

LORD BUSH OF IRAQ: (A satire on the Bush family and its Iraqi adventures) https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/11...

THE REVISED KAMA SUTRA (my bestselling and best reviewed book):

"Should be a recognized classic."--Mark Ledbetter. "Absolutely spectacular."--Afternoon Despatch & Courier "Gritty."-The New York Times "Very funny."--Kurt Vonnegut

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003VYCARI

Nook: http://bit.ly/iHYeNM

Smashwords: http://bit.ly/lVpczz

Apple: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-revi...

I WILL NOT GO THE F**K TO SLEEP (my bestselling e-book): pure (and impure) humor for the open-minded:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0053GBUYG

Apple: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/i-will-n...

Nook: http://bit.ly/jazP3W

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/642...

"For the rebel in you. Made my day"--Amazon 5-star review

LINGAM MASSAGE: A SAFE SEX, ANTI-WAR, AND ECONOMIC RECOVERY TOOL:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/114...
http://www.amazon.com/Lingam-Massage-Anti-War-Economic-ebook/dp/B006M3DZOM
What We All Need: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004W8CZW2
http://amzn.to/f66fDm
Nook: http://bit.ly/kRMzgb

And, not funny, but moving and quite loved by those who read it:

EATEN BY THE JAPANESE

"As a war memoir, ranks with the best."--Amazon 5-star review.

http://amzn.to/eWVexV

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/502...

http://itunes.apple.com/uk/book/eaten-by...

And general links:

All my books on Apple: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/richar...

All my books on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001ICH6H4

My web site: http://www.richardcrasta.com

For a few other suggestions, please visit this blog:

http://richardcrasta.blogspot.com/2011/1...

Thank you, and all good wishes for the new year,

Richard Crasta

Origin of The Whole World in His Pants

2011-12-17T18:32:00.000-08:00

How did I decide on the title THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS PANTS?

One day my son Rohit, when he was 7, came home from school and burst out singing:

He’s got the whole world in his pya-ants,

He’s got the whole world in his pya-ants!

[2-minute break for hysterical laughter]

He’s got the Mummies and Daddies in his pya-ants,

He’s got the Mummies and Daddies in his pya-ants

[hysterical laughter, forced to give up song.]

It was my precious memory of his singing this song, and of the beautiful father-son bond that accompanied it, that inspired the title of this book.

Which is up here

http://www.amazon.com/Whole-World-His-Pants-ebook/dp/B006FJNV9M

and will be free for the next 2 days and will be $3.47 or $2.99 thereafter.

By the way, the title of my next book: THE MILKY WAY IN HIS SHORTS.

New books for Christmas and the New Year: An Open Xmas Letter to Friends

2011-12-16T05:44:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

As Christmas time approaches and many of you will head out on vacation and not be checking your email, this is the time to wish you a Merry X’mas and a Happy New Year, and also to announce with delight my new publications, as well as to provide links for a few other favorite titles. I hope you consider bringing joy into someone’s life, and shopping at home or on your I-phone/I-pad/computer with a convenient click (on Amazon, the gold button on the top right side that says, “Gift It”—no charge to deliver an e-book):

NEW TITLES:

I WILL NOT GO THE F**K TO SLEEP : the print edition(for those who must have it in printed format!): http://www.createspace.com/3714495
and here: http://www.amazon.com/Will-NOT-Go-Sleep/dp/1466480173

THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS PANTS: a short, highly readable adaptation of my widely published novel (called "very funny" by Kurt Vonnegut) The Revised Kama Sutra, containing the juicy middle parts. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006FJNV9M

Only 200 pages versus 440 pages for the full novel. It has already received a 5-star review on Amazon: "Hilarious. . . .Highly recommended."

A SHORT HISTORY OF PECKERS:
http://www.amazon.com/Short-HIstory-Peckers-Ourselves-ebook/dp/B006PUS4WA

LORD BUSH OF IRAQ: (A satire on the Bush family and its Iraqi adventures) https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/115571

Coming shortly:
FATHER, REBEL, MANGALOREAN

OLD FAVORITES:

THE REVISED KAMA SUTRA (my bestselling and best-reviewed book):
"Should be a recognized classic."--Mark Ledbetter. "Absolutely spectacular."--Afternoon Despatch & Courier "Gritty."-The New York Times "Very funny."--Kurt Vonnegut

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003VYCARI

Nook: http://bit.ly/iHYeNM

Smashwords: http://bit.ly/lVpczz

Apple: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-revised-kama-sutra-a-novel/id421345552?mt=11

I WILL NOT GO THE F**K TO SLEEP (my bestselling e-book): pure humor for the open-minded:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0053GBUYG

Apple: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/i-will-not-go-the-f-k-to-sleep/id444134043?mt=11

Nook: http://bit.ly/jazP3W

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/64273

"For the rebel in you. Made my day"--Amazon 5-star review

EATEN BY THE JAPANESE
"As a war memoir, ranks with the best."--Amazon 5-star review.

http://amzn.to/eWVexV

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/50202

http://itunes.apple.com/uk/book/eaten-by-japanese-the-memoir/id436268256?mt=11

And general links:

All my books on Apple: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/richard-crasta/id421345553?mt=11

All my books on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001ICH6H4

My web site: http://www.richardcrasta.com

For a few other suggestions, please visit this blog:
http://richardcrasta.blogspot.com/2011/11/cyber-monday-and-intelligent-laughter.html

I have survived a challenging year thanks to a few friends, and perhaps a certain buffalo-like stubbornness within me. I have continued to focus on writing, though first concentrating on e-books as my turnaround strategy, because, theoretically, there are no gatekeepers, and if just 1% of the owners of Kindles and I-pads worldwide were to try even a single book of mine, my luck would change.(Meanwhile, I am grateful to have a comfortable bed to sleep in and food on the table.) The ultimate goal is to be financially free so I can complete the important and serious works in progress.

Thank you, and all good wishes for the new year,

Richard Crasta

The Whole World in His Pants: or, How to Lose Your Virginity in 39 Agonizing Steps

2011-12-13T04:05:00.000-08:00

Yes, that's the title of my new book, and it is available only here:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006FJNV9M

and for 2 days at an introductory price of 99 cents.

Here is the Preface:

It was at the Stonecoast Writers Conference in Maine, in the Summer of 1990, that novelists Monica Wood and Denise Gess said to me, after reading my novel’s summary and the first 30 or so pages: “There is material here for four novels. You would be wasting it by compressing it all into just one book.”

And now, after many years of having published The Revised Kama Sutra, I realize that they may have been right. The Revised Kama Sutra is many novels combined into one: a novel of childhood, adolescence, an adult quest, and the story of a Third World male with an American Dream. Professional reviewers have described the novel as containing a Dickensian childhood, a story of pubescence and adolescence with elements of Catcher in the Rye and Portnoy’s Complaint in it. (Incidentally, some of the most enthusiastic and genuine reviews for the novel came from middle-class Indian reviewers who said that this was truly a story of a post-Independence Indian male, the story of the middle-class, with the veils off, a story that is completely defiant of, and uncensored by the rules that limit most other fiction by Indian writers.)

I also realize that The Revised Kama Sutra is faced with a drawback as an e-book, one that it did not face as a printed book. Unlike ordinary printed books, which you flip through until something in the book catches your attention, makes you laugh, or hypnotises you with its prose, an e-book gives you just the first 30 or so pages as a free sample. And if those don’t connect with you instantly, you abandon it for a different book.

Which is why, in this novel, which is an adaptation of The Revised Kama Sutra, I have decided to concentrate on the universal story of puberty, childhood, and coming of age, giving just enough historical background to the character so as to bring it and the Indian setting to life. (This historical background may again fill up the sample, so I have priced the book relatively low so as to encourage would-be readers to take a chance, regardless of the sample.)

I hope I succeed, because this story, even if it is just a part of the original book, is very dear to me.

And, as I have met readers who have told me they have read The Revised Kama Sutra more than once, and have returned to favorite passages again and again, I don’t think that reading The Whole World in His Pants will diminish your pleasure should you later decide to try The Revised Kama Sutra.

My books at the Apple Itunes Bookstore

2011-12-02T21:39:00.000-08:00

Yes, my e-books are also available at a number of locations besides Amazon. For international (non-US, non-UK) customers, it might sometimes be cheaper to buy from Apple rather than from Amazon, because there is no international delivery charge.

However, do note that the reviews are more honest on Amazon Kindle than on Apple. I notice many negative ratings, but no reviews, for "I Will Not Go the F to Sleep." These have been left by mean enemies who don't have the balls to sign their real names. I urge you to go and correct them and rate my books fairly at Apple.

So here are a few links:

USA: http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/richard-crasta/id421345553?mt=11
UK: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/richard-crasta/id421345553?mt=11
Australia: http://itunes.apple.com/au/artist/richard-crasta/id421345553?mt=11

My books are also available from Smashwords, Kobo, Google E-books, and Barnes & Noble Nook. And, as we are on the subject, I might as well give you the other links:

Smashwords (all formats): http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/richardcrasta

Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/richard-crasta?store=ebook

Kobo: http://www.kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=Richard+Crasta&t=all&f=author&p=1&s=numpurchases&g=both&l

Sony: http://ebookstore.sony.com/author/richard-crasta_200906

The books on each platform are not the same; I sometimes unpublish books, and it isn't easy to keep up with every platform.
Confession: I don't own an e-reader yet; I'm waiting for the moment when my royalty income exceeds my rent. But I can't think of a nicer gesture during Christmas and the New Year to give someone a gift that will keep them laughing. Such as:

Paperback:

Createspace (printed book) : http://www.createspace.com/3714495

http://www.amazon.com/Will-NOT-Go-Sleep/dp/1466480173

I WILL NOT etc. etc. http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/i-will-not-go-the-f-k-to-sleep/id444134043?mt=11

Intelligent and sometimes Silly Laughter for Christmas & the New Year

2011-11-26T19:18:00.000-08:00

If you would like to give the gift of intelligent laughter to your sophisticated, cosmopolitan, sensitive, and nonconformist friends (and by intelligent laughter I don't mean brainy MENSA jokes involving calculus and trigonometry, just humor for non-Fox-News-viewers with an awareness of the world outside America), and if saving $1 or $2 per book is less important to you than supporting an independent writer who cannot compete with Amazon and the Big Guys, who have the power of volume, here are a few specific suggestions (more titles are being published in the next few days, so please search the e-portal for my name, or follow this blog) :

1. I WILL NOT GO THE F**K TO SLEEP, pure humor and satire, that your friend can return to again and again (a democratic mix of the silly and the childish with the political and intellectual--of MAD magazine with The New Yorker), on all e-book platforms.

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/64273
Apple: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/i-will-not-go-the-f-k-to-sleep/id444134043?mt=11

Nook: http://bit.ly/jazP3W

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0053GBUYG
TO BE AVAILABLE ON AMAZON CREATESPACE IN A DAY OR TWO AS A PAPERBACK BOOK!

Facebook Page (Please like): http://www.facebook.com/#!/NotGoing.F2Sleep

2. THE REVISED KAMA SUTRA: A NOVEL
"Very funny"--Kurt Vonnegut

Nook: http://bit.ly/iHYeNM

Smashwords: http://bit.ly/lVpczz

Apple: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-revised-kama-sutra-a-novel/id421345552?mt=11

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003VYCARI

3. WHAT WE ALL NEED (also sexy & political)
Amazon: http://amzn.to/f66fDm

Nook: http://bit.ly/kRMzgb

Physical Book: order from http://www.richardcrasta.com/buybooks.htm

4. WHAT IN HELL IS UP WITH HEAVEN, by Christopher David Petersen (a friend)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OYTF4A

5. Thought-provoking, moving books, with some humor in them:

THE KILLING OF AN AUTHOR

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003WQAX4M

http://amzn.to/eVghYU

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-killing-of-an-author/5118357?productTrackingContext=author_spotlight_1174659_

http://www.xinxii.com/en/the-killing-of-an-author-p-331455.html

Apple: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-killing-of-an-author/id443434428?mt=11

THE COCONUT BIBLE
(the post-Impressing the Whites edition of "Impressing the Whites")
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006PEXGPQ
(contains the essays, "Daddy, Am I a Black?" and "The Fourteen Commandments of Impressing the Whites")
FATHER, REBEL, DREAMER
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/64287
EATEN BY THE JAPANESE
Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004UBFXFC
Free on Smashwords and Apple Itunes for a few days more.
Also as a physical book from my web site

6. Most of the above books are also available in print. To order, please proceed to my web site, http://www.richardcrasta.com/buybooks.htm . I mention this link (please copy and paste, or here is the link again for you to click: http://www.richardcrasta.com/buybooks.htm ) for the Buy Page, because it works the best, and takes you directly to your shopping cart.

Preface to WHAT WE ALL NEED: An Anti-Literary Manifesto

2011-11-22T19:26:00.000-08:00

AN ANTI-LITERARY MANIFESTO FOR 2004 AND 2005

Or MERE TYPEWRITING

(the PREFACE TO WHAT WE ALL NEED )

“This book ain’t writing. It’s merely typewriting.”—Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac’s On The Road

“Words, words, words.” Hamlet (when Hamlet is asked what he is reading)

“To tell who you are . . . is so basic.” —Chinua Achebe, in a BBC interview.

The true story behind my five years of literary silence is too convoluted to narrate here, and may only be revealed at length when the full versions of the following excerpts are published. Instead, what follows are representations of my writing or my defective typewriting, provided here partly to reassure my justly unhappy reader that reports of my being snuffed out have been greatly exaggerated. Yes, this work is in the nature of filling the gap, even though that is the definition of life itself: we fill the gap between birth and death, striving somehow not to be bored or to be snuffed out before one’s time.

True, I bear some responsibility for my long silence. My perfectionism and my desire to write the best books I could have—to compete in the literary marathon while dragging along a hundred pound rock called depression and benzodiazepine dependency—have delayed the completion and release of perhaps half a dozen books in the last ten years. As a result, I have become more distant from my writing self, alienated from him, a stranger to him.

No more. From this moment, I proclaim my passionate belief in imperfection as comprising the essence of human nature, perfection being inhuman and unnatural. Indeed, I will go further and say that Perfection, and even the desire to attain perfection, is stymieing, self-destructive, dangerous, inhuman, elitist, nefarious, anti-people, anti-democratic—and perhaps even cholesterol-raising and fattening. Besides, a man who is in pain, who cannot see, a blinded Samson in chains, let us say (which is how I have sometimes felt, though no Samson by a long shot) has no option but, with his last remaining and imperfect powers and breath, to perform his final act of self-assertion by bringing down the house, or the temple, even if in the process some innocents were to die. When freedom and breaking free of oppression, internal or external, are the overarching imperatives, fine literary distinctions or hair-splitting scruples are a luxury. My objective is at all costs not to prettify, not to hide and lie, not to be a smiling villain in my writing, but to trust the power of the truth, the raw material, the untamed inspiration.

Starting with this book, I will release a series of books that are unready, raw, overwritten (and sometimes underwritten), and imperfect on every page, and which will be strong candidates for that high honor: the award titled “It’s Only Typewriting—But Heartfelt Typewriting”. In these books, and in this manifesto itself, starting from the next sentence, I throw myself open to contradictions, repetitions, circularities, and subversive mistakes to trip up the pompous. All my academic degrees, all my learning and most of my experience: it is gone, fled, blasted by Valium and assorted doctor-prescribed chemicals and vaporized into the ether. I declare myself a linguistic barbarian, born in some forgotten black hole of Hindoo Asia, unfamiliar with the rules of genteel writing, a Genghis Khan of the English language, an Attila the Hun of literary sensibility and appropriateness.

Yes, as a writer I feel at times that I am almost back at my starting point, when I had nothing, no tools, no refinements, no powerful friends or potential contacts, nothing except something to say, something bursting to get out, something that I wanted you to know, dear reader. I am an unaccommodated man, without a home in the world, with no country I care to truly call my own (or that will happily call me its own), a man without knowledge and prejudices, separated for the last five years from his library, his desk, his own papers and correspondence and handwritten compositions, bereft of some of his own insights, his favorite book-friends with their markings. From a vague claim to some scraps of wisdom and understanding collected like rags from various dustbins around the world, and on past a bizarre memory of being labeled Spokesman for the Male Libido by a major Indian newspaper and Rushdie of Catholicism by another, I have reverted to a state of complete ignorance, meaninglessness, foolishness. All I have to blame as the inspiration and cause for my future books is my decision to stain some pages, to call it writing, and to make it available to potential readers.

No, that’s not all: I have something to tell you, dear reader, something I have hidden for many years now, something that must come out, that must be told at all costs, because if not told, it will destroy what is left of me and what it hasn’t yet destroyed. All I can do is present you with my humanity, spoiled, soiled, broken, and yet resisting surrender, resisting the urge to vegetate, to give it all up, to cry Uncle, to cry Aunty, to let the usual suspects with dubious motives dictate my literary productivity. What I had in me, in my person, character, and mind, was placed there, I believe, for a purpose. Every mistake I ever made, and I have made thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, was made not so much that I could learn from it (I never do learn), but that I could write about it from my sorrow, loss, or defeat, so I could write about my unredeemed and unredeemable, fallible yet ultimately triumphant humanity.

This book is written in defiance of markets, market research, custom, good sense, and the packed and learned stacks of what already exists. I wrote it, that’s all. Yes, it is I who wrote it, and not some arty-farty critic or smarmy Oxbridge London journalist with a well-thumbed Derrida under his arm, and whose prose must compensate for his flaccid masculinity. I bow to no one, to no man, to no woman, no goddess of small or big things, no turbaned doyen, no darling of the Oxbridge set (“He is one of us”), no Associations of the Smiling and Oily-Jointed and rubber-spined clawing each other for the privilege of heaping honors on the already over-honored, no watchdogs of prose or poetry or joke collections, no Grand Panjandrum of Morality or Good Sense or Common Sense.

Publication, honesty, transparency, and confession—even if they weren’t inherently worthy, noble, and perhaps even sacred endeavors, regardless of the consequences—have the practical benefit of helping us imperfect human beings along in our quest for truth and liberty, for genuine discussion and understanding, for compassion and love, and sometimes for liberation and release. It is better to be free and human than to be straitjacketed by visions of the Ideal, which turn out to be impractical and unattainable for most men. Simply breathe and be and do what comes naturally. If you want to sing, sing loudly, and tell the critics to go jump into the Grand Canyon. If you want to dance, dance, dance in the public square, dance in church, dance in your living room, wherever your fancy dictates. If you want to write, and communicate thoughts to the world, do so, and do not worry your little head that such thoughts may or may not be approved, and are not written in the Queen’s English. There is a time and place for all things, and publishers who can afford to pay for copyeditors and such may do so.

But if you are a man of the people, a man alone with a need to express yourself, and you find these constraints are denying you your voice, operating as censors and fascists and tyrants, silencing you for ten years at a time, that is the time to rebel against all, to aim a hygienically packaged globule of upscale saliva at the face of art, meaning, beauty, Ultimate Truth, and all else, and to say: I am the Truth, this is my way, this is my life. Amen.

So liberation and coming out in the open, freedom for the fundamental contents of my thoughts, and providing a few readers with the redemptive laughter or the recognition that is an act of grace in itself, are my overarching objectives, the objectives against which everything must be judged. Once I have achieved this liberation by my publication of the raw and untreated, unrefined, un-sifted and strained, then I may decide, if means and time allow, to rewrite and represent what I have written in a form that is considered a bit—and only a bit—more arty, more lofty, more joyful and aesthetically pleasing, perhaps even more digestible to a larger audience. I cannot allow myself to be limited or confined, to be silenced, by the literary standards that I often attempted in earlier writings: to be entertaining, witty, elegant, stately, meaningful, true, powerful, and spectacular in every paragraph if not in every word and every sentence. There’s not time enough, energy enough, and life enough for that, at least until some formula has been invented to prolong life, lucidity, energy, and literary capability by at least three hundred percent or by twenty years, and perhaps reverse some of the chemical damage done by pharmaceutical poisons posing as friends.

For five years now, I have been sitting on some emotionally powerful material comprising many books, most of them incomplete, battling many personal odds to finish them and present them to the world. But now, the fact that all of this explosive expression is in hiding, it is contained and quarantined, and reduced to harmless digital gibberish on my hard disk, much of it hardly ever reflected in my speech and in my life—I find this situation intolerable. I see this material as repressed expression, as emotion that I myself have repressed. As if I were on the run, as if I had suddenly become unable to speak my mind, as if my vocal chords and my fingers had suddenly become paralyzed, unable to engage in oral or written expression.

As if I had arrested my own freedom and chained it in a Guantanamo of the human spirit.

As Freud said, repressed anger (and perhaps expression) causes depression, and this depression makes it harder to do the work of writing and publishing the books. But when I don’t write or publish what I write, how can I say with conviction that I am a writer, let alone a courageous writer? Have I not been my biggest oppressor?

As a partial and temporary solution, I have decided to publish a book that brings together material taken from a few of my incomplete books, about three to forty pages from each, and to give it the working title of the strongest of the books. And to publish it, no matter if the production is less than pristine: not only to provide a partial glimpse to my most sincere readers, but far more because it is my own act of self-liberation. Thus, this combined “works-in-progress” book itself becomes a literary manifesto by broadcasting my intention to complete and present all of these books to the public, health and finances permitting. Because I presently lack the resources to finish and publish these works, it allows the possibility of collaboration with like-minded people who are like me, suspicious of the Establishment, but would like to help bring these books to the readers who deserve to see them.

Besides, there are issues raised in this book which need to be aired in the public interest without delay, without waiting for the completed works. However, any final judgment of a book that is just a tip of a 4000-page iceberg would be absurd; I ask for open minds and suspended judgments.

Sometimes grudging, and proudly, I have paid what may be the going price (plus VAT plus a ninety percent surcharge for writing while brown and unabashedly male) for writing the truth and almost nothing but the truth, even when it offended the Masters. After fifteen years of this, I believe I have earned the right to be heard on my own terms. Because by choosing a life of writing, I chose to banish myself from society, from the society in which I had a place and a role, and instead spend fifteen years in sterile rooms, my restless body and bursting spirit chained to a desk far away from the red-blooded stimulation of life while I pecked on a soulless machine which often had the nerve to try to correct my spelling, even when I had intended it exactly the way I had spelt it—meanwhile, losing much that is priceless in the pursuit of the ideal writing life, a life owing allegiance to nothing other than to the word, the page, the book, the finished work, the honest, spilling-your-guts truth.

I can wait no longer. The books I shall present simply honor the original emotion or impulse that had me sitting at a desk, indoors, shut out from the world and the people I loved, just so I could express my primary loyalty to the calling for which I am convinced I was placed in this world.

Sometimes, it may be a blessing for an author to have no illusions, no powerful friends, no expectations—to have been written off, disappeared, rubbed out of existence by the Masters and their brown underlings. This is complete freedom, the freedom of anonymity and coming from nowhere, of a Nowhere Man whose books are to be found nowhere, even just after a publisher assures you they have just been released. I can now write as I always wanted to.

You see, even in the Revised Kama Sutra, I was quietly restrained; “No c—-s”, said my first editor, David Davidar, reacting to a particular passage in the manuscript dense with cunning stunts, and I obliged (fair enough; for a brief period then, he was my champion and he had let pass monumental liberties in that book), restraining myself to the feline “pussy” and the sacred and almost sexless “yoni”; even though the powerful, earthy, stunning, and irrepressible c—t managed to surface in one other passage of the book, possibly escaping his eagle eyes.

Besides, one of the advantages of being a nobody is that you have no ego, no fake pride, and nothing to lose. The very notion of an ego attaching to a writer is a foolish concept anyway, a fundamental and profound fallacy, because it is not the I who writes; the I is merely the vessel, the tool, through which The Work is written, through which the Divine or the Muse or some force we don’t fully understand writes. Or else, why would we be fool enough to undertake such a risky, often thankless, frustrating, anonymous, and lonely profession such as writing? Comparisons between writers are odious, even if I may have sometimes slipped into that error. For in a world of literature stripped of the illusory ego, only the work matters if at all, not the person who wrote it.

As for anally retentive obsessive authors who revised a certain manuscript two hundred times, that’s their story, more power to them; but they are not going to mess with my mind or cheat me of my free will. My first duty is to get out into the open air everything that is written, as it exists, as it was given me, without apology or hesitation. Once that has been done, I may consider editing a few, finances permitting, and without cheating myself out of new writing. Never again will I aim for perfection, or let my equanimity be disturbed by dishonest or jaundiced criticism, which experience compels me to accept as the overwhelming rule rather than the exception. I will aim simply for a slightly smoother, less rocky, clearer reading experience, wherever possible. This is my First Unrevised Edition of this book, and there will follow more such new books issued as First Unrevised Editions.

There are endless reasons or excuses to delay these books, and yet, this is a time to blast all excuses and go ahead. One such excuse: in the last few years, I have never had access to the big picture; my current struggle has narrowed, jaundiced, and limited my view of the Big Picture. So be it. In the entire totality of the universe, none of us, not even an Einstein or a Rajneesh, can have the complete picture. Each of us sees just one or up to twenty of the millions of facets of this universe, some of which are beyond the power of sense to perceive, or of language and thought to describe.

A further reason for embracing the imperfection of a provisional book is that it allows for the possibility that I could change my mind, or be corrected and understand more and differently as I plod on the road to completing the books. This is why to take this book as the final word (if there were any such thing) on anything at all would be absurd. However, for now, the book as it is will have to do.

Finally, the description of this work as “works in progress” is sometimes more metaphorical than actual. We are all works in progress, and even if certain aspects of our life some of us may be regressing, we are all progressing towards that ultimate milestone called death, when we are conclusively finished. No one is finished until that moment; and as for literary works, there is always a possibility of improvement, of a second edition, of a change of mind. Besides, my book The Killing of An Author is nearly ready for publication, and another is not far behind.

Long live the spirit of liberty in India, the U.S.A., and the rest of the world!

Richard Crasta, (September 12, 2005)
To buy the original WHAT WE ALL NEED, please proceed to http://www.richardcrasta.com/buybooks.htm

To buy it on Amazon Kindle or Nook, please visit the following: http://amzn.to/f66fDm

Nook: http://bit.ly/kRMzgb

Thanks to the Chinese, Romanians, French, and Brazilians

2011-11-22T02:38:00.000-08:00

Among the followers of my blog in recent days have been persons from China, Romania, France, and Brazil. My thanks to them, and the trusty Germans, and also to the lone follower from Ukraine (who are you? Would you please introduce yourself to the rest of us?).What I would like to see, for a change, is an order for one of my books at http://www.richardcrasta.com/buybooks.htm from one of these great countries.

Invisible Beginnings: An Excerpt from Eaten by the Japanese, #SampleSunday

2011-11-11T05:25:00.000-08:00

Invisible Beginnings: A Short Early History of John Baptist Crasta

But we mustn’t go too far back, must we, we mustn’t go too far back in anybody’s life. Particularly when they’re poor.—Martin Amis, London Fields.

My father, John Baptist Crasta, was born on 31 March 1910, in Kinnigoli, India—a remarkable achievement, because nothing has, does, or ever will happen in Kinnigoli. Luckily for it, the village has a road connecting it to the larger port-town of Mangalore, in the monsoon-drenched Southwestern pocket of India where little of earth-shaking importance has happened since the beginning of time, and where, during the first half of the 20th Century, tigers still roamed the surrounding villages and occasionally strayed into town, snacking on domestic animals and people, once biting off the fingers of a man preoccupied with answering the call of nature in the Great Outdoors at night.

My father was the firstborn of eight children, the others being Lucy, Antony, Aloysius or Louis, Ignatius, Bonaventure or Bonu, Margaret, and Gerald. Make that eight thin children. “We came from a family of thin people,” said Uncle Louis recently, himself pretty thin despite ascending in mid-career to the world of medium-fat cats.

The Crasta children may have been thin in body, but their lives were thick with rosaries. “No rosary, no rice,” was their mother’s domestic diktat. Religious piety was a staple among these Konkani-speaking descendants of converted Catholics, refugees from the Portuguese Inquisition in Goa of the late seventeenth century, and survivors of Tipu Sultan’s persecutions over a century later. In this verdant corner of a country where life was nasty, brutish, and often cut short by snake bites and other arbitrary acts of nature, religion possessed an awesome power over its trembling adherents.

My father’s own father, Alex Dominic Crasta, was often absent from his life, working and living an inaccessible seventy miles from home in the mountainous jungles of the Western Ghats. “At one time, he owned four or five gadangs [toddy shops],” Uncle Louis remembers. In my father’s fuzzier memory, it is his mother who is awarded the credit for shaping his childhood. “My mother, my saviour,” he characterized her recently in a quavering voice while gazing at her photograph, tears welling up his eyes.

Her name was Nathalia, and she was both a housewife and a provider. She would feed all her children first, and then eat the leftovers, if any (a not uncommon habit among Indian mothers; my mother, bless her, often did likewise, eating the chicken bones after all of us had wolfed down the lion’s share of the meal she had lovingly and painstakingly prepared). One day, as she was massaging Baby Louis according to local custom, her two-year-old second son, Antony, had toddled off into an open well and drowned, despite her jumping in after him to save him. Later, still another son, Ignatius, succumbed to the bite of a rabid dog, there being no effective medicine for rabies at that time, at least none accessible to the indigent citizens of Kinnigoli.

“They took me away and didn’t let me see the body,” Uncle Bonu recalled later. “But I could hear them weeping loudly, inconsolably. Then they killed the dog.”

“He was sado—simple and straight, never talked ill of anybody, never got into fights,” my uncle Louis says of my father. When it came time to enter high school, my father walked the wooded and hilly twenty miles to Mangalore and lived there as a private boarder while attending Saint Aloysius High School. One day, when his mother heard that he was sick, she, being too poor to afford the bus fare, carried Baby Gerald on her arm and walked the twenty miles to Mangalore to see him.

It is harder for a rich man to enter Heaven than for a camel to enter the eye of a needle, or so the Bible says; but it was always pretty easy for a rich man to enter St. Aloysius College and its high school, and to escape the whipping the padres gave to the fiscally and morally unlucky. After all, the college towered over property donated by the local squire, its chapel being a magnet, every Sunday, for the town's un-whipped cream of Catholic society. My father, though not one of India’s wretched poor, was consigned by his family income to its struggling lower middle class. And often, because he had not paid his two-rupee monthly school fees on time, he was kicked out of his St. Aloysius High School classes by the Italian Jesuits who were then ruled over their little Indian dominion.

Thanks to a last-minute loan, my father paid his examination fees and obtained his high school diploma. Mangalore still being a one-hundred-bullock-cart, fifteen-horse-carriage, seven-Model-T-Ford town with limited employment opportunities, most local high school graduates would head for the nearest metropolis, Bombay, to find a job. Thanks to the invitation of a family friend, Ignatius, my father hopped on to Karachi instead. After five years of assorted labor in Karachi, including shoveling coals for a retailer of coals, at one time, he joined the Army in 1933.

The next year, he learned of the death of his father. On Easter Sunday, 1934, my grandfather caught pneumonia, and it was decided to take him to the nearest hospital in Mangalore twenty miles away. The mode of transportation? The bullock cart of a friend. However, the cart’s owner did the Christian or Mangalorean Catholic thing: he decided not to miss his Easter revels of booze and delicious pork and mutton curries. Festive meals, which occurred about four or five times a year at Christmas, Easter, the parish feast, Our Lady’s Nativity, and wedding celebrations, were not to be sneezed at in those lean times. It was nightfall before the cart started for Mangalore with its human cargo, including one slightly sizzled driver. When it reached Father Muller’s Hospital the next morning, Dr. L.P. Fernandes, the head doctor, lifted the sheet, checked my grandfather’s pulse, and said, “There’s no point admitting him. He is dead.” My grandfather’s body, having joined The Dead shortly after the time that his friend celebrated Jesus Christ’s rising from it, was upgraded to taxi class on the return trip to his Kinnigoli graveyard.

Did this perfectly silly end to my grandfather’s life make my father resolve that he would not easily become Death’s victim? Possibly, for he narrowly escaped a devastating earthquake that struck Quetta the following year. And then, six years later, he found himself in a war, but survived, against all odds, to write this memoir, and kept it safe for 51 years through dozens of army transfers until his son, by then a published author, discovered it and published it himself.

At this point I will let my father, first published at the age of 87 3/4 in a limited edition sold only in his home town, take over the narrative.

MORE SHORT EXCERPTS:

From “The Torture Ship” (chapter of main book):

Slowly and more slowly it sailed on, heading for the south, and our ordeal worsened as hours passed. Heat, suffocation, stench, thirst. We were allowed a handful (hardly two ounces) of cooked rice and a little dry fish and a cup of water twice daily. The Japanese said if we ate more in the ship, we would fall ill as we were not doing any fatigue. We did not worry much about the quantity of food. We would not have minded even if we were not given any; but with the two cups of water supplied per day, one might die of thirst. We tried to go on the deck to have a breath of fresh air for which we longed so much; but the moment we climbed up the staircase, we would be kicked down by the Japanese sentries.

From “The Second Voyage of the Torture Ship”:

Could humanity be degraded to such an extent? Could Providence be as cruel? The steamer had only one kitchen from which water was being rationed, and the two thousand men had to come one after the other, in a line, for that cup of life-preserving liquid. The rush began at 6 am. My turn came at about 10 am, after four hours of waiting, only to be met with the curt words, “Water finished!” Heavens, what was I to do until next day? Who knows? Before I could reach the front of the line, water might be exhausted again next day? Death was certain. I went round with a cup to my Indian friends, to Malays, even to Japanese, and was met with the reply “Sorry, I have very little.”

From “The Second Voyage of the Torture Ship”:

Dysentery broke out on the ship. The few latrines were being used by both unfit and fit men. In our own party of one hundred and fifty, three or four deaths occurred daily. The corpses were wrapped in a worn-out blanket and lowered into the deep ocean, unwept for and unsung. I could see hardy men prostrate with dysentery, unable to move, without any clothes. The Japanese did not pay any heed to what was going on. Dysentery spread to other holds of the ship, killing seven to eight daily. But the ship was not stopped, nor was an attempt made to evacuate the victims.

Insanitation and squalor increased. There had been cases of men dying from dysentery within a day of getting sick. Except for separate accommodation being allowed, no treatment was given to the men, and the disease spread anyway. The scene was pitiful and heart-rending. Brave, virile soldiers who would have defied anybody in battle were now helpless like babies and were groaning and rolling naked on the floor presenting a weird spectacle. I could not bear it and tears started trickling from my eyes as nothing in my life had moved me to that extent. Was this the penalty we were paying for being honest and principled?

From “Koga the Devil”:

The next day, another Japanese soldier, Koga Hugcho, was put in charge of us. I call him Koga the Devil. I still cannot forget his Satanic face nor forget his atrocities. If anyone deserves to be hanged first for the ill-treatment of prisoners, it is he. A man of about 30 years, quite well-built, with slant eyes and an ape’s mouth with a gold tooth, he looked like a mixture of Japanese and Chinese, a most unprincipled and inhumane brute. Although he said he belonged to Tokyo, I am inclined to think he was either a Taiwanese or a Manchurian. The next three months that we passed with him were the bitterest of our lives. Our daily routine was: rise at 4 am, go to the surrounding jungle and fetch two or three loads of firewood; breakfast (two spoonfuls of rice) at 5.30, off to the tapioca garden at 6 am, cut grass till 11 with half an hour’s break, return for lunch; half an hour’s break, again off to the garden, back by 4 PM; fill a fifty-five gallon drum with water and boil it ready for our master’s bath; again collect two or three loads of firewood. Thus were we kept busy from before daybreak to sunset. In addition, each of us was called upon by him to help the Japanese cook in preparing the morning food—in which case, we were required to get up at 2 am. Fire had to be lit to boil rice, curry and water. The firewood was invariably damp and gave out clouds of smoke, completely blinding our eyes. If the fire was not lighted, the Japanese cook would curse us and even beat us. Food had to be ready before daybreak so that the raiders might not notice the smoke. By now, the planes had no targets left. They would watch for any signs of smoke and let go their deadly bombs.

During fatigue, if Koga thought our speed was not up to his expectations, he would beat us with sticks, fists, and kicks. He said that Indians, like the British, were lazy and were not fit to live. They knew only to enjoy. That is why they were being defeated. He told us the Allied Navy had been completely annihilated near Formosa and in the Philippines. Land fighting was going on in the latter place, and the Japanese were winning. There was no chance of our returning to India. We would remain there in New Britain and cultivate tapioca.

In the evenings, even in heavy rain, the Japanese made us boil water for their bath. This was almost an impossibility as the fireplace and firewood became wet. But there was no argument with our masters.

Our hut was more like a pandal[16]. Even in a light rain, water trickled inside. It was infested with rats, mosquitoes, ants, lizards and snakes. Had the Japanese given us half a day’s rest, we could have improved it, but even on our so called holidays, they made us collect coconuts and extract oil for them!

I had a relapse of malaria. Koga allowed me rest as long as my temperature was on; but as soon as he felt my forehead cool, he would ask me to work. To make matters worse, an ulcer appeared on my right foot. The wound broadened, giving out pus and a horrible smell. The leg swelled, and I could not walk. No arrangement was made for dressing the wound. Not even a piece of linen was given. I tore my langoti[17], dressed the ulcer in filthy water from the nullah, and bandaged it in a dirty rag. Flies swarmed around the wound. Blood trickled down sometimes. The Japanese saw this, but were not moved with compassion. Koga said it was a trifling thing and asked me to go on fatigue. I could only walk with the help of crutches. Other Japanese who saw me on the way thought I deserved rest.

Owing to agonizing pain, my temperature did not subside. I and the four others requested Koga to shoot us as it was better to die than to remain as their prisoners. He jokingly gave us shovels and spades, asking us to prepare our own graves so that we might be shot the next morning.

Basanta was the one most cruelly mistreated. For some trifling offence, he was tied with live battery wires; and when the unfortunate man cried for mercy, all the Japanese laughed. He fell down. They kicked him and made him get up, again tying him up with the torturing wires. Besides Basanta, there was another Sikh, Kartar Singh, with us. Koga ordered them to shave off their beards as, according to them, the beards made them ill. For disobeying him, they were beaten.

One day, Basanta was standing by. Koga, like a dog, came upon him and passed urine on him. On another occasion, Basanta was spat upon.

We again pleaded with Koga to shoot us all. He warned us not to repeat this request. We were their prisoners and must obey them. Even the British General Percival was being ordered about by a Japanese soldier. We had been defeated in the war and must not speak anything out of the way.

From “Fathers and Sons—A Tale of Literature, Reinvention, and Redemption.”—essay by Richard Crasta

But there was another, non-literary duty to be performed before I could feel some degree of liberation from that powerful sense of incompleteness in my relationship with my father. Dr. Arunachalam's gesture of touching my father's feet, repeated later by another Mangalorean I greatly respect, Konkani musician, composer, and impresario Eric Ozario, had haunted me. Because, having been an individualistic, city-raised Christian too cut off from my culture and even from my Indian Christian village roots, I had never touched my father's feet. Back in America, I feared that I would never forgive myself if my father passed away from this world without my ever having touched his feet, while others—no doubt my brothers, kindred souls, and cosmic, Brahmanic extensions of myself—had done so.

In October 1998, ten months later, I arrived in a monsoon-lashed Mangalore and dashed home from the airport, heading directly for my father's bedroom. He didn't come out to greet me as he usually did, for he was weaker than before, slowly losing his once-solid grip on the world. I walked right in and hugged his frail frame, paused a few seconds, and then bent my once-proud body and touched his feet.

EATEN BY THE JAPANESE, by John Baptist Crasta, with a biographical introduction and 3 essays by Richard Crasta, is published in paperback and e-book form, and is available from the following outlets (and many others):

http://www.richardcrasta.com

It is a book that can be read by children as well as adults, but a veteran might appreciate it all the more, whether for Veterans Day or for any other occasion.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004UBFXFC
Amazon UK:http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004UBFXFC
Smashwords:http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/50202

Itunes Bookstore
Nook
etc.
OR READ MORE EXCERPTS HERE: http://richardcrasta.blogspot.com/2011/04/eaten-by-japanese-excerpts.html
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Beginning of the Book

Introduction: Invisible Beginnings: A Short Early History of John Baptist Crasta

The Main Book: Eaten by the Japanese, by John Baptist Crasta

In Singapore, Life Was Gay

The Japanese Invasion Begins

The Quick March to Surrender

Surrender and Seduction

Shipped Out of Malaya

The Torture Ship

The Second Voyage of the Torture Ship

Torture Island

The Bombs of Santa Claus

Fish and Fowl

Koga the Devil

Peace, Rioting, and the Good Australians

War Crimes and the Return Home

Commentary: Essays by Richard Crasta on Rediscovering his Father and on the Political Incorrectness of Truth

Fathers and Sons--A Tale of Literature, Reinvention, and Redemption

Killing to Eat

The Defence Minister and the Politically Incorrect Soldier

Footnotes

Notes

Acknowledgments

About the Author and the Minor Co-Author

REVIEWS:

“A tale of unmitigated horror. A handsome tribute to a man of courage and rectitude.” –Khushwant Singh

“A classic in military history, telling the story of men trapped in a world of torture, starvation, and death"—Roger Mansell, War historian, in Tameme Magazine

“The theater of the absurd . . . war as seen from the smoking trenches. Written without rancour or hatred, of archival value to historians. Bloodcurdling references to acts of cannibalism. Crasta’s memoir should find a cherished place in all major libraries.” --Dr. Arunachalam Kumar, Author, in Morning News.

“Striking and raw, an antidote to myth. Something to be treasured. This is the kind of record that this generation is losing fast, and we need to hold on to this. It made me think of what had happened to my own father's memoirs, which were lost.”--Barry Fruchter, Ph.D., Professor of Literature, New York.

“In Eaten as a memoir, you see the horror of war, without a trace of artifice, through the eyes of one who was there, the writing a simple act of catharsis with no reasonable expectation that anything would come of it. Too bad this memoir was discovered so many years after the event. It deserves to be ranked with the best.” Mark Ledbetter, Professor of Linguistics, Amazon.com 5-star review

Sample Sunday Excerpts from I Will NOT Go the F**k to Sleep

2011-10-16T03:13:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from I Will Not Go the F**k to Sleep (daddies & kids, multifaceted book of humor and satire)

I: From "What You Don't Know about Bangaloring" (satire on outsourcing)

Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Great Hamburger Cowboy Nation of America: There is no need to introduce myself. You know me and my entire family already. Because my eighteen brothers and sisters, bred and currently breeding like rabbits in Bangalore, have all taken your jobs (alternative pronunciation: yer jaorbs?). What’s more, you have spoken to one or more of us. Remember Sue (Sushmita) at AT&T, Kelli (Kalyani) at Walmart Customer Service, Billy (Balwant) from AOL, Jake (Jayakrishnan) from Citibank Visa, Victor (Vikas) from Microsoft Tech Support, Neil (Neelakanta) from HP Customer Support, Vicki (Vikram Bandit) from Citibank Credit Default Swap Investments, John S. Warren (Jnaneswaran) of the Legal Support Hotline, Biff (Bhimaiah, wow, that was a stretch, but Biff had always wanted to be called Biff ever since he was a young sperm with no prospects) from Real Beef Home Delivery, Happy (Happy N. Dingra) of the Virtual Massage Service Hotline, Vin (Venkatakrishnaiah Doddaballapurappa Gowda) of WorldCom, Bob (Babbar) from Allstate Auto Insurance Claims Department who took down your rather imaginative and completely fake accident report, and last but not least, Ruth the real all-over blonde (Rudramma) from 1-888-Talk2MeUHunk, the toll-free erotic phone fantasy hot line for heavy breathers, just put it on your Visa card, and it will be billed as a business/technical consultation? They all fooled you with their flawless American accents, didn’t they?

Well, please don’t get mad at them, because unlike your billionaire CEOs (who are struggling to pay for their kids’ Lamborghinis and to put gas in their luxury yachts), they are merely trying to put tandoori goat on their tables and low-fat camel milk in their Calvinator Refrigerators, and to bury gold ingots in the secret holes they’ve dug under their beds as is the ancient Indian custom. And also because, ahem, they have access to all of your confidential and sometimes embarrassingly personal information (some of which even you may be unaware of). Forget such trivia as social security numbers or dates of birth, which any high school hacker can obtain within sixty seconds flat. They know much, much more: of your marriages and your affairs, of your taste in pizzas and marital aids—I mean, excuse me, Personal Pleasure Products and Feminine/Masculine Empowerment Devices—the name of your cocaine and crack dealer, and so on.

[As dictated to a Blackberry with Voice Recognition by Bhol Clintoneshwaran while milking his personal cow in Patagonia. Richard Crasta is his—Bhol Clintoneshwaran’s—American name. For your smooth reading pleasure, moos, bovine expletives, suspicious orgasmic moans, and milk-sploshing-in-a-bucket sounds have been erased from this transcription.]

II: From Death of a Minister (satire on Indian politicians)

The Minister’s Speech Heats the Fans

And now began the historic speech, the speech that would change the face of the planet and perhaps be memorized by pint-sized debaters for centuries to come.

Soiled white dhotis of the Revolution, and those dhotis beyond the seas being washed by Chow's Dry Cleaners in Kew Gardens: lend me your sisters—I mean, your ears!

Four score and seven minutes from now, free drinks and gourmet aperitifs will be served unto you. [Pandemonium.]

Until then, I shall a tale unfold—of my 75-point Plan for fighting crime, waste, and hunger and for promoting Beauty, Employment, and National Integration—that will make spears start from your eyes . . . I mean, that will make your eyes start from their spheres.

Generations to come will remember what was said here; but few will care to enquire the vintage of the rotten eggs that were thrown here.

And so, my fellow Gandapurians: Ask not what your Minister can do for you, but ask instead whether there is any point in asking questions for which the answers are further questions.

III: From "Veni, Vidi, Vicious: Conquest for Fun and Profit"

Background: For a few years, during the Nineties, under the indecisive, erotically inclined, and tumescent presidency of Bill Clinton, real men the world over were beginning to get nostalgic for the days when the President of the Lone Superpower could be counted on to do his historic duty—shooting first and asking questions a few million tons of TNT later. (Questions such as “Why are we here in the first place?”) And not just real men, but real pundits and television talking heads were nostalgic for the simple old days when foreign dictators were American Allies, the Russians were The Bad Guys, men were men, and Americans could be counted on, at regular intervals, to provide the world with a jolly good fireworks show that entertained more people worldwide than the Oscar Awards. After all, as Aristotle said, tragedy and terror are good for the soul—especially, one might add, if they occur at someone else’s expense, and in someone else’s backyard lighting up someone else’s sorry brown ass, and don’t ruin your dinner. Thankfully, as George Dubya Bush has proved, it is never too late, and it has never been as much of a piece of cake, to go back to the days of Guiltless Conquest, once you have made peace with your Inner Genghis—with a little help from the Almighty (Dubya’s born-again pal) and also with the help of this short History of Conquest and Guide to Kicking Foreign Ass in the 21^st Century:.

The History of Conquest from Prehistoric Times to the 1920s: In the jolly old days, conquering other countries was a venerable sport, guaranteed to work wonders for everything from your image to your complexion. It was easy as picking your nose, or blowing up a few hundred natives with the latest model cannon, whichever you found to be a more rousing form of sport. First, you started on an expedition on whatever animal or wooden contraption it happened to be the fashion to exploit. Sooner or later, you were bound to bump into unfamiliar territory (if, like Columbus, you were a geographical putz, all the better to keep a straight face with). At that point you planted your country's flag on some prominent spot—a hilltop, a cliff top, the local ruler’s palace, the local queen’s beehive hairdo, or any scene with the potential for a picture postcard and a Holiday Inn—and beat the hell out of any natives who objected. What could be simpler? Veni, Vidi, Vicious.

If the territory was too well known for you to pretend it was Your Personal Discovery—say, China or India, which had been churning out mind-blowing philosophies and nude sculptures while your ancestors were still swatting flies or wrestling with boars deep in the German forests—there were more sophisticated stratagems. At least, sophisticated enough to get a few laughs from your drinking buddies back home. Such as making yourself utterly obnoxious to your local hosts—say, by insulting your Vietnamese host's mother-in-law’s lizard soup or insisting that your Arab host provide you with tender slices of bacon to wrap around your camel shish kabobs, along with some black pudding as an appetizer. So obnoxious indeed that they would be forced to reverse their thousand year tradition of hospitality for the first time and throw you out of their sheikhdoms.

At which point, in the guise of resisting your expulsion, because it had hurt your tender sensitive soul and violated every canon of civilized behavior, you could exert just a wee bit of extra force—just wee enough to find yourself, to your wide-eyed surprise (and to your faraway patron’s delight), with a huge country or continent on your hands. Or you could demand that the local sultan pay you protection money against a potential Czarist invasion. When he protested that the nearest Russian border was five hours away by the Concorde supersonic jet, which hadn't been invented yet, you could declare that his statement proved beyond doubt that he was pro-Russian, and indeed, that your spy agency had unearthed documents proving he had signed a secret aggression pact with Russia. At this point, you would be obliged to conquer him.

IV: In the first, title essay, the child responds to his father's emphatic order that he/she goes to sleep with this:

Hey Dad—Grand Patriarch, Pater Sanctus, Daddykins, King-Emperor of this Household, Lord and Master of all you survey, my dearest, darling Pop—I, your humble child and the product of a glorious night between you and Mom, bow before your Awesome, Almighty power, and offer virtual incense before it. But I refuse to, and I Will Not Go the F**k to Sleep. Consider that on this one issue, I have drawn line in the sand, like George H.W. Bush did with Iraq, get it? And my reasons are as follows:

1. The dog ate my sleep.

2. The last I heard, we were living in a democracy. Has this become a fascist dictatorship now, and is your name Adolf, or am I just dreaming?

3. Too late, Daddy, I just injected myself with amphetamines.

etc. etc.
. . . . Haven't you seen the movie Inception? This is my dream, and you're in a dream within my dream . . . . etc. etc.

V: The Devil in Miss Eve (from a reimagining of Genesis)

So he named a certain tree, whose fruit may not be used to make their kissing jelly. Then He instructed the devil in Human Relations 101, and assigned him at a thousand a day (any currency of his choice—currencies were yet to be invented anyway), all expenses paid, and the coveted double “Oooh!” license to kiss licentiously.

Approaching Eve with the beguiling charm of a used car salesman, with Ronald Reagan nice-guyness, the devil, dressed to kill in crimson suspenders and black tights, his hairy chest bared Mick Jagger style on the advice of his Sexual Makeover specialist, said, “If you want really free, creative love, the sexiest jelly comes from that tree. You know, God is frightened of a population explosion . . . .”

“Thanks for the suggestion, Stranger,” Eve said coldly, “but I hope you've seen the Suggestions Box over there. And be sure to fill in your date of birth, if any, color of skin, if any, three character references, if you can manage that many, and occupation, if any. Type it in triplicate, preferably double-spaced, on one side of the paper only—100 g.s.m. paper naturally, rag content not exceeding 33 percent, with non‑negotiable option to recycle, and deposit the requisite filing fee in Treasury Certificates only . . .”

“What? You’re violating my human rights already?” said the cunning Devil, who liked a good opening when he saw one, and had a good appreciation for Eve’s. “Are you also going to tell me to go the f**k to sleep?”

Éve laughed, confirming the then-young saying that if you’ve made a woman laugh, you’ve won half the seduction battle. “So you’ve read I Will Not Go the F**k to Sleep, I see, even though it’s ten thousand years away from being published?”

Now that her mood was mellower, it struck her (it was the Cosmo chip in her and its chapter on “100 Love Techniques to Get Him Wild in Bed” that started functioning) that Adam had wearied of the ordinary jelly, and that their sex life might perk up with the “Creative Jelly” (as happens in the man-woman mating game, the pursued had become the pursuer).

“Wait a minute, you little devil!” she told the sulking black thing, even as the song “Sympathy for the Devil,” started playing in her head from nowhere, even though it would be 6,000 years before the Rolling Stones would actually get round to singing it. “No formalities! After all, the Ice Age is over and the Me Generation is yet to come. Any one I.D. and one credit card will suffice, and as for the filing fee, you can charge it.”

The devil flashed his wallet, displaying his wealth of exclusive credit cards—some so exclusive he was the only one to own them—and also his gleaming black business card.

“Oh, Lucy Fur [Lucy' suited the devil, since he was dressed in drag], Chairman of Brute Fruits Inc., Painter-in-Chief of Paint It Black Enterprises, and author of the bestselling Fruit Truths. . . say, you loveable fruit, how come we haven't met be-Fur, ha ha?”

Misty-eyed at this sudden warmth, the devil even leaked out a patented recipe of “Apple Jelly from Apples eaten by Spanish Flies, an Erotic Tour de Force.” The recipe was typed double spaced, on one side of the paper only. Not only that, he offered her a discount should she want one of her body parts painted black some time down the road, what with fig leaves being unstable, and so on, adding, “Black is the new white, know what I mean?”

“You’re bad!” said Eve laughing. “And I mean that in a good way!” Then she waved him a goodbye as she dashed off to a waiting Adam.

VI:

Nuclear Weapons Fire Sale

Or, How to Take Care of America’s Debt Problems

THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS FIRE SALE

A free ad on the U.N. bulletin board will do it, Sir:

LOST OUR ENEMY! 10,000 NUKES MUST BE SOLD!

OWN YOUR OWN NUKE!

(A DICTATOR'S BEST FRIEND!)

BUY ONE AT OUR REGULARLY OUTRAGEOUS PRICE, GET ONE FREE!

Guaranteed: Delivered To Your Door In Under Twenty Minutes—

Or The Next One Is On Us!!!

Note: *Offer valid only till Doomsday.

**Stocks limited. $999.99 million per warhead. MIRVs 1000% extra.

***We will beat any competitor's offer with printed proof.

****Ten percent discount for countries voting along with us at the U.N., and 15% discount for countries hosting secret CIA prisons and torture outsourcing facilities.

LINKS TO BUY I WILL NOT GO THE F**K TO SLEEP and FACEBOOK PAGE:

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/64273

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0053GBUYG

Apple: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/i-will-not-go-the-f-k-to-sleep/id444134043?mt=11

Nook: http://bit.ly/jazP3W

Facebook Page (Please like): http://www.facebook.com/#!/NotGoing.F2Sleep

The Killing of an Author: Not a Book, but an Act of Bravery

2011-10-14T19:35:00.000-07:00

Literary and publishing stars, an idealistic and uncompromising brown writer, and a novel full of erections, Jackie Kennedy, and an American Dream.

Confessional, political tract, memoir, a clash of civilizations, a comedy of errors teeming with larger than life characters, smaller than life twerps (including a crooked literary agent), and a story of John Updike receiving an unexpected compliment that leaves him unable to write for six months . . .

This hilarious literary and publishing memoir, set mostly in the dazzling world of New York publishing and storied locales such as Aspen and Breadloaf, would be funnier if it were not also true.

Full of lessons for the writer who wishes to understand publishing, and of issues (such as justice and publishing taboos) for editors, publishers, and writers to discuss, this book has been praised as "having a sense of humor from start to finish."

By the author of 10 books who was described as “very funny” by Kurt Vonnegut.

Available at:

http://amzn.to/eVghYU

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-killing-of-an-author/5118357?productTrackingContext=author_spotlight_1174659_

http://www.xinxii.com/en/the-killing-of-an-author-p-331455.html

Apple: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-killing-of-an-author/id443434428?mt=11

Nook: http://bit.ly/pIL074

"Not a book, but an act of bravery."--Amazon 5-star review
"An integrity that is rare. If Richard succeeds, we shall all succeed. This book must be read."--Kuldip Nayar

Why Uncompromising Writers Need Your Protection

2011-10-04T23:18:00.000-07:00

From The Killing of an Author:

As a matter of principle, it is important to preserve uncompromising writers like me, because as Tom Hayden says in How to Save the World (a quote I picked up on the Internet): “You can’t break the cycle of poverty; you can’t break the cycle of violence; you can’t break the cycle of corporate expansion; you can’t break the cycle of the arms race; you can’t break the cycle of imprisonment, if you don’t break the cycle by which radicals are isolated, idealists are turned into pragmatists, and pragmatists into opportunists.” Isolated, fatwahed, starved, and broken. Yes, you need to protect the writers who would, as Bill Clinton said of Bob Dylan, disturb the peace and discomfort the powerful.

The Killing of an Author also contains this appeal to Sonny Mehta, President of Knopf, who had praised my novel "The Revised Kama Sutra" in glowing terms, and according to Harriet Wasserman, had offered to publish it, and then withdrawn his offer the next day and asked for more time--then stalled for more than a year:

I appeal to your idealism, to the fact that we are on this planet for a very brief span, and ultimately none of the petty misunderstandings will matter, but that the good deeds we have done will probably linger: What are you on this earth for if you can't stand for something you believe in, especially when you are possibly the only person with the power and the vision to stand for it?

Xinxii: http://www.xinxii.com/en/the-killing-of-an-author-p-331455.html

and

Lulu:

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-killing-of-an-author/5118357?productTrackingContext=author_spotlight_1174659_