Monday, June 21, 2010

They call her Special K


Kuzhali Manickavel (Special K to her fans)is a talented young Indian writer with a fantastic - and very funny - blog. She is one of those rare talents who seem to have no filters between her creativity and the page. For people like me, who find writing a slow slog, and often find ourselves self-editing perhaps a bit too much, she is a breath of fresh air, and someone to be admired.

Her freewheeling, direct from the creative center of the brain style of writing reminds me a bit of Richard Brautigan. It doesn't always work, but most of it hits the eccentric mark it has set for itself.

She specializes in flash fiction and other tiny bites, and when she publishes, she does so in chapbooks or with small presses. (Check out her book of short stories, Insects Are Just like You and Me except Some of Them Have Wings.)

The fact that she puts so much out there for her readers to enjoy, at what seems to be little or no profit to her, is an inspiration to those of us who at least try to subscribe to Lewis Hyde's idea, in The Gift,that art is - or should be - exactly that, something created for others' enjoyment, without consideration for personal gain. Special K comes about as close to that as anybody these days.

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