Read Hard

Richard Kostelanetz is an author whose works readily reflect an influence of two or more media. He attended Kings College, as a Fulbright Scholar, Columbia, and Brown University and has published many books, anthologies, collections, booklets, reviews, essays and plays. Portrait by Leonid Drozner.

MMR: Over the course of your career as an artist, writer, professor, how has technology impacted the visual and/or writing craft(s)?

RK: Computers have facilitated rewriting (without complete retyping). You can’t imagine what a pain in the ass retyping and then hand-written corrections were.

MMR: Do you have a preferred medium?

RK: I’ve tried to explore possibilities for publishing my words in audio, video, holography, and multimedia installations to degrees that could not have been realized, respectively, fifty years ago, forty years ago, thirty years ago, and a decade ago.

MMR: How has the influence of polyartistry impacted your work?

RK: May I note that I’ve worked in these media as an artist, producing my own work sometimes in collaboration with those more technically skilled, as distinct from slaving for bosses in an industry? So far my media publishing has had less influence and recognition than my books, though this inbalance might change.