Michael Katakis

About Michael Katakis

Michael Katakis is an award-winning photographer who is also known for his travel writing, his cultural commentary, and his work on Ernest Hemingway. Currently he divides his time between Paris and the Carmel, California home he shared with his late wife Kris L. Hardin, an anthropologist with whom he frequently collaborated. They were honored for their work by the Royal Geographical Society in 1999, the year Michael’s collaboration with Ernest Hemingway’s son Patrick led to his designation as the manager of Hemingway’s literary estate. A Thousand Shards of Glass, his latest collection of essays, was published in 2014. He edited and wrote the introduction to Ernest Hemingway: Artifacts from a Life. His first work of fiction, a collection of short stories titled Dangerous Men, was published in July 2020.

Talk on Ernest Hemingway Illuminates John Steinbeck

ernest-hemmingway-yousuf-karsh

Ernest Hemingway © 1957 Yousuf Karsh

When Ernest Hemingway died, John Steinbeck suspected suicide and praised Hemingway’s writing, but knew Hemingway had disparaged his, viewing him as a literary competitor. Michael Katakis, the award-winning photographer and cultural critic who divides his time between Paris and Carmel, spoke recently about becoming Hemingway’s literary executor, editing Ernest Hemingway: Artifacts from a Life, and putting Hemingway and Steinbeck in comparative perspective as contrasting authors who remain popular with contemporary readers despite their differences. The recorded conversation took place on January 31, 2019 at the Carmel Public Library. Like the photography of Yousuf Karsh, the light it sheds on Ernest Hemingway also extends to John Steinbeck, whose life is the subject of a new biography by William Souder—scheduled for publication in 2020—that may comment further on the relationship of two figures with more in common than either ever acknowledged.—Ed.

An Evening’s Conversation: Ernest Hemingway and Traveling the World from Harrison Memorial Library on Vimeo.

Following the Leader in the Age of Donald Trump

Image of Dorthea Lange's photograph of Japanese internment

The Leader

I believed the leader
when he said I wasn’t free
all because of the people
who didn’t look like me

I followed my leader and became
his tool and helped break the
back of the golden rule

I did nothing when the truth
was murdered by lies and silent
when the children screamed and
died

I did what I was told
I took down names not
knowing someone else was
doing the same

I followed my leader when I
knew it was wrong because I was
afraid of not going along but now
in this room with no door or light
it is me they accuse of not being right

I followed my leader until today when
they walked me up to my freshly
dug grave

Socrates had it right, Will and the Buddha did
too, follow no one, question and to thine own self
be true

Photograph of Japanese internment during World War II by Dorothea Lange