Barry Graham's Blog, page 103

I assume you’re referring to this post. I did read what Kelman said. And reporting isn’t hearsay.

Also, that’s “Mr. Graham” to you.

Since Benny has resigned, I think I’ll apply for the job.

It is almost exactly ten years

since we shared drunken kisses

in an unheated bar

in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Later that night, drunker still,

a kiss broke into laughter

when we rolled off my bed

and fell to the floor.

* * *

Ten years later: you

still in Tennessee, in Nashville, me

in Phoenix, Arizona. A catch-up

conversation: You told me about

your kidney transplants, addiction

to pain medication, recovery,

getting engaged, breaking it off,

buying a house, rescuing dogs,

traveling, getting happy.

“I learn...

Jake Hinkson has an essay on one of noir’s “hard luck ladies,” Martha Vickers, who played the nymphomaniac younger sister of Lauren Bacall’s character in The Big Sleep.

I find Vickers’ character, Carmen Sternwood, to be the most interesting character in both the film and the book by Raymond Chandler. I dislike Chandler’s work for a list of reasons, one being his puritanism.The Big Sleepshows a fear of female sexuality.In the book,Philip Marloweactually finds...

Yes. My favorite English-language author isElmore Leonard, though my single favorite English-language novel isThe Friends of Eddie Coyleby George V. Higgins, a book that was a strong influence on Leonard.

But my favorite author isYasunari Kawabata. I love all of his books, with the exception ofThe Master of Go, which I like. But if I had to pick one favorite of his books, I think it would beThe Sound of the Mountain.

There’s a story in Joe R. Lansdale’s book Bumper Crop called “The Man Who Dreamed.” In it, an old man knocks on the door of a house, and tells the woman who lives there that he has dreams that come true, and that he dreamed that lightning would strike her house that night and kill her family.

She doesn’t believe him, and neither does her husband. Neither would you or I if that man came to our doors with such a claim, but, because of the story, and because we know...

Dogen Zenji wrote, “There are mountains hidden in mountains. There are mountains hidden in hiddenness.” So much of Daishin Stephenson’s photography is about making visible the worlds we walk over or just walk past. These two pictures look like an enchanted forest and a hillside, but they were taken on a city street, a street so busy that a cop held back traffic long enough for her to lie on the ground and enter the world I do not know about, because it is too small, or becau...

As with yesterday’s list of female authors, this list is off the top of my head, and I’ll probably forget to include some that I’d want to. The list will also reflect my preference for urban settings; while I respect such writers as George MacKay Brown and Sorley MacLean, I’m unmoved by their work.I’m alsounmoved by Hugh MacDiarmid, but I understand the importance of his effect on the intellectual culture I come from. When I asked the late Angus Calder what he thought of MacDiarmid, he answer...

I don’t think in terms of “women writers” or “men writers,” but, off the top of my head, here are the writers (who are also women) I’ve been impacted by the most (I’m certainly forgetting some):

Lynne Tillman, Christa Faust, Rebecca Brown, Karin Slaughter, Natsuo Kirino, Megan Abbott, Hilary Davidson, Vicki Hendricks, Edna Buchanan (her nonfiction, not her novels), Kathy Acker, Ann Quin, Shirley Jackson, Dorothy Allison, Yosano Akiko, Stevie Smith, Katherine Dunn, Barbara Ehrenreich, Mary Shel...

Trayvon Martin. Mural by Justin Nether, found in Baltimore at Lafayette and Calvert.