Barry Graham's Blog, page 109

I have some Zen students who are in the 12-Step Program. I’ve recommended that they read Bill Krumbein’s book Twelve and Zen: Where the 12 Steps Meet Zen Koans, published last week.

Deb Saint told me about Krumbein’s work a few months ago, and I thought it sounded interesting. Krumbein has been in recovery for more than 25 years, and a Zen practitioner for more than 15. He is a student in the Pacific Zen Institute, perhaps the most radical, innovative and dynamic koan school...

As I predicted, Manny Pacquiao was beaten by Juan Manuel Marquez tonight. This time Marquez didn’t risk leaving it to the judges, instead coming off the floor to put Pacman away by clean knockout in the sixth.

Pacquiao has already announced that he intends to keep on boxing. If he sticks to this decision, which can be fueled only by ego, I think he’ll soon become a pathetic figure. Some fighters can use ringcraft to compensate for loss of speed and punch-resistance, but Pacquiao’s...

TonightManny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez fight for the fourth time. Although Marquez hasn’t scored a win against Pacquiao (he fought him to a draw, and lost two disputed points decisions), I think he’ll beat Pacquiao this time.

Marquez has always been Pacquiao’s most difficult opponent, and Pacquiao is now only a sliver of the fighter he used to be. Assuming Marquez hasn’t slipped equally badly, I don’t see how Pacquiao, on his recent form, can win tonight.

Ac...

In this essay, W. Andew Ewell analyses the film It’s a Wonderful Life as a critique of capitalism. I agree with that reading, and suggest that after watching the film it’s also useful to watch the Beavis and Butt-Head version, It’s a Miserable Life.

If you think I’m joking, you probably have never watched Beavis and Butt-Head, or watched it only casually. M.V. Moorhead refers to them as the post-modern Tom and Huck, which is how I see them. By watching these two films b...

As with my picks for best fiction books of the year, this list is only the ten best of the small fraction of books published this year that I’ve read, and I don’t doubt that there are great books that I’ve missed.

Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco

The Year of Dreaming Dangerously by Slavoj Zizek

Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution by David Harvey

Philosophy for Militants by Alain Badiou

The Good Son: The Life of Ray “Boom...

Wired reports that Google Plus is growing at the same rate as Facebook. This surprises me, because I barely even look at Google Plus anymore, even though when it started I predicted that it would make Facebook as redundant as Myspace and Friendster.

I turned out to be wrong. Not only is Google Plus dull and unreliable, but Google’s other products have seen a decline in quality. I stopped using Blogger because it became so buggy and slow, and then stopped using Google Reader and Google Si...

A Zen friend is a medical student in a big U.S. city. She’s taking part in a program that offers medical outreach to people she describes as “the population of people we like to call the ‘service resistant.’ People who normally don’t have access or have a history of being treated badly by traditional medical staff so therefore only go (usually to emergency rooms) when absolutely necessary.”

She wrote me the following:

We are going to be implementing some heal...

Of course, I’ve only read a tiny fraction of the books published this year. Here are the ten best that I read, in random order:

Hell on Church Street by Jake Hinkson

Raylan by Elmore Leonard

Wolf Tickets by Ray Banks

Last Call for the Living by Peter Farris

Big Maria by Johnny Shaw

The Outlaw Album by Daniel Woodrell

Fireproof by Gerard Brennan

Murder Mile by Tony Black

Driven by James Sallis

Rough Riders by Charlie Stella

Honorable mentions go to Hilary Davidson, John Rector, Gary Phillips and Me...

Jean-Luc Godard asked, “When you see your photograph, do you say you’re a fiction?”

There is an iconic photograph of Elmore Leonard by Annie Leibovitz. He sits on a chair on a street, with palm trees and buildings silhouetted by a sunset or sunrise. He wears sunglasses, all his clothes are black, and a typewriter sits on his lap.

I saw this photograph on a poster in a bookstore in Scotland in the late 1980s, before I had read anything by Leonard. It gave me an impression of Leonard’s...

It’s interesting to me that some novelists write an outline before writing a book. I read that James Ellroy’s outlines are sometimes longer than the novels he writes from them.

I’ve never written outlines. If I knew what was going to happen, I would have no incentive to write the story, and would probably be too lazy to bother. Alfred Hitchcock said, “Once the screenplay is finished, I’d just as soon not make the film at all.” I can relate to this.

In the ear...