Barry Graham's Blog, page 40

Gems from Amy Hempel

powells:

On inspiration:

“In part, writing for me is a call-and-response proposition. I often read something and then write as a kind of response…By response I don’t mean point-for-point, but those stories called up something in me, and perhaps my story wouldn’t have come into being if I hadn’t read the others first.”

“I like the aftermath of the big event more than I like to portray the event itself.”

On her style:

“I’m just not wordy. I am in life, but I’m not on the page. The kind of revi...

The Strange Case of Jameson Johnson, a.k.a.

The Strange Case of Jameson Johnson, a.k.a.:

So many people, including some of his victims, have contacted me after reading some of my earlier reporting on Mr. Johnson that I decided it was time to put it all together in a single article…though if he keeps going at his usual pace I expect to have a book soon.

Columbus Day: A Celebration of Greed, Cruelty and Incompetence

With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want… Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold

—Christopher Columbus

Today the U.S. celebrates an inept navigator who thought that San Salvador was Japan and Cuba was China, and who enslaved, mutilated and murdered the natives of the lands his ineptitude took him to.

Also, it’s not true that most people thought the earth was flat in those days.

I think it’s fitting that the U.S. cel...

Haiku

leaves fall on the morning—

woman in street

singing in French

Haiku

city river—

water screams light

at the sky

Memories Are Fictions

All our memories of childhood are fictions. Not that the events we remember didn’t happen—they may have, most of them, or even all of them—but the stories we tell ourselves about them are fictions. Sometimes useful fictions, but not if we believe them, which we too often do. Worse, if we make it about ourselves, a story of something that has happened to me rather than what was happening at the time, involving many confluences of people and factors, it becomes the type of fiction that’s devoid...

Books, but no author

I don’t know how anyone who writes books can not experience the Buddhist understanding of no abiding self. When I look at books I wrote years and decades ago, I see an author I have little in common with, a personality alien to me, with views and passions that leave me unmoved—not because they’re bad or wrong, but because they’re the words of a stranger I don’t relate to, who’s been dead for years.

The Questions that Haunt Us - The Big Click

The Questions that Haunt Us - The Big Click:

My new essay for The Big Click:

I remember the first time a piece of fiction left me haunted. It was one of the stories in William Hope Hodgson’s collection Carnacki the Ghost-Finder. I won’t say which story, so as not to spoil it for you, and you should read the entire, wonderful book. All the stories have as their protagonist Thomas Carnacki, a Sherlock Holmesian detective who investigates supernatural manifestations. If you think your manor house...

This week’s Portland Zen meeting will be on Wednesday

portland-zen:

As of next week, the meeting will be on Tuesdays, but this week it’s Wednesday evening, 6:30-8:30, at Alberta and 26th. Meetings consist of two periods of zazen (sitting meditation), a short period of kinhin (walking meditation), tea, a Dharma talk by Dogo Graham Sensei, followed by questions/discussion. Free of charge, though donations are accepted. Contact us for the address or with any other questions.

Everything Is Reading

Writers are spectacularly self-important people. Writers and readers collude in spreading the myth that it’s better to read than to watch films or TV. I’ve never understood this view, aside from its self-serving nature.

The argument seems to be that reading requires more imagination than watching, which I think is erroneous. When we read, our minds create narratives and meanings from words on a page. When we watch, our minds create narratives and meanings from images and sounds. And, as we li...