Barry Graham's Blog, page 51

Life As It Is

Reading David Cronenberg’s novel Consumed (excellent so far), I’m struck by how the characters relentlessly theorize about the meaning of what they’re doing, the sex they’re having, their friendships, relationships and work tools, burying what’s happening under piles of ideas and metaphors.

So many of us do this. It seems more interesting to me to strip away rather than add, to experience what’s there, what is, rather than our ideas, comparisons and opinions...

Season’s greetings from your friendly neighborhood cargo...

Season’s greetings from your friendly neighborhood cargo cult.

Christmas viewing for Grinches and Communists

M.V. Moorhead has a list of 12 twisted Christmas films. He includes Beavis and Butthead’s It’s a Miserable Life, which I recall watching with him many years ago. I recommend watching it back to back with the film it parodies, It’s a Wonderful Life, which W. Andrew Ewell sees as a critique of capitalism, a reading I agree with. By watching these two films , I think you can get a concise and accurate look at the U.S. pathology in the 20th Century, and a look at where we are no...

My favorite books of 2014, in random order

Plaster City by Johnny Shaw—sequel to Dove Season, and even funnier. Jimmy Veeder is older, but no wiser, and lives up to Mr. Shaw’s maxim: “When you’re all out of crazy ideas, it’s time to try the stupid ones.”

Full of Days and Dead Men’s Teeth by Bart Lessard—It’s been a busy year for Mr. Lessard, with a brilliant neo-noir meditation on death and morality, and a riotous, alternative-historical tale of crime and fantasy that might be described as “Poepunk.”...

John Wick—another example of little boys playing with guns

Earlier this year, I wrote a column for The Big Click headlined “Little Boys Playing With Guns.” Yesterday I saw the film John Wick, and I think it’s another example of what I was discussing in the column—a silly, childish fetishizing of violence, crime and grief.

It’s particularly disappointing in this case because the film’s premise is compelling: John Wick is a retired hit man whose wife dies, and she arranges for a dog to be delivered to him to keep him compan...

A girlfriend's mother gave me my first book review

Of Darkness and Light was published a few weeks before Christmas 25 years ago, and I gave a copy to my then-girlfriend as a Christmas present. She spent Christmas at her parents’ place, and her mother asked if she could read my book.

"I don’t think you’d like it, Mum. It’s not your kind of thing…"

"Don’t be daft," her mother said, and took the book with her when she went to bed.

In the morning, she handed her daughter the book without a word.

"Well, Mum? Did yo...

M.V. Moorhead: 9 Nerd-Insulting and/or Generally Annoying Things About Birdman

M.V. Moorhead: 9 Nerd-Insulting and/or Generally Annoying Things About Birdman:

A great, wide-ranging essay by my friend M.V. Moorhead (who, by the way, in 2001 directed and acted in this film I wrote). My favorite part:

The apotheosis of Raymond Carver drove me nuts during the release of Altman’s 1993’s Short Cuts, too. Carver was a fine prose craftsman, and a capable practitioner of a certain type of austere, downbeat literary short story. He was very good, at his best.

But the way Carver’s n...

Do you think things are as they are supposed to be?

Supposed by whom?

What do you think are the most under-rated and over-rated modern Scottish novels?

I’m not sure what defines a “Scottish novel” (author? setting?), or “modern,” so I’ll keep it to novels by Scottish writers who’re still alive. Both my picks are by authors of my generation.

Most underrated: Scar Culture by Toni Davidson

Most overrated: Morvern Callar by Alan Warner

HURT—a story for a winter night

HURT—a story for a winter night