Barry Graham's Blog, page 86
August 13, 2013
Tolerance and Arrogance
In his booksViolenceandLiving in the End Times,Slavoj Zizekdiscusses the arrogance and elitism of “tolerance.” To be “tolerant” of the other is to make it bad, wrong, something to be tolerated, and to take a position of moral superiority.
I don’t think peace comes from not having enemies, but rather from not being anyone’s enemy. But how do we refrain from being an enemy? Not by “tolerating” the other, generously accepting and forgiving their badness or wrongness, but by abandoning the p...
August 8, 2013
August 4, 2013
August 1, 2013
I’ve been looking forward to this for quite a while. I...
I’ve been looking forward to this for quite a while. I love The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema.
July 31, 2013
Free on Amazon Kindle today: Hard Truths - interviews with Barry Graham, Ian Rankin, Irvine Welsh and other authors
Hard Truths is an 85,000-word collection of interviews with the crime genre’s most accomplished writers.
As both an award-winning journalist and one of the most acclaimed crime writers of recent times Tony Black is uniquely placed to cross-examine crime fiction’s bestselling authors. Names like Ian Rankin, Irvine Welsh, Andrew Vachss and William McIlvanney reveal the secrets of...
July 30, 2013
It's Called "Fiction"
When I do book-signings at which I recite chunks of my novels from memory, there’s usually at least one audience member who approaches me afterward and asks me if the Scottish stories are autobiographical. (It happened again at St. Johns Booksellers last Friday.) I’ve lived in the U.S. for longer than I lived in Scotland as an adult, but I don’t get asked the same about the U.S. stories, perhaps because I still have a strong Scottish accent.
I wonder if Thomas Harris gets ask...
July 27, 2013
Don't Mistake the Writer for the Writing
This article reminds me of why the following poem by Wendell Berry is something I wish I could add as a footnote to everything I publish:
Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
July 26, 2013
Portland People - Come See Me at St. Johns Tonight
This evening I’ll be reciting from and signing some of my books at St. Johns Booksellers as part of the Them’s Fightin’ Words event, which starts at 7. I’ll recite sections of The Champion’s New Clothes, How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy? and The Book of Man. The store - a wonderful independent - also has some of my other books.
July 25, 2013
Settling Scores in Fiction (and Tormenting Your Friends)
In this article about the joys of authorial vindictiveness, M.V. Moorhead writes:
When you’re the Supreme Being in the world you’ve created, you’re free to visit misery upon those you resent.
This is true, but it’s not just confined to one’s enemies - and Moorhead knows this from experience. He’s one of my closest friends, so in my novel When It All Comes Down to Dust I have a character named Mad Marky Moorhead, a murderous thug who also...
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