Barry Graham's Blog, page 95

A Worker Reads History by Bertold Brecht

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima’s houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwelli...

Happy International Workers’ Day (which is really every...

Happy International Workers’ Day (which is really every day)…

Have you read SEX AND THE SPIRITUAL TEACHER by Scott Edelstein, and if so what did you think about it?

I read and reviewed it when it was first published a couple years ago, and I wasn’t impressed. Click here for my review.

Note to those who follow me on Tumblr

I’m importing my old blog into Tumblr, which will take a couple days, so if your feed is being cluttered with anomalous posts by me, this is why.

Les Edgerton on Writing: A warrior has fallen.

Les Edgerton on Writing: A warrior has fallen.:

Novelist Les Edgerton wrote a beautiful, angry tribute to his friend the novelist and editor Cort McNeel, who has taken his own life. I was particularly saddened and outraged by this part:

A week and a half ago, Cort called me and he was clearly not himself. Les, he said, I’ve got a huge, huge favor to ask of you and if you refuse, I totally understand. What was going on was he felt pretty sure he was going to lose his job as a trader. He was han...

I'm Keeping Tom Piccirilli's Seat Warm at The Big Click

Novelist Tom Piccirilli is also a columnist for The Big Click magazine. He has had to take a break while he recovers from treatment for brain cancer (which he wrote about powerfully here), so I’m going to be filling in for him until he’s ready to return. I’m both honored to be invited to do this and hopeful that he’ll make me redundant soon.

My first column, an essay on class issues and noir, will appear in the May issue. Meantime, you can read my story “Big Davey...

My Rules for Writing

As I finish another novel, I find myself thinking about the seven rules for writing (for my writing, that is) I came up with a few years ago:

Never resort to the use of irony; if sincerity isn’t enough, be silent.
Forget the self. Artists are boring; it’s the art that matters. If you just want attention, go out in the street and pull your pants down. Don’t write anything you don’t have to write.
Don’t make people less than they are.
Don’t write for other people...

criminalwisdom:Boxing match between Roy Campbell and Dick...

criminalwisdom:

Boxing match between Roy Campbell and Dick Hyland, Steveston, 1913
Source: WJ Cairns, City of Vancouver Archives #Sp P98.1
Via pasttensevancouver

Nick Hentoff: There Is No "Public Safety Exception" (ERRATA: THERE IS)

In an article yesterday aboutDzhokar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing,C.N.N. had this quote from an anonymous Justice Department official: “The government has invoked the public safety exception, a designation that allows investigators to question the teen without reading him his Miranda rights and without a lawyer present.”

This morning my friend Nick Hentoff, attorney and journalist, wrote:

There is no such thing as a “public safety exception”...

criminalwisdom:DANZIG BALDAEV: TATTOO COLLECTOR»“Between...

criminalwisdom:

DANZIG BALDAEV: TATTOO COLLECTOR»

“Between 1948 and 1986, during his career as a prison guard, Danzig Baldaev made over 3,000 drawings of tattoos. They were his gateway into a secret world in which he acted as ethnographer, recording the rituals of a closed society. The icons and tribal languages he documented are artful, distasteful, sexually explicit and provocative, reflecting as they do the lives, status and traditions of the convicts that wore them. Baldaev made comprehensi...