Barry Graham: Illusory Flowers in an Empty Sky
Novelist, journalist, poet and Zen teacher from Glasgow, Scotland, now based in Portland, OR, USA
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In his argument for why Scotland should remain in the U.K., David Cameron sounds like a jilted boyfriend who insists that his ex-girlfriend should stay with him, regardless of her feelings for him:
The fight is now under way for something really precious: the future of our United Kingdom. I am 100% clear that I will fight with everything I have to keep our United Kingdom together.
To me, this is not some issue of policy or strategy or calculation - it matters head, heart and soul. Our shared home is under threat and everyone who cares about it needs to speak out.
Of course, there are arguments that can be made about the volatility of dependence on oil, or the problems of debt and a big banking system. But that’s not the point. The best case for the United Kingdom is entirely positive. We are better off together.
He goes to list debatable practical reasons why Scotland is “better off” as part of the U.K., but it would be an irrelevant debate, one that misses the point that Scotland is not England and does not want to be colonized by England. By Cameron’s reasoning, England should be able to invade any country that it can argue would be “better off” as part of the U.K.
Time reports that 55 percent of doctors admit to lying to patients.
It doesn’t mention another kind of lying by doctors that used to be routine, and perhaps still is. I remember in the late 1980s, a woman I knew in Scotland had stomach cancer - and never knew about it. The doctor told her husband and other members of her family, who decided not to tell her, so the doctor lied to her and told her she had something minor. She underwent surgery for the cancer without knowing what it was.
I can think of several people who were terminally ill but were not told about it. Their families were told, and they made the decision to keep it from them. I wonder if this is still common, in the U.S. or in Scotland, and if it is legal.
Certainly in Scotland, children were beaten and humiliated by teachers as a matter of routine. From the novels of Barry Hines, I gather that the same was true of the North of England. But the only example of such institutional child abuse I can think of in American literature is in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which was written and is set in the 19th Century. In American books and films, I can’t think of any other examples of the prison-like routines - sanctioned violence, and having to address teachers as “sir” or “miss” - that were common in the U.K. at least until the 1980s. Was the U.S. different? Am I overlooking any books or films?
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| Alex Salmond |
I agree. I’ve always considered Salmond a conservative, and I’ve never trusted him.
And it doesn’t matter.
Salmond is the leader of the S.N.P., a party whose mission is independence for Scotland. Salmond is right when he says that Scotland is a progressive country. That’s why Salmond is pretending to be progressive. No matter how reactionary the leader of the party that leads Scotland to independence, an independent Scotland will be one of the world’s most progressive nations.
Bain shows his true colors in his shockingly fatuous conclusion:
In good times and bad, the people of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland have stuck together. The UK is the house that, together, we have built. It does not belong to one part of the country. It belongs to all of us. Our shared values and principles burn strong, and our shared history informs our future.
This is fiction. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have not “stuck together” - they have been occupied by an oppressive nation, England. I lived in Scotland through the Thatcher years, when Scotland was ruled, not governed, by a government it had overwhelmingly rejected.
Vince Larue is doing the art for it, as he did with the first one, Regarde les Hommes Mourir.
He writes:
Barry Graham’s The Champion’s New Clothes is a wonderful novel set around the dark, dangerous and always intriguing world of professional boxing (the Scottish version)… a modern day verismo opera; relationships requiring the kinds of sacrifice it takes to be a champion without knowing what the belt might bring. A surprising, unsettling open ending that offers no fairytale of a future.Click here to read the rest.
I’ve been asked if I’ve written any poems in memory of Paul Reekie. I thought I would, but I haven’t. The poems haven’t come. Perhaps they will.
But another dear friend of Paul’s, the Japan-based English poet Paul Hullah, read this poem at the memorial event held at this year’s Edinburgh Book Festival.
He also maintains a blog, Criminal E, in which he interviews authors of crime fiction that’s available as e-books. (He interviewed me a few months ago - read it here.) His latest interview is with Len Wanner, the editor of Dead Sharp, a collection of interviews with Scottish crime writers. I haven’t read that book yet, but have heard high praise of it, from Benjamin Whitmer and others. When Al asks Wanner why he’s so interested in Scottish writers, he answers:
Having grown up in Bavaria, I have a deep respect for any culture that celebrates masculinity by donning fetish wear.
I also have a deep respect for transgressive writing that is free of anti-intellectual bias and full of bile when it comes to the antics of the intelligentsia. There’s a lot of that in Scotland. At its best, that kind of crime fiction is tempered by a self-deprecating sense of humour and tendered by a self-conscious sense of compassion. You tend to learn something about yourself while you’re having a good time with those books.
From Spinetingler magazine:
Barry Graham is a bit intimidating to sit down with.Maybe it’s the Scottish burr or the fierce intelligence which radiates from him or maybe it’s the long string of hard as nails characters he’s been writing about for the past 20 years?Who knows?But without question Graham has hit his stride as a storyteller with his latest effort, The Wrong Thing. (PM Press)… READ THE REST
