Barry Graham: Illusory Flowers in an Empty Sky

I recently watched, again, Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, which was an influence on The Book of Man. When it got to the scene in which the schoolteacher slaps the boy’s face, it occurred to me that, in modern times, this seems to be a European thing.

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?

The Independent Book Fair in Los Angeles, at which I performed on Saturday, was organized by my friend Andrew Pogany, former editor of Flaunt magazine, and founder and current overlord of Echo Park Books. (During his time at Flaunt, he published my article about the executions I have witnessed, “Why I Watch People Die,” which won a FOLIO Silver Medal for Best Single Article, and can be found in my book of the same title.)

I arrived in L.A. two days earlier. At the airport in Phoenix, they searched me and scanned me so diligently that they didn’t find the pepper-spray that I had forgotten was in my jacket pocket, and that I only discovered when I put my hand in my pocket as I got off the plane.

The book fair was outdoors, and, unusually for L.A., it was a rainy day, so things didn’t look promising. But the rain never got heavy, though Andrew held an umbrella over the first author who read, Sesshu Foster (author of the wonderful City Terrace Field Manual), and there was an enthusiastic audience throughout. Foster was followed by Mandy Kahn, whom I had never heard of before, but who turned out to be an impressive writer and an extraordinarily cool person as well. Next up was Jessica Garrison, reading from her great One Dollar Stories. Then I got up and recited from memory chapters of How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy? and The Book of Man. Then the ever-superb Larry Fondation read from his recently-completed story collection Martyrs and Holy Men, which I think is his best book so far - a departure that stays in place.

The rest of the weekend was a round of parties with old friends and new, some Christmas shopping in Little Tokyo, where I had the best sushi I’ve ever eaten, some time at the redoubtable Red Lion, and a quick visit to MOCA, where I saw Richard Nixon’s resignation letter - compelling in its briefness and mundanity - and took a picture of a woman who stood viewing photographs in such a way as to become a part of the exhibition.

Photo by Keith Rawson

In 1996, I read an interview with Daniel Woodrell in Your Flesh magazine. When asked how he felt about his lack of mainstream acceptance, Woodrell - who was already regarded as one of the best contemporary novelists by the few who had read him - compared it to a tent, and said that he didn’t belong in the tent and preferred to stay outside.

His comment had a profound effect on me. I had been in the U.S. for less than a year, and my novel The Book of Man had gotten some traction, and so the great and the good of mainstream publishing were sniffing around me, trying to figure if I could be a lucrative commodity. I was in negotiation with one agent who was telling me I should write novels that were less dark, not morally-ambivalent, longer, more descriptive, less violent, and about middle-class white people.

Woodrell’s remark perfectly articulated my own feeling, in a way that I had not been able to. Most of the outside-the-mainstream artists I knew only identified as such because they were not invited to the white man’s table, and they would join it as soon as they were allowed to. I had never wanted a seat at that table.

I read the interview with Woodrell on a Saturday afternoon. On the Monday morning, I called the agent and ended our association. And I went on writing what demanded to be written. I am grateful that I did.

Fifteen years later, Woodrell is finally getting some attention, because of the film of his novel Winter’s Bone. (Read my review of the book here.) Little, Brown will soon reissue all of his novels. His new book, a great collection of stories called The Outlaw Album, has just been published, and he was at The Poisoned Pen last night to discuss it.

I asked him about the 1996 interview, and it turned out that the journalist who did it was my friend Patrick Millikin, who was the moderator of last night’s discussion with Woodrell. I asked Woodrell if his feelings about the “tent” had changed since then, now that he’s invited in, and I was happy when he said they had not. He allowed that he might enter the tent sometimes, especially if they had good liquor, but that he had no inclination to stay there and that he believed that no artist should want to. I would say that this is why Woodrell’s books have made some of us feel less alone.