Interview: Writer Barry Graham
The finished story will be like nothing I could have imagined beforehand...
Nailed Magazine interview with author Barry Graham, conducted via email by Roy Coughlin.
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NAILED MAGAZINE: Class and social issues come up in your writing: in your fiction, in your essays, in your blog posts, on your Facebook account. Is social conscience (or at least social consciousness) an inseparable component of your writing?
BARRY GRAHAM: Yes. I’m only interested in the public function of fiction. I’m not interested in most so-called “literary fiction” (which is just another genre like romance or fantasy, and not in any way superior to them) about the psychological hang-ups of privileged white people.
Marshall McLuhan predicted a global village. Whether or not that has come about, I think it’s certain that we have a global ghetto. There’s a Third World within the First.
NAILED: So do you think that fiction writers have an obligation to address or reflect the class and social matters of their time?
GRAHAM: No. I think people should write and read whatever they want to.
NAILED: When you begin to write a new story or novel, do you start from a personal place, or are you given immediately to engage with something larger? Is there a struggle to balance what informs any particular story?
GRAHAM: It’s never personal, but I also don’t think in terms of “something larger.” I aim to get out of the way and let the story tell itself. I rarely have any idea what’s going to happen. If I knew more in advance, I don’t think I’d feel compelled to write it. I couldn’t work from an outline, because once I had the outline I’d have no reason to write the book.
NAILED: I think for a lot of writers (myself included) it’s hard to stop writing about themselves and instead write about people. Or just write, period, with no idea what’s going to happen, like you said. Once you’ve gotten out of the way and let the story tell itself, are you ever surprised by where it’s ended up?
GRAHAM: I’ve been surprised every time. That’s where the pleasure and excitement of writing comes from for me.
NAILED: Since you let the writing happen as it will, do you have any goals with your work, or is writing itself the only intent?
GRAHAM: The goal is to get past all pretense and artifice, and get to whatever kind of truth might be gotten to. I try to get as close as I can to a blank page, and yet still have a story.
NAILED: Your article in Flaunt, “Why I Watch People Die,” stuck in my head. It has a deep empathy while still feeling somewhat distanced. It illuminates America’s penchant for killing but refrains from drawing distinct moral conclusions. As you described with your fiction, you seem to be letting the story tell itself. Has your work as a reporter influenced how you write fiction?
GRAHAM: I began writing fiction first, so I suspect that it’s more that the way I write fiction influenced how I write up my reporting, in terms of scenes and storytelling, but, most likely, both forms influence each other. I think my novelist’s mindset keeps my journalism from settling for easy answers or drawing pat conclusions, and my reporter’s mindset keeps my novels from being flabby or self-indulgent. I think I write not with sympathy (which, being about identification, is actually self-centered), but with, as you say, empathy, or, as I think of it, compassionate detachment.
NAILED: In the Flaunt piece you seem to discover your perceptions of and reactions to the subject as the story unfolds. And you said your fiction always surprises you. Does your fiction ever challenge or confuse your own preconceptions?
GRAHAM: The characters I write don’t usually do what I would do (or what I think I would do in their situations). My fiction doesn’t challenge my preconceptions, because I don’t go in with preconceptions. Or maybe I do, because I go in knowing that the finished story will be like nothing I could have imagined beforehand, which, so far, has always been the case.
NAILED: You’ve published many books with a range of publishers big and small, and now you self-publish. Can you talk a little about that decision and its benefits and drawbacks?
GRAHAM: For me, the only drawback of self-publishing is not getting an advance up front. All of the other drawbacks I hear people mention about self-publishing are equally true in traditional publishing, sometimes more so.
I decided that, with the availability of self-publishing, it made no sense for me to continue to sign over my publishing rights to publishers, who would keep most of the money a book made without doing anything for me that I couldn’t do for myself. I put out my backlist, which was out of print, to see how it would go, and then I started putting out new books that way. I think the only reason I would sign with a publisher now is if the advance they offered was too huge to turn down.
For the first time ever, I’m completely satisfied with how my books are being published, because it’s all me—cover design, layout, pricing, everything.
NAILED: What is the learning curve for self-publishing? Is it something you think any author can do well if he or she makes the effort?
GRAHAM: I don’t think it’s for everyone. Nothing is. I’m not sure how long it would take a person with no publishing history to figure out. I do think anyone who knows how to use a computer can learn to do it if they want to.
NAILED: What about the idea of small publishers acting as curators? Are independent presses relevant?
GRAHAM: I think publishers, big and small, are relevant to those who find them so. As for their self-appointed role as curators—I think they’re motivated by commerce and cronyism as much as literary passion (though the indie presses are less driven by the profit motive), which is why so many bad and mediocre books are published.
I’ve heard lots of comments that the availability of self-publishing will allow a lot of bad books to be published. That’s true—and in that way it’s just like traditional publishing. But it also allows good books, great books, and books that innovate and takes risks to be published, and that’s mostly no longer true of traditional publishing.
Regarding independent publishers—I should mention that I am one myself these days, since I’m about to publish Larry Fondation’s book Common Criminals, which has been out of print for too long. He doesn’t have the time or inclination to publish himself, and his current books are already being published by an independent press. It’s being published by Barry Graham Books—the 14th book I’ve published, but the first I didn’t write.
NAILED: Which authors working now excite you?
GRAHAM: Larry Fondation, Tony Black, Lynne Tillman, Gary Phillips, Rebecca Brown, Elmore Leonard, James Sallis, Johnny Shaw, Ray Banks, Christa Faust, Allan Guthrie, Natsuo Kirino, Dennis Cooper, Daniel Woodrell, Megan Abbott, Karin Slaughter, Ryu Murakami, Elissa Wald, Nick Mamatas, M.V. Moorhead, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Gerard Brennan, Jake Hinkson, Charlie Stella, Brian Michael Bendis, Bart Lessard, James Carlos Blake, Toni Davidson, Stephen King, Lawrence Block, Jordan Harper, Irvine Welsh, Zak Mucha, Ian Rankin, Stewart Home . . . I could go on for a while, but I should probably stop there.
NAILED: Does the work of your contemporaries affect your work—push, drive, inspire—or does your appreciation of them exist independently of your own writing?
GRAHAM: It inspires me knowing that they’re out there, doing their work. But I’m equally inspired by the ancestors: Yasunari Kawabata (my favorite fiction-writer ever), David Goodis, Kenji Nakagami, Jim Thompson, George V. Higgins (author of my favorite English-language novel, The Friends of Eddie Coyle), Jean-Patrick Manchette, James M. Cain, Sjowall and Wahloo, Steinbeck, Orwell, Greene, Poe, Melville.
NAILED: With all of the changes in the publishing realm in the last couple decades, especially the rise of e-books and online sales in general, what do you think the future of “books” will be? How will our relationship to the written word change?
GRAHAM: E-books have gotten more people reading. I think paper books will continue to exist, but they’ll become more and more of a niche. As for the written word—many people are more likely to text than to talk on the phone, so I don’t understand why some people think the written word is becoming less important. I don’t know that our relationship to the written word will change, or has ever changed; maybe all that changes is the medium by which the text is delivered.
NAILED: When was the last time you nailed it?
GRAHAM: I don’t really think that way. I just write as well as I can, then let it go. It’s not about me nailing it or not, or about me at all.
Barry Graham is a novelist, journalist, poet and Zen teacher from Glasgow, Scotland. He has been based in the U.S. since 1995, and currently lives in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of more than a dozen books and has written for a diversity of magazines and newspapers, including Harper’s, Flaunt, Parabola, Las Vegas Life, The Arizona Republic and Scotland on Sunday.
[Photo Credits: Daishin Stephenson]