Writer on Writer: Sam Pink Vs. Barry Graham

I bought barry graham's book, THE NATIONAL VIRGINITY PLEDGE (another sky press), at awp this year. i had read his chapbook NOT A SPECK OF LIGHT IS SHOWING (achilles chapbook series) and wanted to read more. barry graham writes sad stories about people eating fast food and drinking keystone and smoking marijuana and trying to get along with each other. here is an interview i did with barry, who as far as i know, does not hate me:

Sam Pink (SP): barry graham, when you are editing your work, and you read a line that you still like and want to keep, do you say, "hell yeah," or do you put your hand over your mouth and go, "dang a lang" or do you just nod solemnly, or what do you do? do you maybe swing like you are hitting a homerun then put your hand over your eyes like you are watching the homerun?
Barry Graham (BG): I am actually a very very very slow writer. You hear these stories where writers just pound out a first draft then go back and revise. That's not me. I can't move on past one sentence, one paragraph until it sounds the way I want it to sound. I can work for three or four days on one paragraph. Then after whatever I'm writing is done, I go back in and retighten. Put every word on trial for its life, determine its value, its necessity, make sure the sum of the details equal something greater than themselves. But then, after its right and I know its right and I know it feels right, I think about doing a nod, fist pump, and a homerun swing, but I refrain and just write more words.

SP: here is a line from tnvp that i like: "three weeks ago, we were lying together in bed; she was naked except for the silky blue pajama top i picked out a month ago at an overpriced boutique in Tahoe. she was undoing the last button. i was still in my boxers, spreading cheese onto a cracker with that little red stick, and watching the new york mets lose the pennant and their self-respect." at this point, i wondered, "will the character end up with leftover cheese, or run out of the cheese and have like one cracker remaining which is preferable since eating the cheese by itself burns your sinuses." how do you approach the cheese and cracker pack? any tips?
BG: I'm glad you like that line, I actually wrote that while I was naked in Tahoe with cheese spread all over my big toe. I come from a long line of obsessive rat-like cheese eaters. We put cheese on everything, even desserts: cookies, ice cream, pie, chips. When we wanted a snack after dinner my momma would just pull out a big ass block of cheese and we'd polish it off. As for the cheese and cracker pack, it is impossible not use all the cheese on the first cracker, unless you go sparingly, then what's the fucking point. Go ahead and buy the little breadstick type things, then you can dip and swirl and make it through about 3 or 4. But if you're hardcore, and I'm telling you, only do this shit if you're hardcore, buy two cans of that spray cheese, cheddar preferably, and a box of generic Ritz, and plow through it without stopping. But be forewarned, it is much much harder to write on a full stomach, when you're belly's full you lose something, your instincts, your willingness to attack or defend, the need to inspire, the voice in the back of your head that tells you that if you don't write something brilliant your children will starve to death, the necessity to be immortal. So fuck that big box of crackers, stay hungry.

SP: here is another line i like: "i rolled over and unzipped my pants and pissed off the side of the couch onto an old sports illustrated and fell back asleep for three more hours." i think i would read that as a short story itself and put my hand over my mouth and say, "dang a lang." what is your favorite videogame?
BG: There have been quite a few times that the piss came out before the zipper came down, so I spent a night or two, alone in the corner, with my sweatshirt pulled down over my knees, but fortunately that didn't happen here. There are really only two videogames I've been able to get into, Zelda and Castlevania. I've called into work during 40+ hour benders on both games and I'd stop and my eyes would feel like sandpaper and I could smell my boxers through my sweatpants. I still managed to get good writing done during this time. I read in some article that the kid who wrote Barak Obama's inauguration speech did so on a 48 hour bender before it was due on Obama's desk and that he stayed up both nights smashing Monsters and writing snippets of the speech between Guitar Hero riffs. There is a lesson to be had here so find it.

SP: speaking of videogames, here is another line i like: "i was sitting in front of the tv, playing nfl blitz 95 and she threw her purse at the back of my head, causing aikman to overthrow irvin by a foot or so, causing me to lose by a touchdown." when you are playing videogames with someone and that someone is losing, and that someone gets pissed and like tries to break the controller and then starts blaming the controller like the controller is an autonomous entity, what do you do? i usually become real quiet and try to melt. any tips?
BG: I can't really answer this question because I am always the loser.

SP: here is another line i like: "fat guy number three just finished eating his sandwich and there was a banana pepper tangled in his chest hair and he was licking the extra mayonnaise off his fingers." please give me a four to seven line biography of this fat man with the banana pepper tanlged in his chest hair. then give me a three to five line biography of the banana pepper.
BG: As much as I'd like to I just can't. I think there is one of those fat guys in all of us, and for me to tell you all about my fat guy would diminish your ability to create your own. You would see mine. You would love him or despise him. Call him a politician or a figure skating judge or a pedophile. He would sell cars or work in a deli, but he would do what I told you he should do. That's not really what I do when I write. I just describe things. I give you everything you need to see what I see then you are responsible for filling in the rest, the whys, the hows. I don't give you any of that shit. That's up to you, and I think, how much someone is capable of enjoying one of my stories, is how much they are willing to invest themselves in figuring out what I am not willing to tell them. I sound like a dickhead right now I know.

SP: barry graham, i think you used to be a manager at a mc donalds. tell me some things about fast food that i dont know (the only thing i know is that when you talk to the magic speaker box, it will give you small pieces of chicken).
BG: I actually won't give you any dirt. I am a huge admirer of the McDonalds Corporation. Fast food workers are smarter than most of my college students. It is called fast food, to keep it such, the people work fast. If it's not going smoothly, the last person to blame is the 16 year old working the register. She is doing what her manager told her, who is doing what her manager told her, who is doing what….. And somewhere, the person who should know what the fuck they are doing, doesn't. So ease the fuck up on the D's kids. Or go tell your flappy ass wives to cook. Also, McDonald's managers who work for the corporation, and have been there at least five years, get company cars, paid vacations and sabbaticals, college tuition reimbursement, and make more than the national average for people who graduate college with a Bachelor's degree. The problem is nobody takes the shit seriously when they should. Assembling double cheese burgers, Cadillacs, computers, who gives a fuck. Cash rules everything around me, cream get the money, dollar dollar bills ya'll. Plus, if you do get to be a manager, you have dibs on all the pussy from the night crew.

Barry Graham is the editor of Dogzplot, Paper Hero Press, and Achilles Press. The National Virginity Pledge was published by Another Sky Press earlier this year, and is available for $2.68 plus whatever you would like to give to the press. You can also read the electronic version of the book for free!

Sam Pink's debut collection was published by Paper Hero Press and can be found here. For more on Sam Pink please check out his blog.