Barry Graham's Nothing or Next to Nothing: A Review by Martin Macaulay

I’ll always remember seeing Barry Graham (now Dogo Barry Graham) on TV about 20 years ago. It was a regional show called Scottish Books which ran in a past-bedtime slot. Each week a different panel discussed the latest releases, but Barry was a bit of a regular. I particularly recall him ripping into a historical romance; “the first time I’ve ever been bored by a blowjob”. He was a contributor to Rebel Inc magazine that was first to publish emerging talents like Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, Laura Hird and Duncan Maclean. Sometime early to mid-90s he emigrated to the US and I never heard of him again.

When I discovered PANK I was mightily impressed by the incisive writing, the understated attitude, the verve – then I saw that Barry Graham had contributed. Barry Graham! I got in touch with Barry and asked if I could review his novella Nothing or Next to Nothing for PANK – if they would let me. Oh, and by the way, I’m a bit of a fan. Sorry, wrong Barry, he told me, but yeah and thanks. It happens a lot and I know him…our styles are very similar if you are still interested in a review. I was.

Each of the diverse array of characters that inhabit Graham’s Nothing or Next to Nothing brings their own particularly fucked-up take on life. Derek finds his mother dead at the kitchen table when he’s 12. He’s unable to communicate what happened and his older sister calls the police. She tells them he killed his mum; his sister has a habit of mixing it: “I sat in a chair next to my mother. Daisy sat in a chair on the other side of her and held her dead head against her chest and petted her dead hair until the ambulance arrived.” Derek stops talking for six months, and from here on in it’s sister and brother fending for each other.

We follow Derek through his restaurant work and the people he encounters. Some are transient; some we never meet. It’s through his first job at McDonalds that he learns the restaurant rules from Grizzly:

‘Restaurant rule one, cleanliness. Everything has to stay clean, clean parking lot, clean lobby, clean bathrooms, clean service area, clean grill area, clean stock room, clean office. Everything needs to be so fucking clean that the Virgin Mary can give birth right there on your goddam floor.’

‘Cleanliness, check. What else you got?’

‘Restaurant rule two, nobody is your friend. Your best friend will set that ass up for the right price.’

‘No friends, check. What’s rule number three?’

‘There is no rule three. Never break those two and everything else takes care of itself.’

The cleanliness of the restaurant rule contrasts beautifully with the corporeal world that Derek lives in. Everywhere he goes he encounters piss, shit, blood, spit, puke and cum. Not all of it his. Restaurant rule number one doesn’t apply outside the building: beyond the doors it’s the grime of every day living, but no-one complains. It’s their lot. Like Derek’s McJob. It’s a job and it teaches him valuable life and business lessons. He quits school to work full time so his sister Daisy throws him out the house. As Derek learns so does the reader.

The novella is interspersed with condensed history or philosophy lessons, from the beginnings of the golden arches, to Aristotle and logic. There are insights into Derek’s take on various businesses such as modern Country music:

They all take turns sucking each other’s dicks and buying each other’s CD’s. There’s more of them than there are of me, so they’ll keep getting radio time and seven digit record deals and I’’ll keep cleaning up after paying customers.

Ultimately he goes back to college and aces everything. Work has disciplined Derek but play still rules: he trips through acid, alcohol, weed and women. Gratuitous, unglamorous and occasionally grotesque. Even the sensational is written in a matter-of-fact way, like incest is a regular occurrence. It’s not that a moral compass doesn’t exist, it’s just, you know, a bit fucked up. Later in the novella when they can afford to,  Derek and his sister-lover retrieve their mother’s ashes to give her a proper burial. It’s touching.

Adjectives are few or simply put, so the novella rips along. People leave, new ones arrive. Grizzly does time for a series of heists but invests his trust in Derek. Derek’s loyalty is rewarded by $25,000 and half ownership of a new restaurant. After burying their mother in Louisville, Daisy doesn’t return home. She sends Derek postcards with a line or two of her own imparted wisdom. He goes in search of his sister following the postcard stating “I know who killed mom. They’re going to kill me.”

Within this novella, there’s a whole unwritten book of Daisy. She twists reality to get something she wants, even something fleeting. Distinctions between the imagined and the real are blurred and she invents stories to get her brother beaten up, or the bloke who picked on Derek killed. Bruises appear on her body. She isn’t a conventional sister and certainly not one you’d want to cross. The prologue is titled ‘Daisy’s Song’ but I was left yearning to read her untold story.

Nothing or Next to Nothing works. It doesn’t try to be too clever despite the non linear storytelling. It is as gentle-paced as amphetamine and inhabits a universe diametrically opposite from the Waltons. One issue of my old Rebel Inc magazines had a painted barcode on the back page, and nstead of numbers, underneath were the words Sharp as Fuck Fiction. History has a habit of repeating.

Nothing or Next to Nothing is available for pre-order from Main Street Rag.

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Martin Macaulay lives and works in Scotland.