Reading Larry Brown

For me, reading Larry Brown is like thinking that I see someone to my right and I look and immediately, whatever was there is gone.

But that shadow, that doppleganger, that other me is still there, somehow, reminding me of who I am, reminding me of my past, reminding me of the present that could have been.

I first read Larry Brown's work very recently, this past spring. I took a class on Southern Literature only because the professor told me that he'd be covering two of my favorite poets: Wendell Berry and Fred Chapell. Now, we did read Berry and Chapell; and I enjoyed the work of both authors.

But only Larry Brown kept me awake at night--well, actually, Larry Brown and Harry Crews, but I'll write about Crews some other time.
Brown's writing is rugged and hard and beautiful, like cypress roots boiling out of a Mississippi river bank. His characters are as hard as the packed dirt on which they trod. He has a musician's ear for dialogue, a way of capturing speech that's somehow both artistic and deep and unpretentious. He finds beauty in the muddy depths of tragedy; he finds darkness in the brightest lights. Joe floored me. Fay, as well. Currently, I'm reading Father and Son.

When I read Brown, I have to stop often, lay the book aside, and breathe. He has a way of enveloping readers into his characters' world. I'm tempted to say that he's brilliant with characterization. However, Brown's characters are not merely developed personalities on white paper. His characters are inseparable from the landscape they inhabit. Joe Ransome is as hard as dried pine tar and as bitter, too. Fay is as mysterious as the depths of the Gulf of Mexico; but readers forget that fact, as we get drawn into her life. She's like the Gulf itself--localized, close, at arm's length, but still deadly and untamable.

Like all good writers, Brown makes me want to write. He makes me want to remember my past. I've longed downplayed my Southerness (to borrow a term from Jake Adam York). But my heritage is without a doubt southern; my people bury in Iron City, Georgia, a small speck of a community just east of Donalsonville, Georgia. I grew up in Northwest Florida, on the Panhandle, in an area locally referred to as "L.A." (Lower Alabama). I still have the remnants of a Southern accent that I labored for years to tame. I love grits, turnip greens, and fried fish. And I am a storyteller, like so many Southerners before me.

Sadly, Brown died in 2004, a mere 53 years of age. Who know what work he would have produced? I can only love what's left, and that has to be enough.