Background
Larry Brown born July 9, 1951, Oxford, Lafayette County, Mississippi, United States. He was the son of a restless sharecropper father and a mother who was a store owner.
United States
Larry's portrait
United States
Larry's portrait
(Facing the Music, Larry Brown's first book was originally...)
Facing the Music, Larry Brown's first book was originally published in 1988 to wide critical acclaim. As the St. Petersburg Times review pointed out, the central theme of these ten stories “is the ageless collision of a man with a woman, a woman with a man - with the frequent introduction of that other familiar couple, drinking and violence. Most often ugly, love is nevertheless graceful, however desperate the situation.
https://www.amazon.com/Facing-Music-Front-Porch-Paperbacks/dp/1565121252/?tag=2022091-20
1988
(Dirty Work is the story of two men, strangers - one white...)
Dirty Work is the story of two men, strangers - one white, the other black. Both were born and raised in Mississippi. Both fought in Vietnam. Both were gravely wounded. Now, twenty-two years later, the two men lie in adjacent beds in a VA hospital. Over the course of a day and a night, Walter James and Braiden Chaney talk of memories, of passions, of fate. With great vision, humor, and courage, Brown writes mostly about love in a story about the waste of war.
https://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Work-Larry-Brown/dp/1565125630/?tag=2022091-20
1989
(Larry Brown's highly praised novel Dirty Work established...)
Larry Brown's highly praised novel Dirty Work established him as one of the fiercest and most powerful new voices in Southern literature, a writer who understands the sorrows and joys of everyday life. That same compassionate regard for ordinary people shines on every page of Big Bad Love, whose heroes in these stories have a fatal weakness for beer, fast women, and pick-up trucks, and who find a kind of salvation in the reckless pursuit of love.
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Bad-Love-Larry-Brown/dp/0679734910/?tag=2022091-20
1990
(Joe Ransom is a hard-drinking ex-con pushing fifty who ju...)
Joe Ransom is a hard-drinking ex-con pushing fifty who just won’t slow down - not in his pickup, not with a gun, and certainly not with women. Gary Jones estimates his own age to be about fifteen. Born luckless, he is the son of a hopeless, homeless wandering family, and he’s desperate for a way out. When their paths cross, Joe offers him a chance just as his own chances have dwindled to almost nothing. Together they follow a twisting map to redemption - or ruin.
https://www.amazon.com/Joe-Larry-Brown/dp/1565124138/?tag=2022091-20
1991
(On January 6, 1990, after seventeen years on the job, awa...)
On January 6, 1990, after seventeen years on the job, award-winning novelist Larry Brown quit the Oxford, Mississippi, Fire Department. With three published books to his credit and a fourth nearly finished, he made the risky decision to try life as a full-time writer. On Fire, his first work of nonfiction looks back on his life as a full-time firefighter. Unflinching accounts of daily trauma - from the blistering heat of burning trailer homes to the crunch of broken glass at crash scenes - catapult readers into the hard reality that has driven Larry Brown.
https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Personal-Account-Death-Choices/dp/1565120094/?tag=2022091-20
1993
(A classic story of good and evil set in the rural America...)
A classic story of good and evil set in the rural American South of 1968. A classic story of good and evil set in the rural American South of 1968.
https://www.amazon.com/Father-Son-Larry-Brown/dp/0805053034/?tag=2022091-20
1996
(She's had no education, hardly any shelter, and you can't...)
She's had no education, hardly any shelter, and you can't call what her father's been trying to give her since she grew up "love." So, at the ripe age of seventeen, Fay Jones leaves home. She lights out alone, wearing her only dress and rotting sneakers, carrying a purse with a half pack of cigarettes and two-dollar bills. Even in 1985 Mississippi, two dollars won't go far on the road. She's headed for the bright lights and big times and even she knows she needs help getting there. But help's not hard to come by when you look like Fay. There's a highway patrolman who gives her a lift, with a detour to his own place. There are truck drivers who pull over to pick her up, no questions asked. There's a crop duster pilot with money for a night or two on the town. And finally, there's a strip joint bouncer who deals on the side. At the end of this suspenseful, compulsively readable novel, there are five dead bodies stacked up in Fay's wake. Fay herself is sighted for the last time in New Orleans. She'll make it, whatever making it means, because Fay's got what it takes: beauty, a certain kind of innocent appeal, and the instinct for survival. Set mostly in the seedy beach bars, strip joints, and massage parlors of Biloxi, Mississippi, back before the casinos took over, Fay is a novel that only Larry Brown, the reigning king of Grit Lit, could have written.
https://www.amazon.com/Fay-Novel-Larry-Brown-ebook/dp/B003UNLA94/?tag=2022091-20
2000
(In Billy Ray's Farm, Larry Brown brings the appealing ble...)
In Billy Ray's Farm, Larry Brown brings the appealing blend of candor, humor, and poignancy of his acclaimed novels Fay and Father and Son to nine personal essays that explore the emotional and physical landscape of the corner of Mississippi he calls home. The centerpiece of this collection offers a moving description of life on his son's cattle farm, capturing Brown's deep-seated attachment to his family and to the land.
https://www.amazon.com/Billy-Rays-Farm-Essays-Called/dp/0743225244/?tag=2022091-20
2001
(Set in Memphis, Tennessee, and northern Mississippi, The ...)
Set in Memphis, Tennessee, and northern Mississippi, The Rabbit Factory presents a wildly diverse cast of characters who are looking for love, but not necessarily in all the right places.
https://www.amazon.com/The-Rabbit-Factory/dp/B0001WOUKI/?tag=2022091-20
2003
(Before his untimely death in 2004, Larry Brown was hailed...)
Before his untimely death in 2004, Larry Brown was hailed as one of the world's greatest living writers. With A Miracle of Catfish, the unfinished but largely complete novel Brown left behind, listeners can once again savor his eloquent and unique style. This tale of fatherhood, alienation, and loneliness introduces readers to another set of Brown's irresistibly flawed characters.
https://www.amazon.com/A-Miracle-of-Catfish/dp/B0013BZYQ0/?tag=2022091-20
2007
Larry Brown born July 9, 1951, Oxford, Lafayette County, Mississippi, United States. He was the son of a restless sharecropper father and a mother who was a store owner.
Before graduating from high school in 1969, Larry Brown failed senior English and had to attend summer school.
Graduating in 1969, Larry Brown served in the U.S. Marines for two years and then worked a variety of odd jobs before finding work as a firefighter for the Oxford Fire Department in 1973. He eventually rose to the rank of captain in 1986, leaving four years later when he gained enough success as an author to pursue writing full time. A writer in the Southern tradition. Brown was greatly influenced by such authors as William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. Starting with short stories, he slowly taught himself writing skills through trial, error, and many rejection letters. Eventually, he began publishing in magazines, and by the late 1980s, one of his stories caught the attention of an Algonquin Books editor. This led to his first short-story collection. Facing the Music (1987), which won an award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters in 1990. Other works followed, including the novels Dirty Work (1989), Father and Son (1996). and The Rabbit Factory (2003), as well as the memoir Billy Ray's Farm (2001). The 1990 story collection Big Bad Love was also adapted as a 2002 film starring Debra Winger.
(In Billy Ray's Farm, Larry Brown brings the appealing ble...)
2001(Larry Brown's highly praised novel Dirty Work established...)
1990(Set in Memphis, Tennessee, and northern Mississippi, The ...)
2003(Joe Ransom is a hard-drinking ex-con pushing fifty who ju...)
1991(On January 6, 1990, after seventeen years on the job, awa...)
1993(She's had no education, hardly any shelter, and you can't...)
2000(Before his untimely death in 2004, Larry Brown was hailed...)
2007(Facing the Music, Larry Brown's first book was originally...)
1988(Dirty Work is the story of two men, strangers - one white...)
1989(A classic story of good and evil set in the rural America...)
1996
Quotations:
“After a year of therapy, my psychiatrist said to me, "Maybe life isn't for everyone.”
“I can understand why people jump off bridges.”
“Sunday just came down like a nine-pound hammer... it was tainted with the closing-in feeling of the loss of freedom. Because after the sun went down, it came back up on Monday morning. And you had to go to work five more days. And it sucked.”