Larry Brown - A belated tribute

Larry Brown

1951 - 2004

 

Because I wasn't writing this blog back in 2004 when author, Larry Brown passed away, I never had the opportunity to write about him for my celebrity deaths category. This sucks because I love his work and his passing was a great loss to literature.

I was introduced to Brown's work by an anonymous poster in the Craigslist writer's forum. I had written a post asking for some good book recommendations and someone suggested Larry Brown, a "Southern writer with some clever stories." I did a little research and ended up purchasing Father and Son, a book Brown wrote in 1996.

As I've mentioned in numerous book posts, I love flawed characters, and Brown's books are full of them; drunks, hoodlums, thieves and sluggards coexisting with decent, hard-working, common people. Most of his stories take place in the south (Brown was born, raised, lived and died in Mississippi) and often exhibit the harsh side of life. His characters are not always sympathetic, but they are true.

Always an avid reader, Brown began writing and submitting short stories in 1980, (an inspiration to us "older" writers) while working as a firefighter for the Oxford Fire Dept., and eventually received his first publishing credit with a story in the bikes and boobs magazine, Easyrider. In 1988 he published Facing the Music, a collection of short stories, followed by a second collection, Big Bad Love in 1990.

I also credit Brown for turning me on to writer Harry Crews. I believe it was in Billy Ray's Farm where Brown credits Crews' Feast of Snakes as an influence

Brown's full collection is below. The ones in bold are those I've read, all of which I can recommend.

• Facing the Music (1988) - short stories
• Dirty Work (1989) - novel
• Big Bad Love (1990) - short stories
• Joe (1991) - novel
• On Fire (1993) - autobiography
• Father and Son (1996) - novel
• Fay (2000) - novel
• Billy Ray's Farm: Essays from a Place Called Tula (2001) - Essays
• The Rabbit Factory (2003) – novel – as of the date of this post I am still reading, but so far it's great.
• (posthumously) A Miracle of Catfish (2007) - novel – (not sure if I want to read this. He died before he could finish it and the book supposedly ends with his notes as to how he planned to end it. That could be…unsatisfying.)

A heavy smoker, Brown died of a heart attack at his home near Oxford on November 24, 2004 at the age of 53. His early death robbed the world of what surely would have been a much larger body of outstanding work.