Larry Brown died on November 24, and I only found out today. Heart attack. Age: 53
For those of you who don't know him (or only know the basketball coach of the same name), he was a writer from the Oxford, Mississippi area.
He wrote several good books and short story/essay collections: Joe, Fay, On Fire, Billy Ray's Farm, Rabbit Factory and more. He was the writer I want to be. Southern voice, good characters, not afraid to be different. He seemed to absorb the best from a lot of writers like Charles Bukowski, Cormac McCarthy, and of course, William Faulkner, and come up with a narrative style that was distinctly his own.
He wrote the way I think. I cannot say that about any other author.
I have most of what he wrote, but it's not enough now that he's gone. I don't have enough Larry Brown books. I have no idea what he may have been working on when he passed, or whether we'll see posthumous releases. I hope we will. But I'm sad to know that from here on out any releases will be... finite.
That's the selfish consumer in me. Hey, he wasn't my uncle; he was one of my favorite writers.
Go to your library and look him up. Fay is probably the least of his books (and it's not bad). On Fire is riveting. Billy Ray's Farm is engrossing. Rabbit Factory slick and smart. Big Bad Love is all smoke and oil and dirt roads. It goes on and on.
There will never be another Larry Brown.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
"There will never be another Larry Brown."
I second that. He was a unique individual. Nobody writes like him. It saddens me that we won't be getting any more brilliance like Big Bad Love. It also saddens me that it took his death to get his name in the public eye. And I feel so sorry for his family, who I know he loved.
He had more to say. Now we'll never hear it.
Michael
And I'll have to resist the urge to hit the bookstores looking for someone just like him... bad habit. I'll fail anyway.
Post a Comment