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BIO
"Larry
Brown writes like a force of nature," said Pat Conroy. Larry Brown
is "direct, powerful, and singularly honest," said Willie Morris.
"Larry Brown discovers real stuff, like great writers do. He’s been
out there, and reports it beautifully," said Barry Hannah. "His
version of the minimalist style is underwritten by a great deal
of real-world experience: he makes us feel much more than we are
told...[and] that to be either human or animal is to engage in a
game with death and danger, perversely, tragically, heroically,
absurdly," said Madison Smartt Bell. "Whatever he writes, I will
read," said Harry Crews.
When publishers are introducing work that’s dark, literary, and
worth reading, Larry Brown’s name is often invoked. (Charles Frasier’s
COLD MOUNTAIN and Tom Franklin’s POACHERS come to mind.) But for
all the complimentary comparisons, Larry Brown remains the writer
who writes like and excels at being Larry Brown.
His story is so much a part of Algonquin’s history that sometimes
we assume everyone knows it. For those who don’t: In 1987, his editor,
Shannon Ravenel, was reading Frederick Barthelme’s Mississippi Quarterly
looking for stories to include in NEW STORIES FROM THE SOUTH. It
was there that she came across "Facing the Music," only the second
story Brown had ever published, and Ravenel thought, one of the
best she had ever read. The contributor’s note included the information
that Brown was working as a firefighter in Oxford, Mississippi,
and had been teaching himself to write fiction. Ravenel contacted
Brown to ask if he had other stories. He answered, in one of his
now famous hand-typed letters, that he had about a hundred. Algonquin
published the first of two collections in 1988.
Since then, he’s written three highly acclaimed novels (DIRTY WORK,
JOE, and FATHER AND SON) and a memoir (ON FIRE). He’s won the Southern
Book Critics Circle Award twice; been published in England, France,
and Germany; and taught writing at several universities (most recently
as a guest of Rick Bass at the University of Montana). When he’s
at home, where he mostly prefers to be, he spends his days fishing
and working on his house and at his pond, and he spends long hours
in his writing room revising page after page. For the past three
years he’s been working on Fay, a character he’s known since he
wrote JOE.
FAY is one hundred percent Larry Brown. With her good looks and
budding libido, Fay walks out of the woods north of Oxford and hitchhikes
down Highway 55 toward Biloxi. For all the trouble she causes and
all the trouble she sees, one thing is clear --- Larry Brown knows
Fay and likes her a lot. Some say FAY is the story of the making
of an unknowingly dangerous woman --- a Monica Lewinsky of Mississippi.
INTERVIEW
April
28, 2000
Minimalist writer Larry Brown may not write flowing prose, but every
word he selects hits home. His new novel FAY, delves deeply into
a character that Brown could not get out of his mind after writing
about her in his book JOE. In this interview by Bookreporter.com's
Senior Writer Joe Hartlaub, learn how a man who failed senior English
can write like a modern day Faulkner. Read carefully --- his answers
are brief, but they tell you exactly what you need to know.
TBR: FAY, while not exactly a sequel to your novel JOE, broadens
and enhances the portrait of the Jones family. What was your impetus
to focus on Fay Jones as the subject matter for a novel?
LB: I had always wondered what happened to Fay. She was a
character that lived on in my mind and her fate was unsettled and
I knew that I had another story to tell, one about her. As soon
as I finished FATHER AND SON I sat down and started on FAY. That
was I think around January 1996.
TBR: The end of JOE raised a number of questions regarding the
fate of the members of the Jones family. FAY resolved a couple of
those, including what happened to Fay after she left the family.
As in life, however, there are still issues unresolved which were
raised in both JOE and FAY. Do you have any plans to resolve those
at a future point in time?
LB: Yes. At this point I plan to make a trilogy.
The last book will probably focus on Gary as well as answer the
question of what happened to Calvin, the little brother of Fay and
Gary who was traded for a car in JOE.
TBR: One of the major, and maddening, questions which both FAY
and JOE raised for me involved the respective virtues of Fay and
Gary Jones. Both individuals were raised by a mother driven mad
by grief and fear and a father who, to all outward appearances,
was without redeeming social value. Yet along the way, Gary acquired
the capacity for hard work and responsibility while Fay, as demonstrated
time and again in FAY, has a capacity for honesty that we would
all do well to aspire to. This is an unfair question, I know, but
-- considering where these people came from, where did they learn
these qualities?
LB: I believe that people are able to rise above
the environment they were raised in. Some genes get passed along,
and some don't.
TBR: Do the characters in FAY have real world models, or are
they purely fictional?
LB: I don't believe that any of them are based
on any real people that I know, but some of the events are real.
TBR: I have read elsewhere that you took three years to write
FAY. Were you working on other projects, as well as FAY, during
this time?
LB: I taught some at the University of Mississippi
but mostly worked on FAY.
TBR: Your biography, as usually presented, goes something like
this: fireman for the Oxford, Mississippi Fire Department; self-taught
creative writer; receiver of several prestigious awards; full-time
writer in 1990. Could you tell us what your academic background
was prior to your career as a firefighter?
LB: I wrote a whole lot of things and threw them
away. I read the best writers that I could find and I just kept
doing that for years and years. I just believed that I could do
it if I worked hard enough at it, but it took me eight years to
publish my first book.
TBR: What drew you toward creative writing as a part-time, and
later a full-time career?
LB: I have a high school diploma and was lucky
to get that. I was such a dumbass that I failed senior English and
had to go to summer school. Since then, I've read books to educate
myself.
TBR: What method(s) did you use to teach yourself creative writing?
LB: I'd always loved to read and, eventually,
I began to want to learn to write. It seemed that it was a thing
that could be learned with enough work. After a couple of years,
I begin to really enjoy what I was doing and wanted to learn how
to be a really good writer and eventually make a career out of it.
In my early thirties I found out what I wanted to do with my life.
TBR: It has been noted elsewhere that the greatest writers which
our country has produced in the last century --- Thomas Wolfe, William
Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy --- have been from the South. While my
list is somewhat subjective, inarguably there are more authors of
note whose origins are from that region than might otherwise be
expected. What is it about the South that gives rise to the inordinate
amount of literary talent and ability that has come, and continues
to come, from the region?
LB: I have been asked that question many times
and have no way to answer it. I am asked that question wherever
I go. The only thing that I can come up with is that the geography
has something to do with the creation of the characters that live
in it. My characters come out of the land that is around me that
I see every day, that is rural Lafayette County, Mississippi. That's
just about the only way I know how to explain it and that's only
for me.
TBR: Your work has been favorably compared to that of McCarthy,
Faulkner and Crews, and while it shows the influence of those authors,
your voice remains uniquely and totally your own. Are there any
other authors, besides those noted above, who have influenced your
work?
LB: Yes, Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver and
Charles Bukowski.
TBR: It is my understanding that Joe Bob Briggs has optioned
the film rights to JOE. Is there anything happening with that project? And
are you, or will you, be involved in it in any way?
LB: I probably shouldn't talk too much about Billy
Bob Thornton and JOE. I don't know what their plans are yet, only
that they have the property.
TBR: What are you working on now?
LB: I'm working on a bunch of essays to finish
up my next book, BILLY RAY'S FARM.
TBR: You have tried your hand at songwriting and performing.
Have you considered any multimedia projects, possibly combining
one of your novels with your musical compositions?
LB: That hadn't really crossed my mind. Mostly
I play for my own entertainment and with friends. I leave the music
to the real musicians.
TBR: What are you reading now?
LB: I'm reading AMERICAN BY BLOOD by Andrew Huebner,
THE INLAND SEA by Steven Varni, and THE GREEN MILE by Stephen King.
I just got the copy of BEOWULF by Seamus Heaney and a copy of HUNTS
IN DREAMS by Tom Drury.
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