Customer Reviews

Big Bad Love

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an inspiring collection of shorts by Larry Brown. Rarely does he follow the typical short story plot curve, but the twists of events and dialog make this a real text in the art of short fiction. Mr. Brown reminds us of Carver, Bukowski and the rest of the "time to get out of Dodge in into the bar" great writers of recent times. An enjoyable read while sitting on a cooler, watching the sunset.

I picked up this volume of stories after Brown's novel Father and Son blew me away, and while these tales of drunk Mississippians don't necessarily rise to the level of Brown's best work, they are a nice diversion and occasionally pack a wallop. Brown writes about the places he knows best, rural Mississippi where the men ride around in pickups or dusty old cars with a cooler of beer in the back and a shotgun at their feet.

Some of the stories were downright hilarious, like the tale of the husband whose wife writes abominable fiction, like the "Hunchwoman of Cincinnati", trying desperately to get published. Then there are the poignant tales of Southern racism and the unwritten bonds between men, like Old Soldiers, that have a real ring of truth about them. I loved the observation of the old gas station owner who was asked by an African American woman to check her air pressure - the old guy reluctantly complied, taking his time about it, and 30 minutes later she drove away with 4 very low tires...for the most part I enjoyed Brown's lean, true dialogue and his characters' unpredictable nature and penchant for trouble.

writing like this isn't taught, or learned; it's born from living and absorption.

i'm the guy who's also "a reader from purchase, ny." and this Brown character is a master.

As a former student of fellow Mississippian Barry Hannah, Larry Brown knows how to write. Boy, does he ever! His characters are mostly down and out "white trash" who drink a little too much beer and whiskey, ride around in their pickups in a dry, scorching Mississippi heat, with a shotgun beside them, looking for something to hunt - deer or women, either one is fine. Larry Brown has a fantastic ear for dialogue and his language posesses a brute and simple poetry. I just love the way he writes:

"My dog died. I went out there in the yard and looked at him and there he was, dead as a hammer. Boy, I hated it. I knew I'd have to look around and see about a shovel. But it didn't look like he'd been dead long and there wasn't any hurry, and I was wanting a drink somewhat, so I went out a little further into the yard to see if my truck would crank and it would, so I left. Thought I'd bury the dog later. Before Mildred got home. Figured I had plenty of time." (p. 47)

"Big Bad Love" is a powerful collection of stories about small people living lives of quiet desperation, about their struggles with women, alcohol, and themselves. A small masterpiece of understanding and understatement.

This book is such a powerful surprise that it is hard to know what to say. So many short stories one encounters in magazines and anthologies are so much 'in the tradition' that they could have been written by any number of writers. Larry Brown's stories, however, have an assured, unique and very personal style that is unlike anything else I have read. These first person confessionals by obsessed (and not too self aware) characters are gripping and funny all at the same time. There is a truth here - about language and behavior - that most authors rarely achieve.

I opened this collection of stories intending to read just one, in order to get a feel for Brown's work - which I have heard praised many times. I found myself glued to the book and finished it in one afternoon - obsessed like his characters. This is so like the high octane, drug and booze fueled narrative one gets occasionally in James Ellroy's L.A. series, but without the complex plot or life and death action. Here we see individuals - mostly down and out - struggling with their own personal demons in the red neck world of roadside taverns, pickup trucks, squalid domestic situations and many, many back roads.

Brown is able to give us the grit of Harry Crews's south without the qrotesque elements. The hard truth is here, and the humor too, but these are people that I have known. I just never cared for them as much as I do after seeing them pass through the filter of Brown's fierce vision.

Great stuff.

I had never heard of Larry Brown untill I read this, I'm from Scotland and wanted something good on conpemporary life and romance in America from a modern angle. Liked it a lot. "The apprentice" was one of the funniest storries I have ever read.

Having just finished "Dirty Work", went right into "Big Bad Love". Never heard of Larry Brown until reading a haunting story, "Fishing with Charlie", in the never disappointing Oxford American magazine (the story is from the 3rd annual double issue on Southern music). Anyway, I digress, but do read the story if you can get your hands on the magazine.

How about that Leon Barlow in "92 Days"?? Can he ever be forgotten?? No, he's the kind of guy, and Brown's words are the kind that find some place within that's very close to the bone, and there it stays. The stuff that you know if you're ever locked away, deprived of further sensory information, you can pull out, dust off and savor.

I've heard Larry Brown's short stories compared to the music of Vic Chestnutt. I hear strains of the characters in the music of the late Mr. Townes Van Zandt. These guys really understand and say so. I just love it. Makes it easier somehow to forgive those characters who show up in your own life, including yourself.

Larry Brown knows how to reach into his guts and pull out stories so true they hurt. Big Bad Love is -- and I know this term is terribly overused -- a masterpiece. Each one of his books is a small, burning miracle: Joe; Father and Son; Facing the Music; Dirty Work; On Fire.

The man knows life and he knows how to write about it.

(By the way, if you like Larry Brown, try Barry Hannah. While they are different in style, each one plumbs the depths of the human soul in a way few other contemporary authors dare.)

mine, mine, all min

okay, so i'll be the first to admit that maybe larry brown's style and content are acquired tastes, what with his predilection for setting his characters smack in the center of unseemly situations in unseemly bars. that's no excuse for not shelling out the $10 for this one. i've read the final story, "92 days", perhaps sixty times, and it's just as moving each time. he's a difficult writer to describe without sounding maudlin; let it suffice to say that larry brown sees the beauty in waking up at six a.m., going out onto the front porch, lighting a cigarette, taking a deep breath, and trying to figure out what comes next. and, as an aforementioned story should be a minor miracle