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Introduction: Larry Brown's Joe
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20167 |
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BOOK WORLD
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1 / 1992 |
243 Words |
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Joe Ransom has lived a hard life, done time in prison, and is now doing time within the loneliness of an estranged marriage and a job poisoning trees--a bottle of whiskey for company. Gary Jones is the young son of a vagrant family headed by an evil father and emotionally distraught mother. When Joe sees a character worth saving in Gary, the pair's better instincts are nurtured until tragedy separates them.
Tendrils of man's good nature spring up through the much of depraved surroundings in Joe, a new novel excerpted in the following pages. Author Larry Brown speaks in a remarkably observant, spare, ironic voice about hard lives and what makes us keep on hoping.
Three commentaries on Brown's literacy efforts follow the excerpt of his book. Alex Standefer of the Sewanee Review tells us why Joe is a tough book to put down. Author Walter Sullivan talks about the course of southern writers since Faulkner, posing the problems that Brown and his contemporaries face, with varied results. Finally, Professor Robert Geary gives us the story of young Larry Brown, who set out writing to make some money and found himself with something to say. "I know what trouble is like, " Brown says. "Maybe I harp on it too much. But the people I write about are like the people I have known." What would otherwise be too-painful portraits are illuminated by veins of humor and unlikely virtue.
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