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The Firehouse Bard
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20177 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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1 / 1992 |
2,777 Words |
| Author
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Robert F. Geary
Robert F. Geary is head of the English Department at James
Madison University. His academic interests include the gothic
novel and its literary descendants. |
There are, in a real sense, two Larry Browns; and, if you are not careful, amazement at the first can block appreciation of the second. There is, to begin with, Larry Brown the rags-to-riches literary success story. So astonishing is the tale of the phenomenal rise of this man who until June 1990 was a fireman in Oxford, Mississippi, that it is easy to give cursory treatment to the second Larry Brown--the consciousness in the fiction, recording superbly the sights, sounds, and smells of the rural environment, capturing the local idiom, and, most of all, seeing a stern dignity in the lives of the most unpromising of ordinary people. The story of Brown's development and discovery needs to be told, not simply because it bolsters our sense of the potential of individuals of talent to succeed in spite of the severest obstacles, but also because it helps us understand what may be the most remarkable what may be the most remarkable feature of his fiction, especially his two novels--the respect for his characters and, by extension, for the dignity of human beings in a warped yet good world.
A Dream Of Success
A little over a decade ago, 29-year-old Larry Brown wanted more from life than the modest security of his position as a fire fighter. Married and the father of two children, he dreamed of becoming really successful. Brown's dream was one that yearly sends countless unsolicited manuscripts to publishers. He wanted to make money, and writing a blockbuster novel seemed to him an easy way to do just that. Waiting around the fire station in Oxford on the edge of the University of Mississippi campus, Brown had ample time to read the best-sellers of writers like Louis L'Amour, Harold Robbins, and Stephen King. These men had made money writing, and he though he could teach himself to do the same in his spare time. On his wife's typewriter, he began working on short and long fiction, eventually producing a novel of, as he has since remarked, "327 single-spaced pages of sex and man-eating," concerning the rampages of a bear in Yellowstone National Park. As the years passed, his collection of rejection slips grew.
During the eighties Brown's ambition changed. With the guidance of Richard Howarth, owner of Square Books in Oxford, Brown began reading a mélange of more demanding authors, among them Flaubert, Harry Crews, Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver, and (of course) William Faulkner. From the local library he obtained collections of prizewinning short stories and every work he could find on the craft of writing. At the suggestion of novelist Barry Hannah, a writer-in-residence at the University of Mississippi, Brown took a
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