My first five-star read of this year, yet I didn't 'love' every story in this collection of ten shorts (nine stories and one 87 page novella). So how does that work? Well, the power of Larry Brown's writing in this second collection of his is such that while I don't think that everything he tries to do here is a complete success, the value and impact of his creation when it IS a success is so overwhelming that I have no choice but to give the book the highest rating. The novella "92 Days" which closes the collection is among the very best of his work, and probably one of the best shorter stories I've ever read.These stories show us characters familiar to Brown's rural Mississippi. Mostly male, working class, and white, these characters often drink too much, have difficult or failed marriages, and are frequently running into trouble. They clearly follow a range of autobiographical themes. The stories are grouped in three sections. The first features the opening eight salvos, and then the second and third sections include a satirical dialogue - "Discipline" - where a writer on trial stands accused of plagiarism (that I didn't care for so much), and the novella "92 Days" respectively.In the opening story "Falling Out of Love" - '...it was an evening as fine as you could ask for except that we had two flat tires on our car some miles back down the road and didn't know where we were or who to ask. Besides this main emergency, I knew things weren't right.'"The Apprentice" is an amusing insight into the life of a struggling author pre-publication, and how the obsessive compulsion to write can affect a marriage. It is the male narrator's wife Judy who wanted to be the writer: '...I didn't know what to do. If I said it was bad, she'd sull up or maybe cry. She cried a lot when I didn't like her stuff. And if I said it was good when it really wasn't, she'd get very encouraged and sit right down and type it up all nice and neat and send it off to "Playboy" or somewhere, and then get all broke down when it came back rejected.'"Wild Thing" is a hopeless tale of an unhappily married forklift driver who has an affair with a younger married woman he meets in a downtown bar. The title story then sees Brown explore another side of matrimonial unhappiness: his narrator Leroy, is spending time in town drinking and playing Tom T Hall songs on the jukebox, avoiding going home and having to bury his dead dog, and his wife Mildred who '...was sexually frustrated because of her overlarge organ...'"Gold Nuggets" sees a slight change of scenery, but not flavour, as the story is set among the strip bars and back alleyways of a Gulf Coast harbour town. The pathetic narrator is in town with a pot of money to pick up shrimp for himself and his associates - who he doesn't even like. He promptly falls victim to the tawdry attractions the town has for him. 'It was a bar somewhere between Orange Grove and Pascagoula, one of those places where they charge you nothing to get in and then five dollars for a ten-ounce Schlitz. It was dark. Everyone had on sunglasses but me...''...They hadn't even set it on the table when the other one leaned over and said she wanted one, too. So I bought her one. And told her to bring me another beer. I didn't care. I wanted to wake up broke and sober. I figured if I couldn't buy a drink, I couldn't get a drink. We jawed some old shit, it didn't matter what we said. We all knew the score. Their job was to rob me, my job was to pay for the robbery. All night long if possible.'"Waiting for the Ladies" is a powerful story of a man whose wife tells of a flasher exposing himself at the local dump. The narrator is newly out of work and has enough time on his hands to ride around looking for the pervert, fantasising about what he'll do to him given the chance. The story reveals far more about the narrator than you'd initially expect.Then, "Old Soldiers", a poignant tale of Leo, a Vietnam veteran spending time with Mr Aaron - a WW2 veteran who fought with Leo's father in Europe. Leo frequents Mr Aaron's general store where they drink together and tell stories. A 3rd character, Squirrel, is a local barfly in his 50s or 60s, and a mutual friend of both. One evening sees Leo 'trapped' at the bar - looking for a good time but instead, mildly annoyed, nursing a drunk Squirrel who needs a ride home... '"I was on the front lines at Korea," he said. I looked sideways at him."I didn't know that," I said."Hell yes."I listened then, because moments like that are rare, when you get to hear about these things that have shattered men's lives. I knew my daddy never got the war out of his head. When he got to drinking that's what he'd talk about. Mama said when they first got married he'd wake himself up screaming from a nightmare of hand-to-hand combat, knives and bayonets and gun stocks. With sweat all over him like he'd just stepped from water. I listened to Squirrel.'The final story - "92 Days" is the novella which alone is easily worth the book's price. Brown immerses us into a world very similar to that which he himself had not long recently been in. The struggling author (though unlike Brown 'Lonnie' is divorced from his wife and never sees his young kids) spends his days writing and drinking, and opening the mail with dread. He reads Faulkner and Bukowski and tries to picture Betti DeLoreo, the editor who wrote him a rejection letter, full of compliments for his 'voice', and encouragement to not give it up. His ex-wife keeps the pressure on for alimony and child support, while he has a finite number of days to keep on writing full time before his money runs out altogether, and he goes back to house painting.'I went down and checked the mail. Water bill, light bill, phone bill, and somebody wanting to give me an AM/FM radio worth $39.95 if I bought a quarter acre of land in some resort area in Arkansas for $6800. Nothing from Betti DeLoreo. But at least nothing had come back. Yet. I had fourteen stories on their way to or back from various editorial offices across America.I went back to the house, opened a beer, and sat down at the machine. I sat there all afternoon waiting for it to say something to me and it never did.'But Lonnie writes plenty of stories. One he starts is about a widowed go-go dancer called Marie, locking her three sleeping children in the car in the parking lot. She ends up quitting and riding '...around for a while, wondering why her husband hadn't had enough sense to buy life insurance. She didn't have enough dog food for their dog.At this point I realized I couldn't help them, realized I wasn't a writer, and threw it away, which scared the shit out of me.' I think Larry Brown is one hell of a writer, and this is a superb collection, whose images and characters will stay with me a long time.
The whole world seemed to be trying to be decent, and I seemed an indecent thing in it.*This one was recommended to me by my pal John, who described it as "... a two evening read filled with social misfits." Though I spend most of my evenings surrounded by social misfits, I decided to give a read anyway. I'm fairly glad I did, as the book provides an excellent glimpse into what your friends, neighbors, and maybe even some of your relatives, might be getting up to behind closed doors.Most of the stories concern basically decent men who've been kicked around by life. These are men who stay too long at the bar and find every reason why they not only need to, but deserve to cheat on their wives. Sometimes, their wives have had enough of it and have kicked the sorry sons of bitches out on their lazy asses. Yeah, we should hate these fellows, but more often than not, they are too pitiful to scorn. I credit Brown's writing talents for making the weasels tolerable.A few of the tales are about struggling writers. In Acceptance, the quality of one man's sex life depends on whether or not he "likes" his wife's latest literary efforts. The last story, more of a novella really, is about a recently divorced man waiting for word on the short stories he has sent to publishers. Will the mail bring a big envelope containing a rejected story or will it be a letter of acceptance? And the funniest story, Discipline, is the document of a writer incarcerated for plagiarism who recounts weird, ungodly tales about torture and involuntary sex with obese women:Why did you think they weren't going to take you out and torture you? Were you friendly with any of the guards?No. Certainly not. They were all former editors. That was one of the requirements.Oh, Larry must have really enjoyed writing that one. Sticks and stones may break bones, but sticking it to an editor is a writer's best revenge. * from 92 Days
What do You think about Big Bad Love (1991)?
My only previous experience with Larry Brown was Father and Son, which was really quite a good novel. I tend to be a fan of Southern writers, and the more in line with the Southern Gothic sorts of stories they are, the happier I am. While most of these don't qualify as Southern Gothic, there are still some good character studies in this collection that are well worth reading. The last story, the long-ish "92 Days," though, is the one that lifts this from a solid 3 star to a very worthwhile 4 star collection. This isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but if you like this kind of blue collar story, you should give this a try.
—Tim Healy
Love and salvation are the underlying themes throughout the book, but these men are not the traditional soul searchers by any means. They are down-and-out, lost, and have strong penchants for cheap booze and fast women. However, they are not lost to the point of giving up. All of them keep pushing through their struggles, particularly the character from the final story, (the novel’s namesake). He is divorced, soul-shattered, unemployed, yet still wakes up every morning from his alcoholic haze to continue writing; sending manuscript-after-manuscript to every lit magazine imaginable. Regardless of his steady pile of rejection letters, he perseveres; knowing this is what he was born to do and that nothing will stop him from achieving his literary glory, (not even himself).For those who like their fiction on the gritty side, this book offers plenty of beer-guzzling and backseat sex. Still, there are plenty of dark-humored moments. I remember especially getting a kick out of the story, “The Apprentice.” It’s told from the point of view of a husband whose wife fashions herself as a writer and subjects him to her lousy stories, in which he makes a habit out of lying for the sake of sex. Basically, he tells her that her stories are good and she rewards him. The fact that he finds his wife’s writing such a nuisance is incredibly comical. He says, “I don’t know where this writing thing came from or what caused it, but it’s a part of her now, like her arms or her face.”
—Erik
Hated it. While I appreciate Brown's writing (he is a good writer), his stories are filled with beer, sex, and bars, and his characters are all unhappily married and seem to be getting sadder and more depressed by the page. The stories were just too bleak, and I kept hoping something, anything, would turn around, but it didn't. I think when a writer reaches that point when he cannot do anything for his characters, he should not be writing that story, but Brown keeps going, people keep dying, marriages keep falling apart, and there's just more sex and beer. I will admit that Brown has a great way of portraying the people he writes about. I knew from reading these stories that they were based on him or people he had met because he never seems to look down on these men who shirk responsibilty and parenting to get wasted and have sex, but instead seems to emphathize with them and their struggles with being published. In that respect, Brown is a great writer. I personally just don't enjoy the content.
—Sarah
