On the Southern Literary Trail discussion

Here's the thread to begin our discussion. Enjoy...

This is my first Larry Brown although I do have five of his books on my TBR shelf. I am on page 82 and am impressed. The Trail continues to expand my exposure to southern authors. I am pleased by that.

Larry wrote: "This is my first Larry Brown although I do have five of his books on my TBR shelf. I am on page 82 and am impressed. The Trail continues to expand my exposure to southern authors. I am pleased by t..."

I think he's great. I love the way he brings in such off the wall stuff in a way that seems "normal"......Mike, you got many Mississippi bar monkeys down there in your parts? For a "what to read next" of Larry Brown, I can highly recommend his unfinished (it doesn't give you heart burn like you might expect) A Miracle of Catfish: A Novel in Progress

Larry wrote: "This is my first Larry Brown although I do have five of his books on my TBR shelf. I am on page 82 and am impressed. The Trail continues to expand my exposure to southern authors. I am pleased by t..."

Larry, I'm so happy to read your comment. When I began this group it was my hope to increase readers' awareness of the wide range of Southern authors. We have so much to explore. I think Brown will continue to impress.

Mike

Josh wrote: "Mike, you got many Mississippi bar monkeys down there in your parts? For a "what to read next" of Larry Brown, I can highly recommend his unfinished (it doesn't give you heart burn like you might expect) A Miracle of Catfish: A Novel in Progress
"

HAH! I'm sure we have a few from time to time. I've steered away from Brown's unfinished novel for fear of heartburn. Glad to hear it didn't have that effect on you. I'd love to see us do a William Gay. We'll have a posthumous publication of his last novel which was in edit at the time of his death. But we have a number of gems we've not read as a group.

Mike

What fictional characters have you met who are as nasty as Glen? What good qualities can you see in him? Or is he simply irredeemably evil and a poster child for capital punishment?

@Larry- I am two/thirds through and just found the first hint of "good" in Glen....in the boat. With that said, I can think of a few "nastier" in some others who are comparable in some of Brown's other work, some of Woodrell's, Gay's, McCarthy's.......but the nastiest ones I can think of were in The Devil All the Time......pure evil there.

Josh wrote: "@Larry- I am two/thirds through and just found the first hint of "good" in Glen....in the boat."

The released fish who never did anything bad to Glen? I must admit that I smirked when I read that! I would still vote him off the island.

One character that came to mind was Stanley Kowalski from "A Streetcar Named Desire." The rape of Blanche, his persistent abuse of the pregnant Stella, and the fact that he feels no shame or remorse for his actions.

Having finished "The Magic Mountain" with The Thomas Mann Group, I've begun Father and Son. Glen is rather endearing, isn't he? *Koff*

For information regarding Larry Brown, it's available in the Folder of the author.

Finished it this afternoon (amid a Tennessee rain pattern eerily similar to the one concluding the book). Wasn't disappointed. Here's my review (don't worry no real spoilers): https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I got this from the library because I wasn't too sure I would like it. Decided to give it a chance today and can't believe how good it is. VERY southern, just right dialogue, setting and characters so well depicted you can see them in front of you. Gritty and violent, yes, but never for the shock value alone, but to further the story. It adds a new author to my favorites list. All this and I' m only on page 116. Thanks to whoever nominated this one.

Diane. He's great and I hate he left us early. I've previously read and loved Catfish and Joe and I've heard good things about his other stuff (I think Rabbit Factory is a bit different than the rest).

Diane wrote: "I got this from the library because I wasn't too sure I would like it. Decided to give it a chance today and can't believe how good it is. VERY southern, just right dialogue, setting and characte..."

I'm very pleased to see the positive response to
Father and Son. I'm on page 123. I've made it a point for the group to chart the direction of the reads we would undertake. However, I've wanted to see us hit on the works of Larry Brown for some time. For those inclined to ride along the rougher roads of the South, we have a number of authors previously unexplored. For Brown lovers, we should also look at William Gay, the darker works of Tom Franklin, Tim McLaurin, and, of course, Harry Crews.

Mike

Just finished the book. It was my first Larry Brown, I think I am going run back to the used book store to get the copy of Fay before it is gone. I had a slow start, not sure why, but once I got into it, it was finished before I knew it. Glad I am getting the opportunity to learn about more southern authors.

I loved this book. This story will haunt me for a long time. I definitely want to read more Larry Brown.

I knew there was something about the cover. Has anyone else seen it? The gargoyle

Look at the negative space in the "N". The Son N. Just relax your eyes, come back to it a few times. It'll be there

I'm so impressed with this my first Larry Brown book as I mention in the review. Any suggestions for next book to read?

Here's my review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Webberj wrote: "I'm so impressed with this my first Larry Brown book as I mention in the review. Any suggestions for next book to read?"

The only two others I have read were
Joe which is another gritty, raw tale detailing the struggles of a young boy coming to grips with the realities of being raised by deadbeats even more gruesome than those in this book. The other was his almost finished A Miracle of Catfish: A Novel in Progress which I like the most- ties similar themes, adds a dose of humor, and really more gripping personal drama together in a most satisfying way. Highly recommended.

While I am not quite finished, I find that Glen's character seems inconsistent. I have never met anyone that can change so much when he is with Roy...well, other than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. That doesn't mean I haven't been enjoying the book, which I have. I still have about a quarter of the book to go.

The story is told in third person but with a lot of stream of consciousness thrown in, much like the last novel I'd read, American Rust by Phillipp Meyers. The problem with this technique, if it is a problem, is that it results in quite a bit of repetition from various characters' points of view which slow down the novel without necessarily advancing the plot. I have been fascinated by how these Southern writers employ Romantic elements, such as using the setting--time. landscape, and weather--to reflect the characters' psyches or tensions. I also thought that the character of Glen is inconsistent; obviously, he is always making excuses for his bad behavior, but towards the end, there are other characters who join in saying what a hard life he has had. Well, if he has had a hard life, most of it is of his own making. Last comment, I was somewhat surprised that the protagonist and the antagonist only confront one another once at the beginning of the book, although the protagonist is looking for the other the whole novel and you are sure that there will be the ultimate showdown at the end. Surprise, surprise. Neat trick.

I finished 'Father and Son' several weeks back and since then, have been trying to put my finger on why this novel didn't quite meet my expectations. It has to do, I think now, with the treatment and development of character. This is Glen's story and the demons that control his inner life -- his feelings of betrayal, his anger and desperation -- are the same demons we see in his outer life, sending him on a rampage of rape and murder. As readers, we don't know exactly how the demons will arrange his destiny but, right from the start, we have a pretty good idea -- regardless of a few moments Glen spends with his better angels -- it will not be peace and harmony that figure in the final outcome. After release from prison, Glen's behavior becomes the perfect expression of his tortured soul, condemned irrevocably to the dark side by the experience of prison and all that bad personal history. For the key secondary characters, though, it's the other way around. Bobby's Mom, Jewel and Bobby himself manifest principally as operatives of the outer plot, i.e. Glen's story. As a result their behavior does not resonate much beyond the circumstances of their lives. They have no inner life or if they do, it's squarely within the shadows cast by Glen's tragic pathology. Glen here, in other words, calls the shots. You can insist that this is fate at work in the lives of these characters and leave it at that, but fate or no, the more I read, the more I felt there was a deterministic black hole at work here, sucking up all the light and what the light can bring -- an idea, variation, uniqueness in world view, something, in other words, that isn't scripted. (Two exceptions here are Puppy and Virgil. Interestingly, both figure only indirectly in the developments that lead to Glen's final undoing. Brown allows these two characters to engage in an easy, slow, conversational back-and-forth that speaks to culture and reveals, I believe, subtle changes in the way they both regard their lives)

FrankH wrote: "I finished 'Father and Son' several weeks back and since then, have been trying to put my finger on why this novel didn't quite meet my expectations. It has to do, I think now, with the treatment a..."

You are far more sympathetic to Glen than I could ever be.

After reading Frank's comments, I have to reply that Glen was the black hole, and of course he was calling the shots, because that's what evil does. All the characters surrounding him were just trying to deal with that the best way they could. Remember that the events in this novel took place over only 5 days, and I felt that Brown did a remarkable job of letting us get inside the other characters within that limited time frame.

I also finished the book a fortnight or so ago, but I’d better comment here and now (despite the “First impressions” heading) before I forget what I had in mind to say. Perhaps in future a “Final impressions” thread could be opened up simultaneously with the “First impressions” thread, for the benefit of those who manage to read the book early in the month?

Anyway, the first thing that struck me about Father and Son was the odd writing style. No one in the novel just goes into a house or gets out of a car – every movement is minutely itemized, sometimes to the point of self-parody:

“He pushed the door open and let the screen door flap behind him, took off his gun and dropped it in a chair and sat down and took his boots off. Took his wet socks off, too, stuck them down inside the boots and carried them back to his room and dropped them beside the bed. There were clean boots inside the closet and more uniforms. He undressed and balled up all his clothes and grabbed some clean underwear from a drawer, went down the hall and tossed the clothes into the utility room and went into the bathroom and closed the door just out of habit.”

It’s almost as if Larry Brown had visualized each sequence and written directions for a film script. I rather liked it. Although the technique is extremely simple, it does make for a very visual novel and also slows the pace in a way that somehow seems appropriate to the time and the place.

I thought we were in for a rough ride and a high body-count when Glen came back home. There’s a wonderfully menacing line near the beginning: “while he was sitting there thinking everything over, he figured he might as well go ahead and finish it, now that it was started.” But in fact, it wasn’t like Frank Miller returning on the noonday train. As William has already commented, you are expecting a big set-piece show-down with Bobby that just doesn’t happen.

Having said that, I really didn’t like the Grand Guignol ending that seemed to have been wrenched out of an altogether cruder and nastier novel. Perhaps Larry Brown thought he had to pull out all the stops, but to me it did not really fit the workaday realism of the rest of the novel , nor did it match Glen’s character. The ending was too devious for someone who is blunt and impetuous, too sadistic for someone who throws fish back in the lake.

I did, however, like the fact that matters were brought to an end by an okra paring knife. For a gritty novel, Father and Son contains an unusual number of vegetable references. Okra, tomatoes, corn, turnips (love the deputy digging up the crime scene – “I just like a good mess of turnips once in a while”)... there is definitely a gardening subtext if I could only figure it out.

Peter said: there is definitely a gardening subtext if I could only figure it out."

Thanks for your interesting observations, Peter. I especially like Okra and Turnips, a southern combination if there ever was one. And I had to look up "Grand Guignol" so I appreciate being stretched a little bit too! I recommend http://www.grandguignol.com/ for those who, like me, might need some explication.