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Rants, Rates, Slags, Slates. Manic-depressive posts from Red Wright-Hand. Because there are thousands of worthless blogs out there and who am I not to add to their number?
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Arts & Letters Daily
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Tuesday, November 30, 2004
HURRY WHILE IT'S STILL NOVEMBER: Obits and reminiscences abounding online for Mississippi writer Larry Brown, who died the day before Thanksgiving, age 53. I had really only read a couple of his stories in anthologies (before I consumed On Fire over the holiday weekend), but they made an impression, not least because they recalled so well the atmosphere of Lafayette County in northern Mississippi, an area I visited for the grand total of a single week in November 1992. The county seat of Oxford, where I stayed, remains celebrated as the long-time residence of a certain earlier American writer, but Brown, whose style is about as antithetical to Faulkner's as I can imagine, was largely concerned with the same things as Faulkner: the quiet struggles of poor deep-Southern folks, lives riven by violence and liquor and natural disasters. I believe it was not Faulkner himself (whom Brown openly admired) who influenced Brown as much as both men being influenced by the same land: the shrinking woods, the sunsets, the segregated towns, the deep dark nights. Here's a link to a page with an audio clip of Brown reading from his story "Old Frank and Jesus." |
