A critical assessment of a great Mississippi writer's empathy with the
working class With contributions from Robert G. Barrier, Robert Beuka,
Thomas �rvold Bjerre, Jean W. Cash, Robert Donahoo, Richard Gaughran,
Gary Hawkins, Darlin' Neal, Keith Perry, Katherine Powell, John A.
Staunton, and Jay Watson Larry Brown is noted for his subjects--rural
life, poverty, war, and the working class--and his spare, gritty style.
Brown's oeuvre spans several genres and includes acclaimed novels (Dirty
Work, Joe, Father and Son, The Rabbit Factory, and A Miracle of
Catfish), short story collections (Facing the Music, Big Bad Love),
memoir (On Fire), and essay collections (Billy Ray's Farm). At the time
of his death, Brown (1951-2004) was considered to be one of the finest
exemplars of minimalist, raw writing of the contemporary South. Larry
Brown and the Blue-Collar South considers the writer's full body of
work, placing it in the contexts of southern literature, Mississippi
writing, and literary work about the working class. Collectively, the
essays explore such subjects as Brown's treatment of class politics,
race and racism, the aftereffects of the Vietnam War on American
culture, the evolution of the South from a plantation-based economy to a
postindustrial one, and male-female relations. The role of Brown's
mentors--Ellen Douglas and Barry Hannah--in shaping his work is
discussed, as is Brown's connection to such writers as Harry Crews and
Dorothy Allison. The volume is one of the first critical studies of a
writer whose depth and influence mark him as one of the most
well-regarded Mississippi authors. Jean W. Cash is professor of English
at James Madison University. She is the author of Flannery O'Connor: A
Life. Keith Perry is associate professor of English at Dalton State
College and the author of The Kingfish in Fiction: Huey P. Long and the
Modern American Novel. Rick Bass is the author of novels and collections
of nonfiction and short stories, most recently The Lives of Rocks:
Stories.
