Joe

Rating:
Summary: Brown's Best
Review: I am a new fan of Larry Brown, and have lately been reading everything by him I can get my hands on. Joe is a powerful and at times brutal novel, a notch below Father and Son in my humble opinion but worthwhile reading nonetheless.

Once again Brown explores the lives of drunk white trash, this time in the dusty small towns near Tupelo Mississippi. The novel has three main characters: Joe, the aging, proud, divorced, hard-drinking ex con who contracts to poison trees for income, and who hires young Gary on his work crew. Gary is about 15 years old, but is not quite sure cause as has no birth records and in fact no legal address. His dad, Wade, is a horrific drunk who moves his family around squatting in abandoned houses while he puts the kids to work foraging for cans and bottles to collect deposit money. When that doesn't generate enough, Wade steals any meager earnings the kids may make on their own.

The budding relationship between Joe and his best worker Gary is the core of the novel, as Joe slowly learns the extent of the horrors of the kid's home life. Of course what would a novel of the south be without a few humerous diversions involving brothels, gambling, green policemen and inept hunters, etc.

I think my only real hesitancy in giving the novel five stars revolves around the ending, which for me was anticlimatic and unsatisfying. I know writers are sometimes criticized for tying up all loose ends too neatly, as if they reached their pre-ordained page limit and had to run, but the ending of Joe was a little too open-ended for my liking. Anyway, for fans of Harry Crews, William Gay (and I am Gay's biggest fan) or Tom Franklin, give Brown a shot he consistently delivers a solid punch.

Rating:
Summary: Rabbit Factory
Review: I have read all but one of Larry Brown's books. He reaches into the soul and you become so involved with his characters that even if you were not raised in this kind of environment you can feel the gut wrenching pain some of these people are going through. Even after finishing his books you still worry about the finality of some of his characters.

Wow, I just can't compliment this man's writing enough. What a story teller!

Rating:
Summary: The hottest thing to hit the south since trailer parks!
Review: I just finished reading Larry Brown's "Fay". It was so great. I wanted it to go on and on and on. "Jo" is like a part one to "Fay".
I read "Jo" in two days! (I layed out of work to read it). That's how great this book is!
The story centers on Gary, who is from a family that has no education and no direction to move forward. His father, very cruel, vengeful, and low educated makes life almost unbearable for his wife and children. He sells a son for a car and let's other men molest his daughter. There is Jo, who has spent time "in the pen" and who is, really no better of a role model, meets up with Gary.
The story is very graphic, fast-paced and deals with the outcasts of society.
I got a lump in my throat when I finished the book. Those poor kids. The characters are real it seems with real emotions.
Very seldom does a good book that deals with southern living come alone.
Larry Brown's "Jo" is one of the best books that can be read, and handed to others to read.

Gary

Rating:
Summary: A literary tour de force
Review: I struggled for days to come up with a way to start a review for Larry Brown's "Joe." Heck, I am still not sure how to do it. My difficulties have little to do with comprehending what the author tries to say with the story; "Joe" is hardly a difficult book to read in terms of structure or language. No Edward Gibbonesque prose here, no Proustian run on sentences or post-modern psychobabble to resolve either. Nope, you won't spend a whit of time banging your head against problematic prose with this book. Brown's writing style is simplicity itself, a smooth, cut to the bone technique that oddly reminded me of William Somerset Maugham, if you can imagine. Come to think of it, Maugham and Brown share a lot of similarities in subject matter too. If you thought the author of "The Razor's Edge" and "Up at the Villa" tossed around moral quandaries fast and furious, you haven't seen anything until you pick up Larry Brown's "Joe." One of the cover flap blurbs said something to the effect that "Joe" deals with the big themes in life, like honor, redemption, good versus evil, and temptation. Yeah, for once a cover flap got it right. Brown's book does deal with the important stuff in life, and it does it in a way I won't soon forget.

The main character is Joe Ransom, a forty something ex-convict spending his time poisoning trees for a large lumber company. He's got a wife who left him after years of dealing with his gambling, drinking, and carousing. He's got a couple of kids he rarely sees. Joe's got a broken down truck, a pit bull guarding his house, a girlfriend roughly the age of his own daughter, and blood vendettas going on with several dangerous locals. He's also got a huge authority problem, a problem that landed him in the stir a few years back and threatens to do so once again if he doesn't keep his nose clean. For all of Joe's faults, and there are many, many faults, he's essentially the good guy of the story. His work ethic is exemplary; in fact, he seems to be about the only person in this region of Mississippi who actually holds down a decent job. Moreover, the guy actually has a sense of the wrong he's committed in his life against his family. Even as Ransom heads towards another confrontation with the men in blue, fate is about to plunk down in his lap the opportunity to redeem his past sins. This manna from heaven takes the form of one Gary Jones, a teenager with a bleak past and an even bleaker future.

Young Gary's family constitutes the second significant plot thread in "Joe." Led by patriarch Wade, the Jones clan wonders the highways of the South from Oklahoma to Florida, always in search of food and a place to stay. This family suffers such excruciating depravation, such a horrific hand to mouth existence, that they make the Joads look like pleasure seekers taking a scenic trip to the seashore. The Jones find an abandoned cabin up in the woods in which to settle for a time, long enough for Wade to head out and perform his usual tricks. Papa Jones steals, connives, and even kills as he embarks on a perpetual quest for another jug of liquor and a pack of smokes. Abuses of the most horrible descriptions reign supreme in the Jones household, abuses so hideous that Fay, the eighteen year old daughter, decides to strike out on her own. Gary stays out of a sense of misguided loyalty-and out of sense of complete ignorance since he can neither read nor write. The boy does work, though, and a special bond forms between Ransom and Gary when the lad hires on to the older man's work crew. But in the background roams the monstrous Wade. The inevitable showdown between Gary's father and Joe Ransom is shattering in its implications.

A whole lot of stuff goes on in this book, always wrapped in the heat blasted landscapes of rural Mississippi and in language of such utterly simplistic beauty. What I liked most about "Joe" is the author's construction of the characters. Brown seems to believe that most individuals' personalities consist of shades of grey when it comes to good and bad behavior, especially someone like Ransom. Joe is hardly a paragon of saintly virtue, but he does possess a keen sense of what is abhorrent along with the ability to take action when confronted with evil. Wade, on the other hand, is simply a monster of epic proportions. There's no good in this man, only an endless hunger to satiate personal needs and desires no matter what the cost. Even worse, his malevolence is shockingly mundane; a soul crushing yet understated wickedness that evokes Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" moniker. Wade Jones may well be one of the most repugnant characters to ever grace a novel, and he accomplishes this feat by merely turning his head at inopportune times or by remaining silent when he should speak.

It would be necessary to pen several reviews to cover the various themes running through the novel, but it's sufficient to say that Brown pulls the whole thing off with shining brilliance. "Joe" is must read material for anyone who enjoys magnificent literature. My rather shaky comparison of Brown to Maugham is probably not appropriate, but I can't compare this writer to that other great writer of the South, Faulkner, because I haven't gotten around to perusing any of that author's books. Maugham I know, and Brown reminds me of him in a way. No matter, however, since you don't need to know any of the "big" writers to enjoy this sublime experience. You owe it to yourself to check this one out.

Rating:
Summary: A literary tour de force
Review: I struggled for days to come up with a way to start a review for Larry Brown's "Joe." Heck, I am still not sure how to do it. My difficulties have little to do with comprehending what the author tries to say with the story; "Joe" is hardly a difficult book to read in terms of structure or language. No Edward Gibbonesque prose here, no Proustian run on sentences or post-modern psychobabble to resolve either. Nope, you won't spend a whit of time banging your head against problematic prose with this book. Brown's writing style is simplicity itself, a smooth, cut to the bone technique that oddly reminded me of William Somerset Maugham, if you can imagine. Come to think of it, Maugham and Brown share a lot of similarities in subject matter too. If you thought the author of "The Razor's Edge" and "Up at the Villa" tossed around moral quandaries fast and furious, you haven't seen anything until you pick up Larry Brown's "Joe." One of the cover flap blurbs said something to the effect that "Joe" deals with the big themes in life, like honor, redemption, good versus evil, and temptation. Yeah, for once a cover flap got it right. Brown's book does deal with the important stuff in life, and it does it in a way I won't soon forget.

The main character is Joe Ransom, a forty something ex-convict spending his time poisoning trees for a large lumber company. He's got a wife who left him after years of dealing with his gambling, drinking, and carousing. He's got a couple of kids he rarely sees. Joe's got a broken down truck, a pit bull guarding his house, a girlfriend roughly the age of his own daughter, and blood vendettas going on with several dangerous locals. He's also got a huge authority problem, a problem that landed him in the stir a few years back and threatens to do so once again if he doesn't keep his nose clean. For all of Joe's faults, and there are many, many faults, he's essentially the good guy of the story. His work ethic is exemplary; in fact, he seems to be about the only person in this region of Mississippi who actually holds down a decent job. Moreover, the guy actually has a sense of the wrong he's committed in his life against his family. Even as Ransom heads towards another confrontation with the men in blue, fate is about to plunk down in his lap the opportunity to redeem his past sins. This manna from heaven takes the form of one Gary Jones, a teenager with a bleak past and an even bleaker future.

Young Gary's family constitutes the second significant plot thread in "Joe." Led by patriarch Wade, the Jones clan wonders the highways of the South from Oklahoma to Florida, always in search of food and a place to stay. This family suffers such excruciating depravation, such a horrific hand to mouth existence, that they make the Joads look like pleasure seekers taking a scenic trip to the seashore. The Jones find an abandoned cabin up in the woods in which to settle for a time, long enough for Wade to head out and perform his usual tricks. Papa Jones steals, connives, and even kills as he embarks on a perpetual quest for another jug of liquor and a pack of smokes. Abuses of the most horrible descriptions reign supreme in the Jones household, abuses so hideous that Fay, the eighteen year old daughter, decides to strike out on her own. Gary stays out of a sense of misguided loyalty-and out of sense of complete ignorance since he can neither read nor write. The boy does work, though, and a special bond forms between Ransom and Gary when the lad hires on to the older man's work crew. But in the background roams the monstrous Wade. The inevitable showdown between Gary's father and Joe Ransom is shattering in its implications.

A whole lot of stuff goes on in this book, always wrapped in the heat blasted landscapes of rural Mississippi and in language of such utterly simplistic beauty. What I liked most about "Joe" is the author's construction of the characters. Brown seems to believe that most individuals' personalities consist of shades of grey when it comes to good and bad behavior, especially someone like Ransom. Joe is hardly a paragon of saintly virtue, but he does possess a keen sense of what is abhorrent along with the ability to take action when confronted with evil. Wade, on the other hand, is simply a monster of epic proportions. There's no good in this man, only an endless hunger to satiate personal needs and desires no matter what the cost. Even worse, his malevolence is shockingly mundane; a soul crushing yet understated wickedness that evokes Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" moniker. Wade Jones may well be one of the most repugnant characters to ever grace a novel, and he accomplishes this feat by merely turning his head at inopportune times or by remaining silent when he should speak.

It would be necessary to pen several reviews to cover the various themes running through the novel, but it's sufficient to say that Brown pulls the whole thing off with shining brilliance. "Joe" is must read material for anyone who enjoys magnificent literature. My rather shaky comparison of Brown to Maugham is probably not appropriate, but I can't compare this writer to that other great writer of the South, Faulkner, because I haven't gotten around to perusing any of that author's books. Maugham I know, and Brown reminds me of him in a way. No matter, however, since you don't need to know any of the "big" writers to enjoy this sublime experience. You owe it to yourself to check this one out.

Rating:
Summary: the title is the only forgettable thing about this treasure
Review: If you are not familiar with Brown's novels, then I offer you my condolences. You are deprived. Joe is, in my opinion, the best of Brown's disturbing and wonderful novels. There are no heroes in his books. There is also little in the way of hope and compassion. Brown tells a wicked story, rich with realism and imagery, like no one in the last half of the 20th century. As a writer, after reading Joe, I realized I had finally found a book that I could never realistically hope to rival. Joe, the book not the man, is flawless. I've heard Brown compared to Faulkner, but Brown has a readability that I never found with Faulkner. Do yourself a favor, get this book & get his debut novel, Dirty Work. There is every chance in the world that you will then become a Larry Brown fan for life. This novel is desolate and grim, but something about his writing endears you to it anyway. With most of the great writers long dead, it's refreshing to know that at least one master of the craft is not only still with us, but in the prime of his life. Joe will leave you aching and disillusioned. It will also leave you bleeding for more, more, more. Larry Brown develops his characters and plots better than anyone going.

Rating:
Summary: Great Read, Great Author
Review: One of my favorite Larry Brown books. This story is about Joe, an ex-convict who crosses paths with Gary Jones, a teenager bound to his on-the-road, virtually homeless family. Gary is looking for work with Joe, who has a tree-poisoning contract. Brown holds a magnifying glass up to his characters lives and their mostly every-day actions, which are fantastically discribed. Gary has come down a long and troubled path and is often disturbed by old memories. Gary's alcoholic father, a man with little to no morals or ethics for anything or anyone including his own family, does his best to drag everyone he crosses paths with along on his downward spiral. Joe, an ex-convict and recently divorced, is just trying to stay away from jail again, but his close enemies, abundant cash-flow and alcoholic, cigarette smoking, whore-house visiting ways tempt him again and again. AN EXCELLENT READ for anyone who likes a good novel. If you like Joe, I'd recommend Larry Brown's Fay afterward. It's even better than Joe, but you can learn a lot more about Fay and where she's coming from if you start with Joe!

Rating:
Summary: powerful poetics from a master of the game
Review: so, here i am again, drunk, trying to tell you why i think "joe" is a wonderful novel and worthy of your attention. i'm not going to mention the beautiful pain of the writing, or the story, which will melt you at twenty paces, or the fact that you are abundantly aware, from the first word, that Brown cares so much about his characters that I feel like he'd die before he'd sell them out. no. you won't get that review here. what you'll get, instead, is an honest plea to read a miraculous novel of blood and redemption, told by a modern Southern master- i'll go with the "accessible Faulkner" tag- that shows you how life is. lacking pretension, lacking garnish; Larry Brown lays the line out like it should be laid out- wholesome, without hamhanded proselytizing. which is magic. his gifts, nurtured in an Oxford, MI fire station, shoot honesty and magic through you like embers from a fire that you didn't set yet have to deal with- i.e., life.

joe is a mess, and his arrangement is a mess, and yet brown pulls it off. with time to spare.

magic. sheer magic.

Rating:
Summary: powerful poetics from a master of the game
Review: so, here i am again, drunk, trying to tell you why i think "joe" is a wonderful novel and worthy of your attention. i'm not going to mention the beautiful pain of the writing, or the story, which will melt you at twenty paces, or the fact that you are abundantly aware, from the first word, that Brown cares so much about his characters that I feel like he'd die before he'd sell them out. no. you won't get that review here. what you'll get, instead, is an honest plea to read a miraculous novel of blood and redemption, told by a modern Southern master- i'll go with the "accessible Faulkner" tag- that shows you how life is. lacking pretension, lacking garnish; Larry Brown lays the line out like it should be laid out- wholesome, without hamhanded proselytizing. which is magic. his gifts, nurtured in an Oxford, MI fire station, shoot honesty and magic through you like embers from a fire that you didn't set yet have to deal with- i.e., life.

joe is a mess, and his arrangement is a mess, and yet brown pulls it off. with time to spare.

magic. sheer magic.

Rating:
Summary: Give me booze, cigarettes, and an old car to drive around in
Review: The wonder of Larry Brown's "Joe" is not so much the story itself, a depressing tale of a depressed era and region, but the astoundingly lush and yet simplified way the tale is told.

Joe starts out by introducing us to a dirt-farm family, homeless and wandering and worn out. Wade is a man who is instantly placed at the bottom of the human existence; a surly, unlikable alcoholic leading his despairing family into ruin. In the rural backwoods of Mississippi, he finds an abandoned shack complete with weeds growing up through the pale floorboards and settles himself in with his wife and three remaining children; Gary, Fay, and Dorothy.

And then we meet Joe Ransom, who scratches out his living by clearing out land tracts by poisoning the trees in order for them to be removed, working a crew of low and shiftless men. Joe has led a hard life, but remains a simple man with simple needs; booze, cigarettes, and women. He stops by the post office to visit his estranged wife at her job, yet continues to exercise his weakness for his young girlfriend Connie, who is the same age as his pregnant daughter.

Joe winds out hiring Gary, who is young and energetic and eager to make enough money to get away from his shiftless father. Joe takes a shine to Gary, and winds out sort of taking him under his wing, not so much as a protégé but rather from a desire to save the boy from the fate that would become his at the hands of his brutal father.

This is not a novel of a thickened plot unraveling at breakneck speeds towards an explosive conclusion; it is a poetically written journey through the intimate details of a life that will make no impact on the world as a whole. It is life lived at its most base of levels, survival on a day-to-day existence of needs versus means.

You will find nothing truly admirable in any character between these pages, but you will find yourself involved in their tough and gritty lives whether you desire to be there or not. Brown's writing is so completely poetic that it flows with a silken shimmer even through the foul waters of Joe's life. The details of Joe and Gary's lives in all of their everyday mundane details are exposed in the rawest form, earthy and folksy, and horrifying in their acceptance of it.

You will be confronted by evil in its purest form; ignorant and uncaring, when you first meet Wade and later meet Willie Russell. Evil has never been more ignorant or ruthlessly sociopathic than this, a terrifying ride on the derailed train of alcoholism and entitlement, that culminates in broken lives and shattered futures.

I found the ending to be incomplete, designed to make you feel like you are guessing what the outcome of the confrontation will be; until you realize in your heart that you already know Joe all too well, and the outcome is less guessable when that very fact is digested.

Brown's writing is so lyrical and flowing that despite the horrifying content and obnoxious, unpleasant characters, you become entranced in the numbing realism of the poverty and desperation that takes place.

In my opinion, Brown is an absolute must-read, and because he can write so well about places and characters that are so hard to like or even relate to, I feel that he should become required reading for students of literature and art. Enjoy!