Joe

This novel is a whiskey soaked Faulkner-esque book of life in a rural Southern community. Quality American literature. A modern classic. I don't want to give anything away. I kid you not when i suggest you read it if you even sorta like American literature. Larry Brown seems to have mastered the form. Really, trust me and all these other reviews on here.

One of the finest Southern writers of the late 20th Century and this tome is one of the finest books ever written in the post-modern era. It's honest. It's brutal. It's beautiful. While Oxford's favorite adopted son, John Grisham, got all the glory (and the wealth), Oxford native Larry Brown toiled unnoticed, writing gritty tales of poverty, violence and redemption. Some of Brown's critics have mocked his unadorned language as if that has any bearing on a story's power. As Papa Hemmingway retorted to a similar snide remark by William Faulkner concerning his use of simple words: "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" I strongly encourage you to add this book to your permanent collection.

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

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 numbin

This is one of the best books of the decade, by one of the best writers of the half-century. Brown's work has been widely praised by critics everywhere but the reading public has not caught on to his mastery of the art. It's been said over and over that he is the Faulkner of his generation. He is, but he's more accessible than Faulkner and a lot easier read, although his books are not beach reads. Joe in particular is disturbing and heavy, but it is an important work that will make you laugh, shudder, and most importantly--think. If you're a fan of serious Southern literature that shows how people in the real New South live, read Joe.