A Miracle of Catfish

by Larry Brown

[jamiereadthis]

Odd I guess, to read a book that’s unfinished and be so, so fond of it but still, in the end, OK to put it aside and not experience angst and frustration at what’s left undone. It’s just how well Larry Brown builds this world: it’s whole and real and you can go on living in it long as you like, nailing up walls and dusting out cobwebs. Plus I like it, just how it is. One of those halved skeletons with all the cool muscles and bones underneath. You never get to see that, do you: the writer’s gaps and editor’s fingerprints. And at what?, 450 pages and still not the whole story, which could have gone on through the winter to likely double that number? Normally that would drive me batty but not here, not with Jimmy and Jimmy’s daddy and Cortez Sharp.

There’s so so so few writers that get the South right, or let’s say get it right to my satisfaction which is another thing beyond voice, which is the fun and complicated swelter of it too, without cheap tricks and condescension, that anyone who does wins a big sloppy piece of my heart. Clearing a higher bar than Tolstoy? Maybe not. But Larry Brown, that’s you.

Also, lest I forget, there’s such a leisurely joy here, taken not on writing-writing and high-wire style but just on writing for the pure solid storytelling world-building pleasure of it, that on the personal writing front it turned a bunch of the “can’t can’t can’t can’t” in my brain over to “hey, probably can,” which is pretty much invaluable I think.