To make it easier to find everything related to last week’s Larry Brown Week posts, here are links to the five days (and the preceding overview).

Sunday: Overview.
Monday: Monday Interview with Shannon Ravenel, Brown’s editor at Algonquin Books.
Tuesday: My review of Brown’s last work, the posthumous novel A Miracle of Catfish.
Wednesday: Brown and film, a look at films related to Brown and his work.
Thursday: An interview with Tim Lee, the musician who produced the Just One More
tribute CD.
Friday: Musician Ben Weaver helps me wrap things up with some heartfelt words about Brown.

Day 5 of Larry Brown Week.

Novelist Larry Brown had a unique relationship with music and musicians. Many writers aspire to be musicians, just as musicians aspire to be actors, actors aspire to be novelists and so on. But Brown seemed content to strum his guitar and sing on his back porch; he didn’t hop up on stage and try to front a band. Instead, he appreciated music, befriended musicians and wrote about the music that he loved. He wrote liner notes, conducted interviews for magazines like No Depression and clearly reveled in the sounds of Americana.

He performed with Alejandro Escovedo on several occasions, and sat in with Ben Weaver a few times as well. I had the pleasure of catching one of the latter performances, at a club down the street from the Iowa City book store where he had given a reading from The Rabbit Factory earlier in the evening. As Weaver played his guitar, Brown read, his prose occasionally punctuated by Weaver’s singing. It was a ramshackle affair, perfectly suited to Brown’s work.

Brown’s admiration for musicians was reciprocated; one need look no further than the tribute CD forthcoming from Bloodshot Records, Just One More, to see proof of that. As Tim Lee, the musician who compiled and produced the disc said, “The simple concept of this disc was to put together a mix tape of sorts, the type of thing that Larry would have enjoyed listening to as he drove his little truck into the gloam’ with a cooler full of beer and an ass pocket of something that burns a little bit on the way down.” There was no pretension in Brown’s love of music, no attempt to tap into something that would make him seem hip or extend his reach. He simply knew what he liked and was singularly talented when it came to expressing how and why.

My original idea for this post, wrapping up what I have declared to be “Larry Brown Week,” was to have musicians weigh in on what they liked about Brown and his music. A promising premise, perhaps, but given the fact that most of these guys are road dogs who tour a lot and aren’t exactly tethered to their e-mail accounts, it was perhaps a case of reach exceeding grasp. Weaver was my lone respondent, but this doesn’t suffer from the lack of contributions from his peers. Brown called Weaver “an American original whose voice and guitar are matched only by the power of his words. His songs are an incredible, haunting gift of music.” Weaver’s powerful words about Brown are a fitting way to bring the week to a close:

“He is a bird now. A hawk rather. He looks over his family and his fish and his shack. He perches on half sunken trees at the river’s edge… I think when we leave this world, people that knew us will see us in the things that resemble the essence of what we were when we were alive. What I mean is, I know I’m not the only one that thinks of Larry when a hawk flies overhead. Larry told the honest truth about things. He didn’t just talk about things, he talked about the things that made up the things and the things that made up those things, which in the end made up his characters. To me that is what the honest truth is. It’s the facts, the feelings, the circumstance, the heart and the guts. I believe all these things were ever present in Larry’s writing. That is one of the many reasons why my respect and appreciation for the man and his work will never die.”

Day 4 of Larry Brown Week.

One needs no better indication of the mutual appreciation between Larry Brown and Americana musicians than Just One More, subtitled “a musical tribute to Larry Brown, a great American author.” The disc, which collects performances from 18 artists, is a heartfelt appreciation of Brown and his writing, but also of his vocal patronage of many of those on the collection.

In the liner notes to the disc, Brown’s widow Mary Annie writes, “I think he wished he had the talent to do music for a living.” Barring that, he channeled that desire and energy into playing guitar for fun, listening to music and writing about some of his favorite artists.

The first I knew of Brown’s interest in Americana came when I received a promo CD for a Blue Mountain album. Brown had penned the one-sheet that accompanied the disc, a mix of laudatory bio and fairly insightful analysis that showed he knew of what he wrote. He later contributed liner notes to the band’s album Homegrown, writing, “They’ve done the same thing I’ve done, practicing something over and over, for years, trying to get to the place where they want to be.”

This new disc, coming from Bloodshot Records on May 22, contains a mix of new and old songs. Of the 18, 10 are new, most of those seemingly written specifically for this compilation. Those are the best songs here, particularly Scott Miller’s “Thirsty Fingers,” Brent Best’s “Robert Cole” and Ben Weaver’s “Here’s to My Disgrace.” Brown’s novelist peer Madison Smartt Bell joins with musician Wyn Cooper on the fitting “Going Down with Larry Brown,” while Jim Dickinson and Duff Dorrough tackle Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Remember You.”

A couple of previously released songs stand out as well. Alejandro Escovedo’s “Baby’s Got New Plans” is offered in a previously unreleased live recording, while Cary Hudson, former leader of Blue Mountain, offers “Song in C” from his most recent solo album, which talks of “lowriding with Larry Brown.”

The disc was compiled by Tim Lee, who contributes the track “The Bridge” with his wife, Susan Bauer Lee. Tim is a talented singer-songwriter who once co-fronted (and occasionally still does) the wonderful Southern pop group the Windbreakers. He writes in the liner notes that “you didn’t need to know Larry well to have a keen awareness of his love of music, and he strongly believed in walking that road on which music and literature co-exist.”

That road is extended here on this disc. What at first feels like a slightly disjointed collection of songs begins to cohere around one feeling: an overwhelming respect for Brown and his work. Lee answered a few questions about the disc recently, which follow.

TIRBD: How did you choose the artists who appear: did you put out word and then have people get in touch, or did you approach specific artists?

TL: We started out with a list of artists we felt would be interested, starting with Mississippi musicians, friends of Larry’s and folks we knew Larry was a fan of. From the beginning, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Everyone loved the concept and wanted to be involved. As we progressed, artists would mention other artists and the initial list grew pretty quickly.

We started out with the notion that we’d approach 18 or 20 artists and hopefully come away with a dozen or so songs. In the end, we had over 20 tracks contributed and only room for 18 on the actual disc. The extra songs will be available with the digital download version, and there is a limited edition bonus disc with eight songs on it.

How and why were the actual songs chosen? Some are new and clearly influenced by Brown’s work, but others have been out there a while.

I generally left that up to the individual artists. Some went with already existing recordings because of time limitations. Others felt strongly about writing songs specifically for the project. Some had Larry Brown-related tracks on hand. Cary Hudson’s “Song in C” had already been recorded for his latest record, but it was such an obvious choice, we had to use it. Caroline Herring and Scott Miller wrote specifically for the compilation. Alejandro Escovedo chose a live version of “Baby’s Got New Plans,” because he knew it was one of Larry’s favorites. It seems like it was almost a different circumstance for every artist.

Why was Brown so beloved by musicians?

This is a tough question. This was addressed on the “Larry Brown and Music” panel during the Oxford Conference for the Book in March. Several musicians tried to answer this one, and they all had different answers. When I first contacted Bo Ramsey about the project, he said he “hears a lot of blues in Larry’s writing.” I like that statement. Others say it’s the terse quality of Larry’s writing that songwriters relate to. You could probably ask 20 musicians and get 20 different answers.

How would you characterize him as a music fan and/or someone who wrote about music?

Larry was just a guy who loved music. Like his wife, Mary Annie, says, if he could’ve been a musician, he probably would’ve given up the writing. But I think he felt music in a way that few non-musicians do, you know? He wasn’t simply a frustrated musician; he was someone who related to music and had the writing talent to express that relationship in words. When he wrote about music, he had an uncanny ability to relate the music-listening experience. I always felt like I was standing next to him in those bars, listening to those bands with a cold longneck in my hand.

Day 3 of Larry Brown Week.

The one film related to Larry Brown that probably best sums up the man and his work is one that I have yet to see, and that seems as fitting a metaphor for Brown’s relationship with cinema — and perhaps the cultural world at large — as any.

The Rough South of Larry Brown is a 2002 documentary/drama made by director Gary Hawkins. The film mixes interviews with Brown and other documentary elements with narrative adaptations of three of Brown’s short stories – “Samaritans” and “Wild Thing” from Facing the Music, and “Wild Thing” from Big Bad Love. It follow’s Hawkins’ previous “Rough South” entry, the 1991 TV documentary The Rough South of Harry Crews.

The film has yet to be released on video, so infrequent screenings at festivals seems to be the only way to catch this one for now.

The one Brown-related film that is readily available is Arliss Howard’s 2001 adaptation of Big Bad Love. The film, which carries that same name, tells of Leon Barlow (Howard), a Vietnam veteran and struggling writer who still isn’t over the breakup of his marriage. His ex-wife, Marilyn (Debra Winger) doesn’t make things easy for him, though there are moments of quiet grace that make it clear why the two married in the first place. While it is not without its flaws, the film is highly watchable, if for no other reason than to see Howard fully inhabit Barlow.

Last up, for now, is a planned adaptation of Brown’s comic novel The Rabbit Factory. It was reported last summer that actor and director Vondie Curtis-Hall (Waist Deep) will direct the film for Ithaka Entertainment. Surprisingly – and intriguingly – short story writer Thom Jones is reported to have written the screenplay. There is little new information about the production, but some listings report a planned 2008 release.

As for Brown’s other novels, it was reported in 2000 that Billy Bob Thornton had optioned Joe, a match made in heaven if ever there was one, but a search finds no recent mentions of the project.

Day 2 of Larry Brown Week.

In the prologue to his essay collection, Billy Ray’s Farm, Larry Brown writes about the many times he was asked what it was about his hometown of Oxford, Miss., that seemed to spawn so many great writers. In answering, he offers as good a summation as any of the reason why his is such a singular voice, and why his stories, settings and characters rang so true:

“The things you know, the things you have seen or heard of, the things you can imagine. A writer rolls all that stuff together kind of like a taco and comes up with fiction. And I think whatever you write about, you have to know it. Concretely, absolutely, realistically.”

Perhaps that’s why his previous novel, The Rabbit Factory, rang somewhat false. A writer shouldn’t be limited to writing only about what they know in terms of their life, upbringing and geography – I think what Brown was getting at was more about knowing the spirit of the story and the hearts of the people who populate it – but if they veer outside of that, they need to take pains to make sure that what they write holds a similar truth that can be found in some other element of the story.

With The Rabbit Factory, Brown seemed to be trying to stretch, probably too much. I don’t begrudge him that; I encourage it, in fact, and the result at times was as good as anything he had previously written. But it seemed self-conscious, and Brown’s work could be called a lot of things, but until that book, that wasn’t one of them.

His new novel, the posthumously published A Miracle of Catfish, incomplete though it may be, rings true. I mean this as no backhanded compliment, but it feels like the kind of story Brown could tell sitting on the porch of his house, a cold beer cradled in his hand. Nearly all of its characters feel three-dimensional and alive, and their various motivations and interactions truly resonate. Brown seemed to be trying for Barry Hannah-like comedy in The Rabbit Factory, but it felt forced. Here, he seems to have found a workable middle ground between the dour, dark tone of his earlier works and the more light-hearted humor he sought in his previous book. Where those previous books could feel claustrophobic at times – perhaps because, as he told me of his characters in an interview around the time of The Rabbit Factory, “I try to get them in trouble as soon as I can and just go from there” – A Miracle of Catfish feels wide open.

Here, he tells the story of several residents in and around a Mississippi town, focusing mainly on three men with more than their share of troubles. There is Jimmy’s daddy (he gets no other name here), father of young Jimmy. He has a wandering eye, a lust for beer, more interest in his ’56 Chevy than in his marriage and few if any redeeming traits. There is Cortez Sharp, the real center of the story, an old farmer who has a fishing pond dug on his property, and who doesn’t pay much attention to his dying wife. Lastly there is Cleve, an elderly black man who one worked for Sharp and who is dealing with his daughter and her annoying boyfriend, who moved into his trailer.

Several other people populate the book, none more sympathetic or well-drawn as Jimmy, a gradeschooler with a go-cart who longs for more attention and affection from his disinterested and borderline criminally neglectful father. All of these people interact in ways that are both expected and surprising; if this were a book by, say, Kent Haruf, things would resolve in a fairly tidy way with the characters all scarred but smarter. This isn’t a Haruf book, however; one wonders if any of the events would truly lead these characters to change. Though catfish are a fulcrum of the story, there is nothing miraculous here, either in a singular event or cumulatively. Perhaps given the chance to complete this, Brown would have rectified this.

The book does have shortcomings. Despite editor Shannon Ravenel’s efforts to remove 30,000 words from the original 710-page manuscript, the story still drags in places. There are characters that pop in and out without really making much impact, plot tangents left unresolved and, most glaringly, it lacks an ending. You can forgive all of that, however; this is labeled “a novel in progress,” and it reads as such. Brown’s books were never flabby, and one can safely assume this would have been tightened and polished before publication had he not died before having the chance to do so. Given that assumption, the finished product wouldn’t better classics like Joe or Fay, but they would certainly render this a worthy addition to a back catalog stuffed with great books.

The jacket copy proclaims the book’s publication to be a bittersweet occasion; the reader has the chance to read Brown’s last work, but must also acknowledge that it is indeed the last. Flaws and all, it is well worth the time spent, and it is a testament to how large a hole Brown’s passing leaves in the world of literature, Southern or otherwise.

Day 1 of Larry Brown Week.

Just before his death on Nov. 24, 2004, Larry Brown sent a manuscript for his next novel, A Miracle of Catfish, to his agent. Under the title, he had typed, “a novel in progress,” and elsewhere he had made notes for the final chapters that would tie up a few loose ends.

Brown obviously never got the chance to finish the book, but his longtime editor, Shannon Ravenel, was asked by Brown’s widow and two close friends to edit the manuscript and publish it. She did, but only after consulting with several others in the field to determine just what role she should play. She decided that she would make no changes – “substantive or minor – to the plot, the structure (or) the characterizations.” Instead, she simply cut where she felt Brown went on beyond the point.

In her editor’s note at the opening of the book, she writes, “Once Larry Brown had mastered his laconic style, the first-draft manuscripts of his books were nearly always so polished stylistically that my job as editor mostly involved showing him places I felt the novels would benefit from trimming… Having honed his skills on the short-story form, he reveled in the wide space that novels offer.”

Throughout the text, she simply inserts an ellipsis – like this: […] – to indicate her cuts. She reduced a 710-page manuscript to a 450-page novel, still with the caveat “a novel in progress.” The entire manuscript is housed at the University of Mississippi, and in that editor’s note, Ravenel welcomes readers to compare it to the published work, and to ask questions about her choices. Without having the luxury of reading the original manuscript, I did have questions, and took her invitation to ask about the editing process.

What follows is a Q&A conducted by e-mail with Ravenel, in which she discusses Brown’s work, the stylistic detour he took in his penultimate novel, Rabbit Factory – a detour that led the two to part ways professionally – and what she sees as his lasting place in the world of letters.

TIRBD: You write in your introduction to A Miracle of Catfish that you welcome questions about your edits. Have you received many thus far, and have any made you question your choices?

SR: There have been many reviews of the novel, almost all of them very favorable. Most reviewers had quibbles with my edits – why didn’t I cut more? Why did I cut anything at all? What good are the notes at the end? I haven’t had to answer these face to face (or in writing, until just now!), but if I should find myself needing to, I’d just have to say that I did what I thought was best under the circumstances. I talked with a number of scholars and other writers before I set about editing the book. The one thing I knew I should not do was try to change it in any way except cutting. I also knew that I should not try to hide the fact that it was unfinished.

Why not edit out some of the tangents that Brown didn’t have the chance to resolve, which may have resulted in a tighter novel that felt closer to being finished?

I did edit out a good many such tangents. Cutting 30,000 words is no small feat. There are tangents upon tangents missing from the published book.

Was there ever any thought to just publishing it as he submitted it, without the cuts?

I read the manuscript twice before doing anything. The things that had worried me the first time through – riffs that went on past the point and the reader’s interest, some stuff that seemed not to have any connection with the main thrust of the novel, a character who showed up early but never reappeared – bothered me the second time through. And those that bothered me the third time through got cut. I’m an editor. It’s my nature to believe that manuscripts can be improved. Larry and I had, except for Rabbit Factory, worked easily together on revision of his books. I thought he’d be glad to lose some things that didn’t seem necessary or relevant. So, I guess the answer is no – I never considered publishing the manuscript as was. It was unfinished which meant Larry expected to do revision. I thought the novel deserved some cutting. So I did it.

You clearly wanted a sense of transparency in your editing, and including Brown’s notes for the closing chapters of the book seem part of that effort to keep it as close to his vision as possible. That said, including them does draw attention to the “in progress” nature of the book. Did you deliberate about making choices like that, knowing it might put off people who don’t want to be left hanging at the end?

There was really no way to avoid the “in progress” status of the novel. Larry had himself typed “a novel in progress” under the title. Once those notes for the ending were found, those of us who had the responsibility for publishing novel felt they had to be included.

If he had lived, what would the process of bringing this book to print have been like? How different would the finished product have been?

If he had lived, he would have written the ending. A novel with an ending and a living author is a very different thing to edit than one without either. I really can’t say how different the book might have been.

Brown told me in an interview around the time of Rabbit Factory that he left Algonquin because the publisher didn’t like that book. I assume that means you didn’t like it. Do you still feel that way? Does that time and his decision to go elsewhere affect the way you approached this project?

I read two drafts of style="">The Rabbit Factory and Larry and I had many conversations about it and about why I didn’t like it. The reason was that, to me, it read as if it had been written with Larry’s tongue firmly in his cheek. That stance struck me as unfortunate. We couldn’t agree on much of anything about the novel except that it might be better edited by someone else. We agreed to this amicably, though I hated to see him leave Algonquin and knew I would miss working with him, that all of us here would. To have the opportunity of editing A Miracle of Catfish is an honor I have cherished. To have published it is an honor Algonquin itself has cherished.

Brown also mentioned at that time another book, The Indonesian Subterranean Termite Soldier Blues. Does that exist as anything more than a title for a forthcoming project? Are there other works of his that might see the light some day?

I don’t know of The Indonesian Subterranean Termite Soldier Blues. (What a great title!) Larry’s widow, Mary Annie Brown, asked two of his friends to sort his papers after his death. They may know about that project.

How did Brown evolve as a writer in the time that you edited him, and where did it seem he was headed?

Larry Brown was the hardest working writer I’ve ever known. He never stopped experimenting and his work continued to evolve and grow. I have always thought – from the very first thing I read by him (the short story, “Facing the Music,” in 1987 in Mississippi Review) – that he had a quality that set him apart: his empathy and his willingness to stare human pain squarely in the face. I believe he’s a very important contemporary American writer and that his books will become part of the canon.

A congruence of Larry Brown-related listening and reading has led me to declare this week “Larry Brown Week” at TIRBD, and to commemorate it, I’ll have a week’s worth of postings related to the late author and his work.

The Monday Interview this week features Shannon Ravenel, the Algonquin Books editor who worked with Brown on all but one of his novels and who edited the posthumous A Miracle of Catfish. For the first time, she’ll talk about the reasons behind her editing choices on the book, and discusses Brown as a writer.

Tuesday, I’ll offer my own review of the book, while on Wednesday I’ll look at films of Brown’s work. On Thursday I’ll talk with Tim Lee, the musician who produced the Brown tribute disc Just One More, out May 22 on Bloodshot Records. The week closes on Friday with musicians weighing in on what Brown and his work meant to them.