Larry Brown

Jean W. Cash is professor emerita of English at James Madison University, where she taught a variety of courses in southern literature for thirty-eight years. She is coeditor with Keith Perry of Larry Brown and the Blue-Collar South and Rough South, Rural South: Region and Class in Recent Southern Literature; and coeditor with Richard Gaughran of Twenty-First-Century Southern Writers: New Voices, New Perspectives, all published by University Press of Mississippi. She is author of Flannery O'Connor: A Life and has published a number of essays on southern writers and given numerous conference presentations. Her most recently published essay is on the novels of Ann Patchett.

Larry Brown's life story is about as close to a literary version of the Horatio Alger myth as American letters have witnessed. . . . Jean Cash's exhaustive archival research and firsthand interviews with Brown and those who knew him best enable her to bring that story to life on the page even as her skills as a literary critic wisely assess his writing. For anyone concerned about American writing's connection to people outside of elite publishing and academic circles, this book affirms that literature has not yet been completely handed over to insiders on the country's two coasts or reduced to intellectual games requiring footnotes. For all of us who have experienced the power of Brown's best writing, it offers understanding of the sources and driving forces behind their emotional and intellectual impact.--Robert Donahoo, professor of English, Sam Houston State University, and president of the Flannery O'Connor Society This is the man captured with clarity by Ms. Cash.--Carl Rollyson "Wall Street Journal" For fans of the late Brown, this book is a must. For aspiring writers, ditto. And readers everywhere. Ms. Cash has done an exhaustive job, but it's never exhausting to read. A pleasure and reminder of what a loss Mr. Brown's death was, but what a gift his writing still is.--Tom Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter Larry Brown's connection to the earth and animals and many objects seemed religious somehow. He was gentle in a mysterious way, deep, quick, sincere, and very funny. We're all lucky that he left so much of himself behind--on paper. And I'm thankful that Jean Cash decided to write about him.--Clyde Edgerton, author of The Floatplane Notebooks