Southern writers (1 Viewer)

i've become obsessed with southern writers. like harry crews and larry brown. soon i will be reading barry hannah. anyone else have any thoughts on these guys? anyone got any other southern writers to recomend(besides the oldies like carson mcclures and faulkners and occonor)? come on, lets chat about this.
 
Nick Cave. Read "And The Ass Saw The Angel". Yes, he is Australian, not southern, but that book is very much in that tradition. It is often compared with Faulkner. A disturbing book.

Wikipedia describes the plot as:

And the Ass Saw the Angel tells the story of Euchrid Eucrow, a mute born to an abusive drunken mother and a father obsessed with cruel traps and animal torture. His father's dangerous traps, greasy and vile, just might maim or kill an unwary person. The ultimate outcast, scorned even among outsiders, in a valley of fanatically religious Ukulites, Euchrid bears his mother's beatings, his father's inturned indifference, and the hatred and loathing of an entire town. Euchrid's increasingly fractured mind teems with words and horrible angelic visions, narrated by his silent Southern drawl. (To wit, Cave phonetically renders the boy-narrator's "I" as "Ah.") Raised to inevitable madness in this world of inbreeding, moonshine, and fanaticism, Euchrid will exact his terrible vengeance on the people who have made his life one of nearly unrelenting pain.

Bill
 
Oh, ok. I just assumed he was from the South because, like you say, he writes about it all the time. I might have to check out this Larry Brown guy as well.
 
re: larry brown, i rented "big bad love" years ago (because it was about an alcoholic writer) and like it pretty well. then looked it up and found that it was written by larry brown. so he's been on my radar for some time. guess i need to check out his books...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0260746/

re: southern writers, i'm about 100 pages into "the road" by cormac mccarthy. pretty good so far, but apocolyptic fiction isn't my favorite....
 
Dig Larry Brown's short stories--I read them years ago, lost the book, and recently re-bought it. Big tip of the hat to Bukowski by Brown in BIG BAD LOVE...the last story was dedicated to Buk. Haven't read his novels.

McCullers is tremendous & I've always liked Tennessee Williams plays.
 
Tennesee was best at this plays but his short stories are very good, The Malediction is one of my favorite short stories. I think McCullers is my favorite female writer.

Larry Brown seems to be one to check out.
 
Justin, if you haven't already, I would check out a few earlier novels by Cormac McCarthy, especially "Outer Dark" and "Child of God", both of which take place in the deep backwoods of southern Appalachia, sometime around the turn of the 20th century.
Very unsettling and haunting, at the bare minimum. Worth a read.
 
I've read it.
And it would have been a great novel, just like his others..if only had it been written a bit differently.
Arm yourself with a Websters, a machete and lots of patience.
You'll need to hack your way through the foliage of words like "Ratiocinate" "Confabulation" "Effluvium" "Parsimonious" etc..just to get to the other side of what he's really trying to say. Metaphors were a pain in the ass to decrypt.
The language was stiff and collegiate. Did nothing for me. At times there would be bouts of clarity coming through the fog, but that was rare, unfortunately.
Think: Faulkner but 1,000 x's more verbose.
However, it was Cormac's first book, so the style is glaringly different than most of his other ones.
If you have the time and determination, sure, give it a shot. The story is almost worth being bludgeoned over the head repeatedly by the "obstreperous congregation of language"
Just wish the editor/enema was around to flush out the useless crap.

Apologize for the book report.
 
Arm yourself with a Websters, a machete and lots of patience.
You'll need to hack your way through the foliage of words like "Ratiocinate" "Confabulation" "Effluvium" "Parsimonious" etc..just to get to the other side of what he's really trying to say. Metaphors were a pain in the ass to decrypt.

That was one of the problems I had with The Road. The writing was simple and clear, and then out of the blue he'd throw in some unusual word that served as a brick wall. It would just stop me and leave me scratching my head thinking 1) what the hell does that even mean, and 2) why did he choose that word when simpler words would have sufficed. I think I have a pretty good vocabulary, but the words he would choose were just off-the-wall and seemed like it was his way of saying "Look at me and my big vocabulary."
 
its strange, when you read the big fat words in his books(especially in super dense stuff like orchard keeper and sutre) it makes him seem really snotty and colligiate. then when you hear an interview with him and he's not like that at all. i think he dropped out of college twice.
has anyone seen the interview oprah did with him? i think you can find it on youtube
 
I've just started reading Dirty Work by Larry Brown and it's great so far. It's a pretty quick read so I would imagine I'll finish it tonight. Thanks for the tip JG and I'll also check out Hannah and Crews at some point.
 
My favorite modern southern writer is John Hart.
Real page-turning thriller/mysteries that are beautifully written.
The King of Lies
Down River, and
Last Child.

Grisham fast, Turrow ________ (something)
yet also, in my opinion, literature...
truly, you'll feel it in your gut like after you've read a good Buk piece
and it hits your heart hard.

Look him up
 
i've become obsessed with southern writers. like harry crews and larry brown. soon i will be reading barry hannah. anyone else have any thoughts on these guys? anyone got any other southern writers to recomend(besides the oldies like carson mcclures and faulkners and occonor)? come on, lets chat about this.

I know! I've become obsessed with these southies aswell. Yet I'm no one to recommend anything in this Genre to anyone. My alltime favorite film would have to be a Love Song for Bobby Long. I bet you're familiar with this being a south-fan. I love The heart is a lonely hunter (mainly 'cos it's so visible in the film). And of course Faulkner is the Father. And Steinbeck. I am actually just now reading Tortilla Flat. It's here next to my laptop.

But I'll look into Crews and Brown, cheers.
 
Nick Cave. Read "And The Ass Saw The Angel". Yes, he is Australian, not southern, but that book is very much in that tradition. It is often compared with Faulkner. A disturbing book.
I think there's also a lot of Lautréamont in it.
 
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I remember reading Erskine Caldwell, Tobacco Road, when I was 16, and it had left quite an impression on me.
Since I was going to a catholic school, the book had been confiscated by the teacher, but I need to read again to see if I would still be impressed.
Only, the atmosphere remains.
 
i recently read The Road the vocabulary was never an issue. (smoke more pot)

Barry Hannah has recently come to my attention and i recently read Hey, Jack i thought it was pretty good like his little sexual innuendo's and vignettes and easy style, easy read. i have Ray on deck.
 

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