Customer Reviews

Billy Ray's Farm: Essays from a Place Called Tula

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I have, had, and will continue to have such respect for Larry Brown--first off, that this man quite simply decided to be a writer one day, and from there worked his butt off to make that happen. His tales of writing several novels and over a hundred short stories before he wrote anything that he considered the work of a writer is quite simply archetypal. When there seems to be some concern about the effect of prodigious MFA program on the state and audience of writing, Larry Brown reminded us that it is work ethic, not education, that makes a writer.

Another great aspect of the legend of Larry Brown is the simplicity of his intent and execution. While the critic looks at writing as a mish-mash of symbols and metaphors removed from intent, Brown saw it from the blue-collar perspective--a story about characters who remind us of ourselves. The connections people have with their environments are direct and substantial--people come from a place, a patch of ground that smells and feels familiar to them; they come from groups of people who help shape them and help them identify who they are.

And it is this last point that this book revolves around. While Brown reminds us in one or two of the essays in this collection of his work ethic in the realm of writing, most of the writing here is about place and the anchor that it provides. We are taken through a tour of blues bars and fishing, of working on a farm and chasing coyotes and helping calves emerge from their mothers and building houses by hand. While some of these essays, for example the tremendously long centerpiece, don't hold a lot of drive to make each page worth turning only after the previous has been soaked up for its every syllable, the simple ethic that speaks volumes is distinctly there.

Of course, there is also the spirit of play that is such a commodity in Brown's work--an essay in second-person about the hardships of a book tour, for example--and this only fuels Brown's pure love for his work. While sometimes I found myself preferring his fiction over his nonfiction, I have been inspired to pick up The Rabbit Factory again, or Joe, just to touch that flavor of Brown all over again.

Perhaps this book is more enjoyable as an occasional read, something to pick up when between books or between episodes of another book, to let the essays sit separately and resound in the mind on their own rather than read one next to the other and hope for overriding connections to progress and develop, but this is no doubt a good reminder of the pure talent we lost when Larry Brown left us.

"What is it about Oxford [Mississippi] that produces writers?" It's a question Larry Brown, Barry Hannah and John Grisham get asked a lot. Brown says, "They always want to ask about Faulkner and what it all means, being a writer in Oxford, and where all the stories come from....

"I don't know what the answer is for anybody else, and I don't know what caused Faulkner to write," he explains, but "Most times, for any writer, I think it springs from some sort of yearning in the breast to let things out, to say something about the human condition, maybe just to simply to tell a story."

Of this, he knows plenty, for the essays in this memoir - I say "this," as opposed to "his," because I'm sure there will be many more - are stories of his life, so far; as a writer, indulgent father, and reluctant farmer.

Getting back to the question, he supposes it basically boils down to this: "Where do you get your ideas?" His response is "I believe that writers have to write what they know about. I don't think there's much choice in that." Elaborating, he says, "All [Faulkner] was doing was what every other writer does, and that is drawing upon the well of memory and experience and imagination that every writer pulls his or her material from. 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."

Brown has an easy, honest way with language that is as smooth as Mississippi molasses. Describing the region around Tula, where he spent his teenage years, he writes, "The tall cypresses with their knees standing in water were hollow coon castles, the bark worn smooth on one side only from the steady traffic of coons scrambling up in the morning and down at night, regular as dairymen."

Reminiscing about his hunting expeditions with neighbors, he writes, "in the reserves of good memories we all hold, those times are special and seem magical to me, those nights in the woods and those days in the fields, those lessons in the wild."

Hunting is a tradition that weaves its way through Brown's family's generations, one he now shares with his sons: "They bring in ducks and squirrels and deer and doves, and I cook for them as my mother did for me, and they tell me their hunting stories, and I listen to catch their words."

In addition to letting us glimpse his personal life, Brown takes us down the long enduring road he's taken in becoming a writer. Deliberately seeking mentors in his early days as a writer, he found one when a friend lent him a copy of A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews. He would go on to read everything by the author he could get his hands on, and in the end, he's "grateful that a writer like him walks this earth."

Brown had written five unpublished novels by 1985, "and almost a hundred short stories that had, for the most part, gone begging also." Pulling 24-hour shifts at the Oxford fire department, working odd jobs on his off-days to make ends meet, and writing in his "spare" time, Brown burned one of his novels in his backyard and worked on his rejection-slip collection.

His "apprenticeship period" would span seven years - a relative bargain, considering Crews' lasted 10 - until his first book of short stories, Facing the Music, was accepted for publication.

Brown writes with such a subtle passion. Speaking of his son, Billy Ray, whose farm is the subject of the essay chosen for the book's title, he tells, "The barn leaks. It's an old barn, pretty ragged, but he's tried to fix it up. He's mowed yards since he was twelve years old, and worked as a butcher, and hauled hay, and laid sod, and worked on a hog farm. He's saved his money, and all he's ever wanted is to be a cattleman. And it's always hurt me deep that he has had such bad luck."

Perhaps Billy Ray should take a page from his father's history and realize that with a little luck and a lot of dedication, dreams come true.

After reading Larry Brown's memoir/essay collection "Billy Ray's Farm", I felt so good about it- I mean, it was one of the finest reading experiences I'd had in years, that I decided to write the author and thank him for writing it. That's when I found out that Mr. Brown had passed away. What a fine writer we've lost.

This one was more readable than most of Larry Brown's other works.

"yawn",oh sorry it is just so hard to stay alert when reading this book. This author must be Mr. Negativity in a bottle. His glass is not just half empty, it has a hole in it, from which drains all the sloppy, gunky things that have settled in his heart. Besides being boring and slow moving, there is not point to his stories, which makes it more a journal of a depressed, whoa is me, person. "See spot Run", has more life to it than this book. From personal experience, ranching, farm life, rural life has its ups and downs but if you read this book looking for insight to see if you would fit rural life, you would drop that idea like the proverbial hot potato. Not that this a research book, but don't buy this book if you are looking to have some insight on what country life can be.I try very hard to always finish a book, with the hope that since it was pusblished there must be something good in there somewhere. But, when my husband looked over the book, unbeknowst to me, and later asked me how or why would I read that book, since the 3 places he read was nothing but negativity, he awoke me from the trans I was in reading the book and coincidentally we were burning brush that day. You figure out what the book is good for. This book has one star only because Amazon won't let you give a zero.