Customer Reviews

On Fire: A Personal Account of Life and Death and Choices

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I did not know of Larry Brown until I saw the film "Big Bad Love," based on one of his stories. I wasn't crazy about the film but was fascinated by the imagination it emerged from, and gave one of his books a try. For starters, I read his memoir "On Fire," about his years as an Oxford, Mississippi, fireman. I thought it would be about fighting fires, responding to emergencies, and what goes on in the firehouse in between. I expected some reflection on the world of firemen, which I understand to be a social order of its own, like policemen.

There is all of that and considerably more in this wonderful collection of short essays, many of them dashed off during those off hours in the firehouse, often recounting an experience Brown and his compatriots just had, rescuing someone trapped in a smashed car, putting out a fire, or just screwing around. You learn something of the process of firefighting as Brown reconstructs the events of several fires, including one in the top floor of a building at Ole Miss. He explains how they use the Jaws of Life. You learn about the daily routines of checking equipment for readiness, as well as continual training in CPR and different kinds of fires.

But much in the book is unexpected. There are pieces about dogs, hunting, lost kittens, cookouts, practical jokes, watching hawks, petty thefts, driving, drinking beer, and S and V on HBO. Essays that will stay in my memory include his account of a trip to New York to appear on the Today show when one of his books is published and learning while he's there that his wife and son have been hurt in a car accident, then discovering when he finds out they are OK that his dog Sam has died. The mental image of him crying in the airport is vivid and moving.

On a more hilarious note is an account of a long day's drive to a training exercise in the Delta, where they arrive late and drunk. On a more literary note, there's his account of setting up a hose to provide fake rain for a documentary film at William Faulkner's home, just down the road from the firehouse. His reflections on Faulkner sitting in the house and writing novels are full of awe and respect for a giant of letters, a giant who had a cup of coffee every night at a local restaurant where he always left a dime tip for the waitress.

If you've read or you're thinking of reading Brown's fiction, I recommend this book. It's a wonderful introduction to the man and his world, and you get a sense of the raw material that feeds his imagination.

Judging from the reviews here, one would expect Larry Brown's "On Fire" to be a travesty of modern nonfiction, an insult to firefighters and rescue personnel, and a rough estimate of the degree to which mankind has fallen from some form of enlightened perch. For grief's sake, people, it's only a book, and a fairly good and compelling one at that. Apparently many people (either in or out of the fire service) have such lofty expectations of their heroes (reinforced sadly by the events of September 11) that to envision firefighters as doing anything more rowdy than a tough game of touch football is to destroy the halos we all love to put on them in our society. Truth is, folks, and this is a firefighter talking here, most of them have the same ordinary, mundane concerns as you and other dead-end jobbers do, especially those whose careers take them down dark paths (as dryly and matter-of-factly as Brown writes them here). They love and hate, they rage and submit, they work and play, they hunt and fish, they drink and smoke, they are ordinary men and women, and they are somehow more important for many of the reasons Brown indicates. What I feel is the book's greatest strength is that Brown's portrayal is as much a myth-destroyer as it is a myth-builder: firefighters, he seems to say, rise above the mundane when asked, and slip beneath it when allowed.

Now as for the whole hunting / fishing / cruelty to animals bent that seems to turn everyone off, I suggest you all buy a plane ticket to Memphis, drive south toward Oxford itself, and observe the country Brown writes about and writes from. In case you haven't read any of his other works, it's pretty consistent with other Larry Brown, and yes, it's country-boy living. Some can handle it, and some don't. As for Brown, I think he probably feels as I do: thanks for stoppin' by, and if you see something you don't like, then don't let the door hit you too hard. Frankly, I read Larry Brown for just that attitude and reality, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

If you're looking for a glorious depiction of firefighting, or a glamorized portrayal of the Mississippi South, you're invited to read a few fictional accounts of each. But if you want the cold, hard reality of life that only Brown ever seems to bring to light, the pop open a cold one and join him for a tale or two. It'll be, as he says, "mighty fine".

This is an excellent book about a man who knows who he is, dreams of what he might be, and works his butt off to make the near-impossible real.

It's a great book for struggling writers to read because Larry Brown came from nowhere to become one of the great writers of his generation and he did it on the strength of his will alone.

There are passages in this book so lovely they make you catch your breath.

I love Larry Brown's writing. So simple, yet so affecting and evocative. This collection of autobiographical tales was written as a reflection on the time in his life from the '70s to the early 90s as an Oxford Fire Department member in Mississippi. That alone would be good enough - his stories tell of the unique esprit de corps in the fire station and of the many harrowing emergencies they would attend. But this book is more than just this. Brown writes of what that life was like as a colleague among the truest of friends, as a professional - sure of his abilities and confident in his training and equipment, as a man coping with moments of life, death and devastation on a routine basis, and as a husband and father living a blue collar existence in a simple home doing simple things.

It is these latter recollections which penetrated the most - you feel the soul of the man as he tells of half-hearted hunting expeditions with his sons, planting trees with his buddies in a snowy January landscape, or the heartbreaking episode of the disappearing kittens and the stuggle to settle with himself the ethics of raising rabbits for profit.

Intermittently he makes reference to his private passion - writing - and his efforts to fit that parallel vocation in with his home and work lives. These tiny insights are fascinating, and truly give an indication of what kind of a man he was.

Highly recommended.

Only 20% of this book is related to the fire service and it is adequately written at best. The rest is a rambling bore. Akin to a teenager's journal, it is witless, slipshod prose about the author's pets, drunk driving, raising rabbits, hunting, fishing, and the like. Mind you, I would be delighted to read about firefighter's off-duty life if it was interesting and well-written. This is neither.

Personally, I would recommend this book because it shows excellent character on Larry Brown's side and he is a great role model to look up to. At times in his life just like everyone else was not perfect and sometimes even terrible but he lived through it and got over the bad things that affected his life as a person and and strived to be the best at what he could be. That is a great example of what anyone should look up to as far as reaching goals is concerned. I definitely recommend this book to readers.

The "Chapters" in this book range from 1 paragraph to a few pages. The story follows no logical sequence. Author talks about how he drives while drinking beer with his buddies, slaughters pet rabbits for meat and tells his kids they "ran away", ran over his kitty accidently with his car, and relates some experiences in passing from the fire department. I felt it was an insult to professional fire service personnel. I would prefer that Mr. Brown not be one of the responders if I needed help, unless no other units were available. This book was a complete waste of money.

I spent the last year trying to teach college, and in one of our anthologies was an excerpt from On Fire. I liked it so much that I bought the book, but when I started reading the book, I hated it. Then, I ran out of things to read about six months later, picked up On Fire again, and I really liked it. Unfortunately, it is not a book that you can recommend to others because it has so much language and talk about dog's sex lives--and my friends would not be able to get beyond that, because it was hard for me to!

This book is hard to review because Brown writes so much about so many different things. It is not a book about firefighting; it is a book about life.

The book most profoundly affected me when Brown has to wait in an airport for six hours when he wants/needs to be home--he talks about how those hours have to be "gotten through" and, as a foster parent, I have had to get through hard hours in my life, and the fact that he eloquently captures that feeling of fighting the clock really moved me.

If you like dogs, cats, etc. this book will move you even more!

Larry Brown shares the emotional trauma of being a firefighter in his book On Fire. The book is a true to life account of what it is like to be a firefighter, from the crazy things you do to the heart wrenching life or death scenarios at the scene of an accident. Anyone looking into becoming a professional firefighter should read this book.

This author in no Dennis Smith. I had expected that a majority of the book would involve the author's professional life and his experiences. What I got was a tiresome narrative mainly about his personal life. Who really cares that he had a deer in his gunsight, thinking "This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.", before he kills it. Or all the time he spends drinking beer. There's more but I prefer to just forget the whole regretable experience.