Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 8, 1994 TAG: 9405010155
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by NEIL HARVEY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Larry Brown, a fireman from Oxford, Mississippi, decided in 1980 to try to become a writer.
He locked himself in a room with a typewriter and, quite simply, began putting together short stories and novels, using no actual training other than a writer's essentials: reading, and constant trial and error with words and sentences. After eight years, an astoundingly short period of time for a writer starting from scratch, he published a book of stories. Two novels and another collection of short works quickly followed.
Brown became, in those eight years, a prose craftsman. He can write beautifully about instances in which almost nothing happens; his heroes, usually loners, do laundry at 4:30 in the morning, drive around alone, watch from their porch while the sun fades. But Brown is so careful and precise with his descriptions that the situations transcend their static settings. While the basic elements he uses in his writing may be reminiscent of other writers (William Faulkner, Raymond Carver, Charles Bukowski, and Cormac McCarthy all come to mind), he has an attitude and an accuracy with words that is entirely his own.
He is an extremely good writer and the most frustrating kind, the kind that make writing look simple.
Initially, it seemed surprising and somewhat disappointing to me that Brown had decided to write "On Fire," a non-fiction book about firefighting. I could imagine only two possibilities: tall tales or hard facts, neither of which seem to jibe with what Larry Brown does best: characters, dialogue and scenes.
I was right and I was wrong.
"On Fire" is a slim book full of tall tales and hard facts. It is also much better than I had expected. More autobiographical than non-fiction, "On Fire" is an account of Brown's experiences both on and off the job. Each chapter (there are nearly 50) describes an episode from his life during the 17 years he fought fires and all the writing here, tall tales and hard facts included, contains the fine, rich style that makes his novels and short stories so good.
Woven together are equal measures of horror and humor. In one chapter, Brown engages in mortal combat with a field mouse he's found in his bathroom and in another chapter he discovers a child's bloody footprints in the basement of an apartment building during a call. In one chapter, a partner of Brown's is shown strong enough to break a car's gearshift with his bare hands to free a trapped passenger from a wreck, and in another that same friend is buried, killed by stroke. Brown grieves, tragically and also a little humorously, for his dead dog, and he also grieves for other dead pets, like cats, who, for some unknown reason, always hide in bathtubs during fires, where they usually suffocate.
Like all things episodic, some sections in this book succeed more than others, but all the situations serve some purpose in explaining a writer's need to write, or a fireman's need to explore his courage. Brown is able to describe reading a new novella in front of an audience with the same cut-and-dried tone that he describes approaching a red-hot, ready to explode tank of LP gas.
"On Fire" is to fighting fires what Tim O'Brien's powerful, similarly structured "The Things They Carried" is to fighting in combat: an explanation of experience, put forth by someone articulate, who knows exactly what he wants to say.
- Neil Harvey is a Blacksburg writer.
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by CNB