Grade: A

It’s not my intention to pigeonhole anything here, but when I think of the American Short Story my mind goes straight to Hemingway and his spawn. Writers of a dark masculinity that create poorly concealed autobiographical fiction where the men desperately search for their place in the world while acting terribly. They are womanizers and boozers, some are violent and most are emotionally unstable, but the catch is that they’re smart enough to understand the damage of their actions. The writing is unrefined and coarse, reflecting their working class characters. These are the Bukowski’s and the Carver’s of the world and Larry Brown deserves his place among them, both in style and skill. His collection Big Bad Love contains stories of men who are desperate for love and a human connection but will never get it because their understanding of it is so flawed and their choices so awful.

The stories themselves are all set in the south and all are written in first person. They have ever-present themes like poverty and violence and desperation. Most of the men in the stories are married, though some are divorced, and most of them too are either looking to cheat or are cheating, though some just live in agony as they try to figure out how to make their women happy. In “The Apprentice” the man’s wife is a struggling writer who he supports financially but secretly thinks she’s terrible at it and should give up, but he continues to support her through some obligation or maybe love. In the title story “Big Bad Love,” it’s less subtle. The protagonist can’t please with wife for physical reasons. The man spends time in the bar alone and laments “I just couldn’t do anything with her big Tunnel of Love. I could hit one side at a time, but not both sides.” If man’s inadequacy and inability to conquer the new world is your central theme than what better metaphor exists than a cavernous vagina? Sure, some could argue this collection is a bit on the sexist side, and they wouldn’t be wrong, but it’s honest in the portrayal of the existential crisis of these men.

The last half of the book is sort of a novella titled “92 Days” that is about a divorced man who dreams of being a writer. He sits at home alone and writes and writes and sends manuscripts out and awaits the rejections slips. If this sounds like Bukowski to anybody, it did to me too, but there’s one key difference. Bukowski never doubts his writing or his genius. Rejection slips mean nothing to him because being misunderstood is actually a good thing to him. Brown feels the horrible pain of every rejection, he’s honest that some of the things he writes are terrible. This is not a story about sticking with your dream and everything will work out fine (I’m not trying to say that’s what Bukowski was trying to do, for the record, but there’s a sort of inevitability to his writing that suggests eventually he will be recognized as great), but instead reads as a treatise on writing. About how it’s a passion that doesn’t go away simply because you’re not successful or it’s not really the smart way to live your life. Rejection slips pile up and the only solace is in the nicely written denial letters.

Larry Brown was one of our great writers. His stories, and novels, are dark and gritty and dangerous and punch you right in the gut. But there is also a humor in his writing that really makes it jump off the page. It’s as if he knows just how ridiculous the people in his world are but can’t help the fact that he loves them anyway. Nobody is all good, okay nobody is really very good at all, but nobody is all bad either. People are complicated and so are Brown’s characters, and all just desperately want to connect to another human being. If you haven’t read any Larry Brown, do yourself a favor and get on that. This collection and his debut novel Dirty Work are literary masterpieces that show both the ugliness and beauty of people.