Larry Brown | DIRTY WORK | 1st Edition HC | "A True Voice" —Harry Crews

Description: • For Your Consideration: • A First Edition, First Printing SIGNED* HARDCOVER of: • “DIRTY WORK: A Novel” (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1989) (Hardcover, First Edition, First Printing) • BY LARRY BROWN (1951-2004) *SIGNED, INSCRIBED, & DATED by the Author in this way (on the half-title page, in black ink): For KIM, Best Wishes, LARRY BROWN 8/24/90.” • ABOUT THIS TITLE: • “LARRY BROWN’s shattering first novel is the story of two men—strangers—one black, the other white. Both were born and raised in Mississippi. Both fought in Vietnam. Both were gravely wounded. Now, twenty-two years later, both men lie in adjacent beds in a VA hospital. Over the course of a long day and night, they recount their memories, reveal their fears and their dreams, and ponder their fates, until each is irrevocably touched and transformed by the other's life. With great vision, humor, and courage, BROWN writes of human tenderness in an unforgettable story about the waste of war.” —THE PUBLISHER • “A strong, true voice that speaks with authority and compassion. LARRY BROWN’s work is exceptional by any standard. Talent has struck.” —HARRY CREWS • “LARRY BROWN writes as if he owns—legitimately and without challenge, mind you—the entire grief-stricken, joy-ridden world, and a few things beyond it. Only a steward of the world could give us DIRTY WORK—all fire, wind and ice, miraculously suspended in a web of heart-crushing love.” —BOB SHACOCHIS • “Direct, powerful, and singularly honest.” —WILLIE MORRIS • “DIRTY WORK is a novel of the first order. It’s a short, dialogue- and monologue-studded gem that tells the story of two ex-Marines who were severely wounded in Vietnam. Brown sets his story in the present day. He unwinds the action during one long, long night of the soul that the two main characters spend in a Veterans Administration hospital…. Given its territory, DIRTY WORK is not always pleasant to read. Yet the writing, the characters and the plot are so compelling that you can't help but stay with the book until its conclusion.”—MARC LEEPSON, WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD • “There has been no antiwar novel—certainly no first novel—quite like LARRY BROWN’s DIRTY WORK since DALTON TRUMBO’s JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN, which was published 50 years ago…. It is a powerful and original work all its own that moves along in short, staccato chapters with indisputably authentic language. At times, the reader feels he is eavesdropping on a conversation between foreigners, not Americans. For these two men inhabit the alien world of the unseen, half-dead hospitalized wounded.”―HERBERT MITGANG, NEW YORK TIMES • “LARRY BROWN’s first book, a collection of stories called FACING THE MUSIC, was published last year to considerable acclaim. Now he has accomplished that rarest of feats, following a strong first work with an even stronger second one. Like WILLIAM FAULKNER, MR. BROWN is from Oxford, Miss. It must be difficult to write under such a daunting shadow. Whether this is why he has a man in DIRTY WORK beat a mule to death with his bare hands, I can’t say. But the way I read things, LARRY BROWN is his own man these days. His well of inspiration may also spring out of the works of BARRY HANNAH, HARRY CREWS, RICHARD FORD, and even WALKER PERCY, but what he’s given us in DIRTY WORK is all his own. This is an unforgettable, unshakable novel. In it, griefs and joys are met not at a delicate, self-consciously artistic angle but head-on, with a force that is both subtle and powerful—and above all compassionate.” —RICK BASS, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • “The writing, the characters, and the plot are so compelling that you can’t help but stay with the book until its conclusion.” ―WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD • “One of the most powerful antiwar novels in American literature.” ―ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION • “A marvelous book…. BROWN’s swift, intuitive dialogue explodes like a land mine and leaves the reader dizzy with shock.” ―KANSAS CITY STAR • “A real knockout.” ―NEW YORK NEWSDAY • “Stunning power…. DIRTY WORK makes the human cost of war achingly real.” ―USA TODAY • “An unsparing book, at once brutal and compassionate, horrible, yet funny, too.” ―PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER • “It’s hard to imagine a more powerful effect than the one BROWN creates with his attentive, unsparing prose.” ―ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH • “[BROWN] has created two fully realized, believable―and often very funny―characters…. No one who reads this book is likely to forget them.” ―HOUSTON POST • “People who are in trouble are the kind I know best. They’re the kind I grew up around."—LARRY BROWN • ABOUT THE AUTHOR:• “LARRY BROWN is an American original. If a movie were made of his life, DENNIS QUAID or JEFF BRIDGES would get the part. If they could get the accent right. Because LARRY BROWN’s voice is like nothing you've ever heard before—that is, unless you’ve spent some time in Oxford, Mississippi. Not the Oxford of WILLIAM FAULKNER, the town's better known artiste. But the Oxford of six-packs and pickup trucks and the pains of mismatched men and women in trailer parks…. LARRY BROWN grew up amid poverty, Southern style. His father was a sharecropper who moved his wife and four children from Mississippi to Memphis when he couldn't make a living farming. When they returned to Oxford 10 years later, his father worked in the same stove factory BROWN would work in a decade or so later. Wherever they were, money was scarce and problems plentiful….. People often ask this trim, wiry man with the friendly manner and boyish smile why he writes about people with such violent, troubled lives. ‘It’s not that I have a bleak outlook on life or anything,’ he says. ‘There is just no way for some lives to have a happy ending….’” —JUDITH WEINRAUB, WASHINGTON POST • “That he came to writing late, without any institution of higher learning to dictate to him the ideology of good writing, was to his advantage, allowing him to appraise his new vocation with the eyes of someone who knew something of the world….” —WOODY HAUT, LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS • “I think he’s become one of America’s great stories—how his diligence and his big backbone won out. Something happened in about five years that's quite a miracle. He’s become his own genius.” —BARRY HANNAH • “Right from the beginning he was willing to look very straight into the depths of human pain without blinking. If you didn’t blink and were willing to stand there and look with him, you could learn some remarkable things.” —SHANNON RAVENAL, EDITOR, ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL • • For other details about this book, please see below. • TITLE: “DIRTY WORK: A Novel” AUTHOR: LARRY BROWN COVER ART: GLENNRAY TUTUOR TYPE: HARDCOVER PAGES: 236 PUBLISHER, LOCALE, & YEAR: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill (North Carolina), 1989 EDITION: First Edition, First Printing* *RE: On the Copyright Page, the statement “FIRST EDITION” & this Number Row: “10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1.” NOTE: This copy is NOT ex-library NOR a book-club edition. ISBN: 0-945575-20-3 CONDITION OF DUST JACKET: VERY GOOD PLUS. The price (16.95) is unclipped. Corners & spine tips are faintly rubbed. Edges are lightly worn & there is a tiny cut at the top of the inside flap. Faint scratches & smudges (from normal handling) affect both sides of the DJ—but overall DJ is bright & clean. (Now protected in a Brodart archival cover.) CONDITION of BOOK ITSELF: VERY GOOD. Boards have a few faint scratches—but are otherwise clean. The spine has a light-to-moderate slant (of about 10%?), but is tight. Spine-lettering is bright. Corners are faintly rubbed. There are a few light smudges on the fore edge; other edges are fine. Pages are bright & clean with no underlining, no doodling, no tears, no foxing, & no writing save for the author’s signature & dated inscription on the half-title page. THE AUTHOR’S SIGNATURE & DATED INSCRIPTION: Appear, in black ink, on the Half Title Page as follows: “For KIM, Best Wishes, LARRY BROWN 8/24/90.” SHIPPING NEWS: This book will be wrapped with care before being shipped in a cushioned and sturdy box. 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Price: 49.99 USD

Location: Chapel Hill, North Carolina

End Time: 2024-08-11T15:45:29.000Z

Shipping Cost: 6.99 USD