Roman publié en 1991 sous le titre original Joe.
Larry Brown (1951 Mississipi-2004), sapeur-pompier jusque dans les années 80, écrivain à ses moments libres, il a publié une dizaine de romans, essais ou nouvelles. Crise cardiaque en 2004.
Présentation de l’éditeur
Joe Ransom, la cinquantaine, aime l’alcool, le jeu et la castagne. Il conduit trop vite et dégaine encore plus vite. Le jour, il trime dans la moiteur torride des forêts du nord du Mississippi. La nuit, il traîne dans les bordels et les tripots clandestins.
Gary Jones pense qu’il a quinze ans. Il est né dans la mouise et fait les poubelles pour survivre. Son père est un journalier itinérant mauvais comme la gale. Sa mère est devenue folle à force de douleur. Une famille où les gosses n’ont connu que la route, la faim et la sauvagerie.
Il faut maintenant que Gary s’occupe d’eux et trouve du travail. Quand leurs chemins se croisent, c’est Joe, l’homme sans avenir, qui offrira sa chance à Gary.
(Source : Folio policier )
Mon avis
Un roman noir, excessivement misérabiliste, qui aurait pu se dérouler, sans changer beaucoup de lignes, pendant la grande dépression des années trente.
Correctement écrit et traduit, mais à la limite de la caricature et vraiment trop sombre à mon goût.
Peut-être quelque chose à en tirer du point de vue des relations sociologiques au Mississipi, mais vraiment difficile d’en apprécier la valeur.
Une interview du 28 avril 2000
Minimalist writer Larry Brown may not write flowing prose, but every word he selects hits home. His new novel FAY, delves deeply into a character that Brown could not get out of his mind after writing about her in his book JOE. In this interview by Bookreporter.com’s Senior Writer Joe Hartlaub, learn how a man who failed senior English can write like a modern day Faulkner. Read carefully — his answers are brief, but they tell you exactly what you need to know.
TBR: FAY, while not exactly a sequel to your novel JOE, broadens and enhances the portrait of the Jones family. What was your impetus to focus on Fay Jones as the subject matter for a novel?
LB: I had always wondered what happened to Fay. She was a character that lived on in my mind and her fate was unsettled and I knew that I had another story to tell, one about her. As soon as I finished FATHER AND SON I sat down and started on FAY. That was I think around January 1996.
TBR: The end of JOE raised a number of questions regarding the fate of the members of the Jones family. FAY resolved a couple of those, including what happened to Fay after she left the family. As in life, however, there are still issues unresolved which were raised in both JOE and FAY. Do you have any plans to resolve those at a future point in time?
LB: Yes. At this point I plan to make a trilogy. The last book will probably focus on Gary as well as answer the question of what happened to Calvin, the little brother of Fay and Gary who was traded for a car in JOE.
TBR: One of the major, and maddening, questions which both FAY and JOE raised for me involved the respective virtues of Fay and Gary Jones. Both individuals were raised by a mother driven mad by grief and fear and a father who, to all outward appearances, was without redeeming social value. Yet along the way, Gary acquired the capacity for hard work and responsibility while Fay, as demonstrated time and again in FAY, has a capacity for honesty that we would all do well to aspire to. This is an unfair question, I know, but — considering where these people came from, where did they learn these qualities?
LB: I believe that people are able to rise above the environment they were raised in. Some genes get passed along, and some don’t.
TBR: Do the characters in FAY have real world models, or are they purely fictional?
LB: I don’t believe that any of them are based on any real people that I know, but some of the events are real.
TBR: I have read elsewhere that you took three years to write FAY. Were you working on other projects, as well as FAY, during this time?
LB: I taught some at the University of Mississippi but mostly worked on FAY.
TBR: Your biography, as usually presented, goes something like this: fireman for the Oxford, Mississippi Fire Department; self-taught creative writer; receiver of several prestigious awards; full-time writer in 1990. Could you tell us what your academic background was prior to your career as a firefighter?
LB: I wrote a whole lot of things and threw them away. I read the best writers that I could find and I just kept doing that for years and years. I just believed that I could do it if I worked hard enough at it, but it took me eight years to publish my first book.
TBR: What drew you toward creative writing as a part-time, and later a full-time career?
LB: I have a high school diploma and was lucky to get that. I was such a dumbass that I failed senior English and had to go to summer school. Since then, I’ve read books to educate myself.
TBR: What method(s) did you use to teach yourself creative writing?
LB: I’d always loved to read and, eventually, I began to want to learn to write. It seemed that it was a thing that could be learned with enough work. After a couple of years, I begin to really enjoy what I was doing and wanted to learn how to be a really good writer and eventually make a career out of it. In my early thirties I found out what I wanted to do with my life.
TBR: It has been noted elsewhere that the greatest writers which our country has produced in the last century — Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy — have been from the South. While my list is somewhat subjective, inarguably there are more authors of note whose origins are from that region than might otherwise be expected. What is it about the South that gives rise to the inordinate amount of literary talent and ability that has come, and continues to come, from the region?
LB: I have been asked that question many times and have no way to answer it. I am asked that question wherever I go. The only thing that I can come up with is that the geography has something to do with the creation of the characters that live in it. My characters come out of the land that is around me that I see every day, that is rural Lafayette County, Mississippi. That’s just about the only way I know how to explain it and that’s only for me.
TBR: Your work has been favorably compared to that of McCarthy, Faulkner and Crews, and while it shows the influence of those authors, your voice remains uniquely and totally your own. Are there any other authors, besides those noted above, who have influenced your work?
LB: Yes, Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver and Charles Bukowski.
TBR: It is my understanding that Joe Bob Briggs has optioned the film rights to JOE. Is there anything happening with that project? And are you, or will you, be involved in it in any way?
LB: I probably shouldn’t talk too much about Billy Bob Thornton and JOE. I don’t know what their plans are yet, only that they have the property.
TBR: What are you working on now?
LB: I’m working on a bunch of essays to finish up my next book, BILLY RAY’S FARM.
TBR: You have tried your hand at songwriting and performing. Have you considered any multimedia projects, possibly combining one of your novels with your musical compositions?
LB: That hadn’t really crossed my mind. Mostly I play for my own entertainment and with friends. I leave the music to the real musicians.
TBR: What are you reading now?
LB: I’m reading AMERICAN BY BLOOD by Andrew Huebner, THE INLAND SEA by Steven Varni, and THE GREEN MILE by Stephen King. I just got the copy of BEOWULF by Seamus Heaney and a copy of HUNTS IN DREAMS by Tom Drury.
