What do you think?
Rate this book
Dirty Work
Braiden Chaney has no arms or legs. Walter James has no face. They lost them in Vietnam, along with other, more vital parts of themselves. Now, twenty-two years later, these two Mississippians -- one black, the other white -- lie in adjoining beds in a V.A. hospital. In the course of one long night they tell each other how they came to be what they are and what they can only dream of becoming. Their stories, recounted in voices as distinct and indelible as those of Faulkner, add up to the story of the war itself, and make Dirty Work the most devastating novel of its kind since Dalton Trumbo's Johnny got his gun.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 8, 1989
89 people are currently reading
2697 people want to read
About the author
Larry Brown
73 books656 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Larry Brown was an American writer who was born and lived in Oxford, Mississippi. Brown wrote fiction and nonfiction. He graduated from high school in Oxford but did not go to college. Many years later, he took a creative writing class from the Mississippi novelist Ellen Douglas. Brown served in the United States Marine Corps from 1970 to 1972. On his return to Oxford, he worked at a small stove company before joining the city fire department. An avid reader, Brown began writing in his spare time while he worked as a firefighter in Oxford in 1980.
Brown was awarded the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award for fiction. Brown was the first two-time winner of the Southern Book Award for Fiction, which he won in 1992 for his novel, Joe and again in 1997 for his novel Father and Son. In 1998, he received a Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Award, which granted him $35,000 per year for three years to write. In 2000, the State of Mississippi granted him a Governor's Award For Excellence in the Arts. For one semester, Brown taught as a writer-in-residence in the creative writing program at the University of Mississippi, temporarily taking over the position held by his friend Barry Hannah. He later served as visiting writer at the University of Montana in Missoula. He taught briefly at other colleges throughout the United States.
Brown died of an apparent heart attack at his home in the Yocona community, near Oxford, in November 2004.
Larry Brown was an American writer who was born and lived in Oxford, Mississippi. Brown wrote fiction and nonfiction. He graduated from high school in Oxford but did not go to college. Many years later, he took a creative writing class from the Mississippi novelist Ellen Douglas. Brown served in the United States Marine Corps from 1970 to 1972. On his return to Oxford, he worked at a small stove company before joining the city fire department. An avid reader, Brown began writing in his spare time while he worked as a firefighter in Oxford in 1980.
Brown was awarded the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award for fiction. Brown was the first two-time winner of the Southern Book Award for Fiction, which he won in 1992 for his novel, Joe and again in 1997 for his novel Father and Son. In 1998, he received a Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Award, which granted him $35,000 per year for three years to write. In 2000, the State of Mississippi granted him a Governor's Award For Excellence in the Arts. For one semester, Brown taught as a writer-in-residence in the creative writing program at the University of Mississippi, temporarily taking over the position held by his friend Barry Hannah. He later served as visiting writer at the University of Montana in Missoula. He taught briefly at other colleges throughout the United States.
Brown died of an apparent heart attack at his home in the Yocona community, near Oxford, in November 2004.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 244 reviews
April 27, 2019
"You look in somebody’s eyes, then kill him, you remember them eyes. You remember that you was the last thing he seen."
The horrific aftermath of the Vietnam War in both the minds and bodies of men really struck home in Dirty Work, my introduction to author Larry Brown. It’s been twenty-two years since the war, but to Walter and Braiden, two strangers meeting for the first time in a Mississippi VA hospital, the battle wounds and mental trauma are far from healed. As they begin to swap stories about their war experiences and their impoverished and troubled backgrounds, the reader slowly learns how both of these broken men ended up in this place where neither wants to be. "I meant in here was like prison. Ain’t no bars on the windows, but ain’t many ways to leave." The narration alternates between Walter and Braiden. The premise of the story on the surface is quite simple really – two men in hospital beds sharing their stories, but Larry Brown digs deep and I ended up in places I couldn’t have imagined.
I had to take a deep breath after finishing this one! As I so often do after a war story. Always so gripping and thought-provoking - I find myself reflecting on humanity and the feeling of loneliness that lurks below the surface in each one of us. Dread hovered over me throughout. It was devastating really.
"I know where you been, man. I’ve decided it’s all the same. It’s just the places and the reasons that change. Or maybe just the enemy."
The horrific aftermath of the Vietnam War in both the minds and bodies of men really struck home in Dirty Work, my introduction to author Larry Brown. It’s been twenty-two years since the war, but to Walter and Braiden, two strangers meeting for the first time in a Mississippi VA hospital, the battle wounds and mental trauma are far from healed. As they begin to swap stories about their war experiences and their impoverished and troubled backgrounds, the reader slowly learns how both of these broken men ended up in this place where neither wants to be. "I meant in here was like prison. Ain’t no bars on the windows, but ain’t many ways to leave." The narration alternates between Walter and Braiden. The premise of the story on the surface is quite simple really – two men in hospital beds sharing their stories, but Larry Brown digs deep and I ended up in places I couldn’t have imagined.
I had to take a deep breath after finishing this one! As I so often do after a war story. Always so gripping and thought-provoking - I find myself reflecting on humanity and the feeling of loneliness that lurks below the surface in each one of us. Dread hovered over me throughout. It was devastating really.
"I know where you been, man. I’ve decided it’s all the same. It’s just the places and the reasons that change. Or maybe just the enemy."
September 13, 2020
Young Soldiers Never Get Old
Old people (mostly men) have always induced (seduced) young people (mostly boys) to continue their childhood fantasies of violence and dominance into adulthood by joining the military. The sequence is important: “There ain’t nothing meaner than some little deranged six-year-old sadistic motherfucker loose in a playground.” This youthful sociopathy is a strategic asset that is nurtured.
The military opportunity is presented in quasi-religious terms as a ‘calling’ from God and Country which will demand and develop important personal virtues in impressionable youth - loyalty, discipline, and faith in one’s leaders among the most essential of these. Since it’s easiest to recruit (or coerce) these young people from god-fearing, less than well-educated, under-achieving families, the military has a distinct demographic, historically referred to as cannon-fodder.
Military training has more or less the same aim everywhere in the world - to break down the inhibitions that constrain childhood violence to mere verbal threat or minor mayhem. Such training is necessarily traumatic because “It do something to you to kill another person. It ain’t no dog lying there. Somebody. A person, talk like you, eat like you, got a mind like you. Got a soul like you.” So the most fundamental moral sense must be extinguished: “People shooting other people is bad and don’t nobody have to tell you, you born knowing that.”
Getting that fixed permanently in a young mind isn’t easy. Therefore a new ‘higher power’ has to be established, something called ‘us’, which justifies lethal action. So, as the drill sergeant says, “We got an image to uphold here. The best in the world. There’s a bunch of them going over there in a few months that ain’t coming back. They’re gonna die for their country, they’re gonna die for their Marine Corps, for all the softass civilians like you guys used to be.” From the eternal scrutiny of this higher power there is no escape. The soldier stays in the school yard, now part of a gang.
Only a fraction of military personnel end up as front line troops. They are the ones who do the eponymous dirty work and who get the full ‘benefit’ of their training. This is where the gang matters. They also receive the benefit-in-kind of the training of their opponents and their gangs. The most horrid of the reciprocal gifts received and given is not death but the inability to live with oneself.
Living comfortably with oneself is the most primitive level of ‘normality.’ Disfigurement is bad. Loss of abilities, perhaps even to walk or touch, is worse. But wanting to die is the worst. That’s the part they don’t train you for and the drill sergeant never mentions - what happens when it’s over but so much gets left behind, friends and ideals as well as body parts - theirs as well as ours.
There’s nothing more to imagine in youthful fantasy, and things “ain’t gonna get no better.” At that point Ennui becomes an incurable companion in convalescence: “It woulda been a lot better for mama to see me in my coffin laid out and watch them put me in the ground and blow taps over me than to see me like that.” Staying young is not an option; but neither, for many, is getting old.
Old people (mostly men) have always induced (seduced) young people (mostly boys) to continue their childhood fantasies of violence and dominance into adulthood by joining the military. The sequence is important: “There ain’t nothing meaner than some little deranged six-year-old sadistic motherfucker loose in a playground.” This youthful sociopathy is a strategic asset that is nurtured.
The military opportunity is presented in quasi-religious terms as a ‘calling’ from God and Country which will demand and develop important personal virtues in impressionable youth - loyalty, discipline, and faith in one’s leaders among the most essential of these. Since it’s easiest to recruit (or coerce) these young people from god-fearing, less than well-educated, under-achieving families, the military has a distinct demographic, historically referred to as cannon-fodder.
Military training has more or less the same aim everywhere in the world - to break down the inhibitions that constrain childhood violence to mere verbal threat or minor mayhem. Such training is necessarily traumatic because “It do something to you to kill another person. It ain’t no dog lying there. Somebody. A person, talk like you, eat like you, got a mind like you. Got a soul like you.” So the most fundamental moral sense must be extinguished: “People shooting other people is bad and don’t nobody have to tell you, you born knowing that.”
Getting that fixed permanently in a young mind isn’t easy. Therefore a new ‘higher power’ has to be established, something called ‘us’, which justifies lethal action. So, as the drill sergeant says, “We got an image to uphold here. The best in the world. There’s a bunch of them going over there in a few months that ain’t coming back. They’re gonna die for their country, they’re gonna die for their Marine Corps, for all the softass civilians like you guys used to be.” From the eternal scrutiny of this higher power there is no escape. The soldier stays in the school yard, now part of a gang.
Only a fraction of military personnel end up as front line troops. They are the ones who do the eponymous dirty work and who get the full ‘benefit’ of their training. This is where the gang matters. They also receive the benefit-in-kind of the training of their opponents and their gangs. The most horrid of the reciprocal gifts received and given is not death but the inability to live with oneself.
Living comfortably with oneself is the most primitive level of ‘normality.’ Disfigurement is bad. Loss of abilities, perhaps even to walk or touch, is worse. But wanting to die is the worst. That’s the part they don’t train you for and the drill sergeant never mentions - what happens when it’s over but so much gets left behind, friends and ideals as well as body parts - theirs as well as ours.
There’s nothing more to imagine in youthful fantasy, and things “ain’t gonna get no better.” At that point Ennui becomes an incurable companion in convalescence: “It woulda been a lot better for mama to see me in my coffin laid out and watch them put me in the ground and blow taps over me than to see me like that.” Staying young is not an option; but neither, for many, is getting old.
April 4, 2017
This is the fourth Larry Brown work that I have read, and my favorite so far. It's not often that an author's first novel outshines his later work, but that's how I feel about this one. His book of short stories, Big Bad Love was wonderful, as were his later novels, Fay and Father and Son. But the emotion in this one was so raw, and his people so real, I felt like I knew them personally.
Two men, one black, one white, but with similar hard childhoods raised in poverty in rural Mississippi, spend a long day and night sharing their stories in a VA hospital. They were both horribly mutilated in Vietnam 22 years ago, and both still bear inescapable burdens. The book is a long conversation between them, interrupted only by nurse Diva, and occasionally Jesus, as Braiden sometimes has conversations with him. We get flashbacks to the war, of course, and forays into their imaginations. The story is a difficult one on both sides, leading to some irrevocable decisions by each man.
Larry Brown writes about the people he knows, and it turns out that I know them too. They are my family, and neighbors, and co-workers, and the people you meet in the street and read about in the newspapers. They are all of us, trying to make sense of life when it makes no sense at all.
Two men, one black, one white, but with similar hard childhoods raised in poverty in rural Mississippi, spend a long day and night sharing their stories in a VA hospital. They were both horribly mutilated in Vietnam 22 years ago, and both still bear inescapable burdens. The book is a long conversation between them, interrupted only by nurse Diva, and occasionally Jesus, as Braiden sometimes has conversations with him. We get flashbacks to the war, of course, and forays into their imaginations. The story is a difficult one on both sides, leading to some irrevocable decisions by each man.
Larry Brown writes about the people he knows, and it turns out that I know them too. They are my family, and neighbors, and co-workers, and the people you meet in the street and read about in the newspapers. They are all of us, trying to make sense of life when it makes no sense at all.
May 12, 2019
A perfect illustration of the toll that war can exact on an individual. One room in a VA hospital, two men who have been maimed and disfigured beyond repair. Even so, the damage that has been wrought on their bodies is not complete. Here, you will become privy to the crippling effect to their minds, their spirits, and their very souls. Raw and grisly, with few words this lays bare the waste to the very bone.
November 14, 2013
This is one of those books that I use to size up other people. If you've read Dirty Work and you didn't love it, I wish you well but I doubt I want to know you. This was the first Larry Brown book that I ever read and, after re-reading it, it is still as powerful and haunting the second time around.
The novel focuses on two Vietnam veterans in the VA hospital two decades after the war has ended. Braiden, a black quadraplegic, has spent this entire time in the hospital and his imagination is his only means of escape. When Walter arrives under mysterious circumstances, Braiden thinks he's found his salvation. Walter's face was horribly mutilated and shell fragments lodged in his brain cause him to have uncontrollable "blackouts" from which he awakens with no memory. As these two men talk about their lives as they were and as they are, they revisit the painful landscape of Vietnam and Brown reveals how the war took much more from them than their bodies. The damage is emotional, spiritual, and mental (as Braiden says at one point, "It do something to you to kill another person. It ain't no dog lying there. Somebody. A person, talk like you, eat like you, got a mind like you. Got a soul like you . . . You look in somebody's eyes, then kill him, you remember them eyes. You remember that you was the last thing he seen.") The novel also reflects how it was the poor and, in particular, the black soldiers who were asked to give the most and expect nothing in return--not even valid reasons for fighting.
Brown's writing is simple, direct, and often bitingly funny when you least expect it. He knew how to capture the cadences and culture of working class Americans always one paycheck away from the brink of poverty and he always did so with the utmost respect, never denigrating or lessening their value to American society. When Brown died, we lost one of the finest writers of the American South and this novel is a testament to his gifts.
Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder and at Shelf Inflicted
The novel focuses on two Vietnam veterans in the VA hospital two decades after the war has ended. Braiden, a black quadraplegic, has spent this entire time in the hospital and his imagination is his only means of escape. When Walter arrives under mysterious circumstances, Braiden thinks he's found his salvation. Walter's face was horribly mutilated and shell fragments lodged in his brain cause him to have uncontrollable "blackouts" from which he awakens with no memory. As these two men talk about their lives as they were and as they are, they revisit the painful landscape of Vietnam and Brown reveals how the war took much more from them than their bodies. The damage is emotional, spiritual, and mental (as Braiden says at one point, "It do something to you to kill another person. It ain't no dog lying there. Somebody. A person, talk like you, eat like you, got a mind like you. Got a soul like you . . . You look in somebody's eyes, then kill him, you remember them eyes. You remember that you was the last thing he seen.") The novel also reflects how it was the poor and, in particular, the black soldiers who were asked to give the most and expect nothing in return--not even valid reasons for fighting.
Brown's writing is simple, direct, and often bitingly funny when you least expect it. He knew how to capture the cadences and culture of working class Americans always one paycheck away from the brink of poverty and he always did so with the utmost respect, never denigrating or lessening their value to American society. When Brown died, we lost one of the finest writers of the American South and this novel is a testament to his gifts.
Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder and at Shelf Inflicted
January 4, 2026
Novela muy original.
Se trata de dos ex-soldados de la guerra de Vietnam que se encuentran en un hospital mucho tiempo después de la guerra.
Cada uno de ellos tiene sus propios demonios mentales y sus "muy graves" secuelas físicas.
La novela está narrada en capítulos cortos donde cada protagonista va narrando su propia voz o sus propios pensamientos.
Es bastante triste y deprimente, también hay que decirlo.
Al principio, me costó un poco acostumbrarme a la dinámica de la novela, aunque es muy original y está muy bien escrita.
---------------------------
A very original novel.
It is about two former soldiers from the Vietnam War who meet in a hospital long after the war.
Each of them has their own mental demons and “very serious” physical after-effects.
The novel is narrated in short chapters where each protagonist narrates their own voice or their own thoughts.
It is quite sad and depressing, it must be said.
At first, I found it a little difficult to get used to the dynamics of the novel, although it is very original and very well written.
Se trata de dos ex-soldados de la guerra de Vietnam que se encuentran en un hospital mucho tiempo después de la guerra.
Cada uno de ellos tiene sus propios demonios mentales y sus "muy graves" secuelas físicas.
La novela está narrada en capítulos cortos donde cada protagonista va narrando su propia voz o sus propios pensamientos.
Es bastante triste y deprimente, también hay que decirlo.
Al principio, me costó un poco acostumbrarme a la dinámica de la novela, aunque es muy original y está muy bien escrita.
---------------------------
A very original novel.
It is about two former soldiers from the Vietnam War who meet in a hospital long after the war.
Each of them has their own mental demons and “very serious” physical after-effects.
The novel is narrated in short chapters where each protagonist narrates their own voice or their own thoughts.
It is quite sad and depressing, it must be said.
At first, I found it a little difficult to get used to the dynamics of the novel, although it is very original and very well written.
June 4, 2017
A haunting book written by the late Larry Brown who dedicated it ," To Daddy, who knew what war did to men. " My Southern Lit club occasionally reads some substantially tough to read and emotionally draining ( at least for me ) books. This one which takes place in the span of a few days in a Mississippi VA hospital and covers the traded stories and histories of two Vietnam Vets who have both suffered great losses in combat, is among the most difficult and heartbreaking one yet. Still the ending is unsurpassed in its moral dilemma, and makes this an unforgettable read in my mind. So yep 5 stars, but I most definitely would not recommend it to everyone. Truly it sort of chips away at your heart and then just smashes it altogether !!
April 26, 2017
Raw and real. Fascinating how the two men cope with the hand they were dealt. The book reads like a therapy session. The best closing lines.
March 1, 2022
This is a disturbing tale and raw to the bone (gruesome in parts, actually) with dialogue that cuts like a hot knife through butter to the emotional and physical damage war inflicts on its soldiers - damage that never heals, no matter how many surgeries or how much love. The alternating voices of two terribly injured Vietnam veterans, strangers but each raised in poverty in rural Mississippi, now sharing a room, scars and memories in a VA hospital twenty-two years after the war, proves this point in chilling detail.
‘Dirty Work’ is Larry Brown’s debut novel and my first experience with this highly respected and much loved Southern author. Filled with gothic imagery (violence, broken people, dark humor, a dash of the grotesque and yes, a dead mule) and authentic Southern people and places, this was another powerful, thought-provoking selection by the GR group ‘On The Southern Literary Trail.’ I thought I’d read it all, but this book rattled me to my core.
“Whole world’s a puzzle to me, though. Why it’s got to be the way it is. I don’t think the Lord meant for it to be like this originally. I think things just got out of hand.” ~ Braiden Chaney
“I knew that somewhere Jesus wept.” ~ Walter James
‘Dirty Work’ is Larry Brown’s debut novel and my first experience with this highly respected and much loved Southern author. Filled with gothic imagery (violence, broken people, dark humor, a dash of the grotesque and yes, a dead mule) and authentic Southern people and places, this was another powerful, thought-provoking selection by the GR group ‘On The Southern Literary Trail.’ I thought I’d read it all, but this book rattled me to my core.
“Whole world’s a puzzle to me, though. Why it’s got to be the way it is. I don’t think the Lord meant for it to be like this originally. I think things just got out of hand.” ~ Braiden Chaney
“I knew that somewhere Jesus wept.” ~ Walter James
September 15, 2021
Seen every kind of man they is come in here. Seen every thing that can go wrong with them, too. Just a junk pile, this place. Stick you in here when they can’t do nothing else with you. When nobody else don’t want you, when your family don’t want you, when your mama gone and it ain’t nobody else.
In a hospital ward for soldiers crippled in the Vietnam War, two men spend a sleepless night next to each other, alternately trying to have a conversation or retreating inside their own head for long monologues. Both come from the Deep South and could have been good neighbours if not for the war and for the colour of their skin. One has lost both arms and both legs, an inmate of this place of the damned for almost twenty years. The other still has pieces of metal embedded in his brain from a grenade, causing him to have fainting spells and dangerous mood swings as he goes in and out of hospitals.
Slowly, hesitantly, painfully we get inside the minds of these two veterans, learning their struggle to cope with the whole pointlessness of their war history, with their heritage and with their present desperation.
I know how long night is. Laid through enough of them. Wide awake. You sleep all day, you sleep enough, it do something to you. Don’t want to sleep then. And no place to go but a place in your head.
How can a human mind remain sane after decades of crippling pain and isolation? Either take refuge in a fictional world, an imaginary return to the original African culture that was enslaved and transplanted across the Atlantic, or seek escape in books and classic movies, a denial of the present in favour of a romanticized past. [ They don’t make movies like that no more. ]
Yet the real world keeps intruding even into the lives of these two pieces of driftwood, abandoned by society after they paid the price for the politicians and generals folly. One seeks release from endless strife, the other seeks penance for a tragic encounter with a girl from the real world. Can they help each other in some way or are they doomed to remain locked inside their own minds?
>>><<<>>><<<
One of the questions about human nature that interests me most is how people bear up under monstrous calamity, all the terrible things that can befall them, war, poverty, desperation. I know my father tried to deal with all those because I saw him try, again and again. I was exposed to these things early, and it instilled in me a strong belief in the resiliency of the human spirit.
This is my first novel from Larry Brown, and I was devastated by the emotional load it carries. It its condemnation of war and of a society that tried to sweep the cost in lives and sanity under the rug, hiding the worst cases away from the public view, the novel stands proudly among the best in the genre. I was reminded in particular of Toni Morrison and James Sallis by the style of presentation and by the thematic. I was also inspired to re-watch the classic movie “Coming Home” with which it shares many similarities.
Highly recommended!
April 20, 2019
This is the kind of novel that is, on its surface, fairly simple. There are two Vietnam vets, seriously injured during the war, who find themselves in adjacent beds in a VA hospital. One is black, the other white, and through the length of one night, they share their stories with one another. However, what is exposed in the telling of the stories are the hearts of two men, and the heart is never a simple thing, is it?
Larry Brown, with the precision of a surgeon, cuts to all the things that matter the most in life: our concept of who we are, our families and our loves, our longings and disappointments, our ability to handle the things in life that are unfair and unjust, and our desire to hang on or let go of the world we know. He wraps them up in the fabric of war, the senselessness, the fear, the consequences, and then he asks what makes us alike or different.
This book is so powerful, it makes you shake. There is so much to pity, so much courage on display, and so much wisdom, bought at too high a price. But what makes it work completely and irrefutably is its honesty. You could walk into any VA hospital in the country and listen to the men there, and you might find Walter and Braiden, you might overhear any part of this conversation, because the earning of a purple heart is indeed dirty work that scars its recipient for life.
Larry Brown, with the precision of a surgeon, cuts to all the things that matter the most in life: our concept of who we are, our families and our loves, our longings and disappointments, our ability to handle the things in life that are unfair and unjust, and our desire to hang on or let go of the world we know. He wraps them up in the fabric of war, the senselessness, the fear, the consequences, and then he asks what makes us alike or different.
This book is so powerful, it makes you shake. There is so much to pity, so much courage on display, and so much wisdom, bought at too high a price. But what makes it work completely and irrefutably is its honesty. You could walk into any VA hospital in the country and listen to the men there, and you might find Walter and Braiden, you might overhear any part of this conversation, because the earning of a purple heart is indeed dirty work that scars its recipient for life.
February 12, 2022
“Yo ya he pagado mi precio. Tuve mala suerte, era negro, joven, pobre y me llamaron a filas. Pero yo creía en el Sueño Americano. Sirve a tu país, cumple con tu parte, regresa a casa y pasa a formar parte activa de la sociedad. ¿Sabes lo que iba a ser? Maestro de escuela. Sí. Me iba a sacar el título, tío, con la G.I. Bill iba a ir a la universidad. Habría hecho felíz a mi madre. Le iba a construir una casita porque ella nunca había tenido una propia. Nada más que malditas chabolas. Tenia que remendar las ventanas con plásticos…
[…]
Tío, ¿cómo sería este país si nos hubiesen traido aquí a nosotros? Pero eso es historia. No se puede cambiar. Es así.”
Después de haber leido Padre e Hijo y la colección de relatos Amor Feroz, no tengo ninguna duda de que Larry Brown es uno de los grandes escritores americanos, al más alto nivel. Estoy contenta porque todavía me quedan obras suyas por descubrir aunque es una pena que falleciera tan joven, a los cincuenta y pocos, teniendo en cuenta lo que podría haber seguido creando, sin embargo alegrémonos porque ahí están sus obras a descubrir.
Trabajo Sucio fue su primera novela y a priori no parece una novela de un autor novel por la sabiduria del texto y por la forma en que su estilo va directo a la yugular del lector. En Larry Brown no hay nada impostado ni soterrado, es directo y tremendamente honesto en lo que cuenta y en la manera en que nos muestra a sus personajes, aunque no por eso se puede decir que es menos complejo lo que nos está contando, todo lo contrario: los temas que aborda, los conflictos de sus personajes no son nada fáciles pero el lector los capta enseguida por esa honestidad en la escritura de Larry Brown.
“-¿Desearías estar muerto?- le pregunté. Mantuve la cerveza oculta entre las sábanas y le miré directamente a los ojos. Ardían.
- Cada minuto que pasa – me respondió.
Me lo temía.”
La novela transcurre en un intermedio entre un dia y una noche en la que dos personajes se encuentran en un hospital de veteranos de guerra: Braiden es afroameriano y lleva veinte años ingresado en el hospital a consecuencia de las heridas de la guerra del Vietnam, y Walter James es blanco y ha sufrido unas horribles heridas en un accidente del que apenas recuerda nada. Durante este intervalo de tiempo que puede parecer corto, pero que sin embargo es más que suficiente para que estos dos personajes se conozcan, entre tragos de cerveza y recuerdos del pasado, salen a la luz los miedos, los anhelos y los traumas que estos dos hombres han sufrido y que en unas páginas a flor de piel, Larry Brown convierte en una experiencia muy íntima. No he leído mucha literatura en torno a la guerra del Vietnam pero leyendo Trabajo Sucio me queda muy claro el tormento que tuvo que ser vivir la guerra desde dentro, desde lo más intimo del ser humano, que es cómo Brown nos acerca a la historia. Walter y Braiden comparten su infancia, su pasado y sus recuerdos más íntimos contraponiéndolos a la experiencia posterior en la guerra, con lo cual lo que le sale a Larry Brown es una novela antibélica muy intimísta, por muy raro que esto pueda suponer.
Larry Brown por tanto nos habla de la Guerra del Vietnam pero desde dentro, que es de verdad lo que impacta, dejándose la piel a la hora de exponer a estos dos hombres frente a nosotros: a diferencia de Padre e Hijo no hay una violencia extrema, pero sí que hay una violencia emocional de dos hombres que construyen una relación a costa de ese sufrimiento que llevan como una mochila incrustada. Una novela magnífica de un autor muy grande. La traducción es de Javier Lucini.
“Tú me has sido enviado, Walter. Me has sido enviado y no se me va a negar.”
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2022...
[…]
Tío, ¿cómo sería este país si nos hubiesen traido aquí a nosotros? Pero eso es historia. No se puede cambiar. Es así.”
Después de haber leido Padre e Hijo y la colección de relatos Amor Feroz, no tengo ninguna duda de que Larry Brown es uno de los grandes escritores americanos, al más alto nivel. Estoy contenta porque todavía me quedan obras suyas por descubrir aunque es una pena que falleciera tan joven, a los cincuenta y pocos, teniendo en cuenta lo que podría haber seguido creando, sin embargo alegrémonos porque ahí están sus obras a descubrir.
Trabajo Sucio fue su primera novela y a priori no parece una novela de un autor novel por la sabiduria del texto y por la forma en que su estilo va directo a la yugular del lector. En Larry Brown no hay nada impostado ni soterrado, es directo y tremendamente honesto en lo que cuenta y en la manera en que nos muestra a sus personajes, aunque no por eso se puede decir que es menos complejo lo que nos está contando, todo lo contrario: los temas que aborda, los conflictos de sus personajes no son nada fáciles pero el lector los capta enseguida por esa honestidad en la escritura de Larry Brown.
“-¿Desearías estar muerto?- le pregunté. Mantuve la cerveza oculta entre las sábanas y le miré directamente a los ojos. Ardían.
- Cada minuto que pasa – me respondió.
Me lo temía.”
La novela transcurre en un intermedio entre un dia y una noche en la que dos personajes se encuentran en un hospital de veteranos de guerra: Braiden es afroameriano y lleva veinte años ingresado en el hospital a consecuencia de las heridas de la guerra del Vietnam, y Walter James es blanco y ha sufrido unas horribles heridas en un accidente del que apenas recuerda nada. Durante este intervalo de tiempo que puede parecer corto, pero que sin embargo es más que suficiente para que estos dos personajes se conozcan, entre tragos de cerveza y recuerdos del pasado, salen a la luz los miedos, los anhelos y los traumas que estos dos hombres han sufrido y que en unas páginas a flor de piel, Larry Brown convierte en una experiencia muy íntima. No he leído mucha literatura en torno a la guerra del Vietnam pero leyendo Trabajo Sucio me queda muy claro el tormento que tuvo que ser vivir la guerra desde dentro, desde lo más intimo del ser humano, que es cómo Brown nos acerca a la historia. Walter y Braiden comparten su infancia, su pasado y sus recuerdos más íntimos contraponiéndolos a la experiencia posterior en la guerra, con lo cual lo que le sale a Larry Brown es una novela antibélica muy intimísta, por muy raro que esto pueda suponer.
Larry Brown por tanto nos habla de la Guerra del Vietnam pero desde dentro, que es de verdad lo que impacta, dejándose la piel a la hora de exponer a estos dos hombres frente a nosotros: a diferencia de Padre e Hijo no hay una violencia extrema, pero sí que hay una violencia emocional de dos hombres que construyen una relación a costa de ese sufrimiento que llevan como una mochila incrustada. Una novela magnífica de un autor muy grande. La traducción es de Javier Lucini.
“Tú me has sido enviado, Walter. Me has sido enviado y no se me va a negar.”
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2022...
December 8, 2013
Walter & Beth with their web of scars I'll not soon forget. Braiden dreaming of lions, crocs and Jesus. Diva ghosting in and out like an angel.
This is one of those novels that gets you at the end in a way you don't expect.
Maybe because the dialogue moves so fast but sinks in Mississippi slow and languid right up until that knife blow: Matt Monroe'd one inch from the heart and left hurting for these characters.
Not just the war-torn ones but the others as well all wanting to come home from something unimaginably destructive.
This is one of those novels that gets you at the end in a way you don't expect.
Maybe because the dialogue moves so fast but sinks in Mississippi slow and languid right up until that knife blow: Matt Monroe'd one inch from the heart and left hurting for these characters.
Not just the war-torn ones but the others as well all wanting to come home from something unimaginably destructive.
November 7, 2019
This book leaves you with flashbacks: wet, dying in a cold, wet field. Helpless. The sound of choppers. Lying in a hospital bed, helpless. No way out. Perpetual hell. Drowning, passed out. Cold. Wet. Nothing warm or soft or dry anywhere. Helpless.
Two vets share a room in a VA Hospital. They talk. They think. Larry Brown's prose is more like poetry and as free as dreams. Yet there is no problem following it, and I can easily imagine this being played on stage by actors without changing a thing and merely adding light cues. The dialogue is that perfect. The train of disconnected time that organic.
I often wonder why I'm okay. Recently I realized that just before falling asleep, I'll often dredge up some thought of something that once almost happened and it's so real to me that my adrenal glands release. Last week it suddenly hit me that I have a mild phobia about near misses—things that could have killed me, but somehow I escaped unscathed. This book is all my worst near misses not missed. The writing is astounding.
Two vets share a room in a VA Hospital. They talk. They think. Larry Brown's prose is more like poetry and as free as dreams. Yet there is no problem following it, and I can easily imagine this being played on stage by actors without changing a thing and merely adding light cues. The dialogue is that perfect. The train of disconnected time that organic.
I often wonder why I'm okay. Recently I realized that just before falling asleep, I'll often dredge up some thought of something that once almost happened and it's so real to me that my adrenal glands release. Last week it suddenly hit me that I have a mild phobia about near misses—things that could have killed me, but somehow I escaped unscathed. This book is all my worst near misses not missed. The writing is astounding.
March 9, 2025
REREAD: January 2025
This was Larry Brown's first novel and the first of his that I read even before joining Goodreads. I went on to read all of his novels and enjoyed each and other one of them. But as good as they are I never read one that touched me to the degree that this one did. It is a powerful and well-written book.
This was Larry Brown's first novel and the first of his that I read even before joining Goodreads. I went on to read all of his novels and enjoyed each and other one of them. But as good as they are I never read one that touched me to the degree that this one did. It is a powerful and well-written book.
July 16, 2018
This is the best anti-war novel I have read, right up there with _All Quiet on the Western Front_ and _Johnny got His Gun_. The story alludes stronger to the latter book, for there are two characters, both grievously wounded in Vietnam, lying in adjoining beds in a military hospital. That was where Johnny—what was left of him--lay when he requested permission to dictate what he did in the war. Permission denied. The novel was censored itself-- too demoralizing.
One, Braiden, is black, and the other , Walter, is a poor white. You should read this great work but it won’t be easy. I won’t describe the physical condition of Braiden and Walter; Larry Brown does too good a job to even try. In _Dirty Work_, both men assert themselves in a way that shows their love for each other. “Jesus loves you,” says Braiden, who had already had a vision of angels and of God. It’s a stunning overcoming of vulnerability beyond and above the culture that makes Jesus weep—and of the “value” system of 70s America . Both are poor, from the rural South, uneducated (make that: they had not been “schooled”) and therefore had no defense against the draft
Since he was born in America and saw the Vietnam carnage, Braiden “has to cry for all them wasted lives, man, all them boys I loaded up like they loaded me up.” Walter remembers a funeral his father took him to. The old women whose choral singing made the hair stand up on his head. He could hear every one of them individually and if one of them was not there, the choral sound would be somehow lessened.
Contrast that to Walter’s basic training.. The Drill Sergeant had Walter’s platoon screaming thank you, Sir “like some disciplined herd of animals .” At the end, DI told them “Don’t die for your country. Make that M-F die for his!” Now that’s tough.
The characters and style of _Dirty Work_ classify it as an example of Country, or Redneck, noir. Some writers in addition to Brown are Larry Fondation, Vicki Hendrix, Rusty Barnes, Harry Crews, Eric Miles Williamson, Daniel Woodrell. I think the intense and distinctly American creativity of this body of work is connected to its understanding of vulnerability, a sense of community, injured self-respect, a need for adventure, and a built crap detector that makes consumer culture a kind of living death to them.
One, Braiden, is black, and the other , Walter, is a poor white. You should read this great work but it won’t be easy. I won’t describe the physical condition of Braiden and Walter; Larry Brown does too good a job to even try. In _Dirty Work_, both men assert themselves in a way that shows their love for each other. “Jesus loves you,” says Braiden, who had already had a vision of angels and of God. It’s a stunning overcoming of vulnerability beyond and above the culture that makes Jesus weep—and of the “value” system of 70s America . Both are poor, from the rural South, uneducated (make that: they had not been “schooled”) and therefore had no defense against the draft
Since he was born in America and saw the Vietnam carnage, Braiden “has to cry for all them wasted lives, man, all them boys I loaded up like they loaded me up.” Walter remembers a funeral his father took him to. The old women whose choral singing made the hair stand up on his head. He could hear every one of them individually and if one of them was not there, the choral sound would be somehow lessened.
Contrast that to Walter’s basic training.. The Drill Sergeant had Walter’s platoon screaming thank you, Sir “like some disciplined herd of animals .” At the end, DI told them “Don’t die for your country. Make that M-F die for his!” Now that’s tough.
The characters and style of _Dirty Work_ classify it as an example of Country, or Redneck, noir. Some writers in addition to Brown are Larry Fondation, Vicki Hendrix, Rusty Barnes, Harry Crews, Eric Miles Williamson, Daniel Woodrell. I think the intense and distinctly American creativity of this body of work is connected to its understanding of vulnerability, a sense of community, injured self-respect, a need for adventure, and a built crap detector that makes consumer culture a kind of living death to them.
November 26, 2014
This is an unusual format that, at times, reads like separate monologues. It reminded me a little of Stephen King's Delores Claiborne, not the story itself, but the mode of storytelling.
The tragic tale of two American vets who have both been scarred emotionally and physically, Dirty Work is brutally honest, yet beautifully written. At the end of the edition I read, there is an interview with Brown, who has since passed away. He is speaking to some of his critics, and I think the excerpt below summarizes what I love about this particular genre and this particular author and others like him.
Some people find Southern Gothic Fiction to be dark, depressing, and an all-around downer. I find the glimpse into the darkest corners of our hearts and our minds--the chance to confront the worst of our human nature, the monster within, incredibly empowering. Dirty Work, indeed.
The tragic tale of two American vets who have both been scarred emotionally and physically, Dirty Work is brutally honest, yet beautifully written. At the end of the edition I read, there is an interview with Brown, who has since passed away. He is speaking to some of his critics, and I think the excerpt below summarizes what I love about this particular genre and this particular author and others like him.
As a writer, it bothers me to be accused of brutality, of cruelty, of hardheartedness, of lack of compassion. Only few reviewers of my work have lodged these complaints. But more than a few seem to register a certain uneasy feeling, and I wonder if this is because I make them look a little too deeply into my characters' lives. Maybe I make them know more than they want to about the poor, or the unfortunate, or the alcoholic. But a sensible writer writes what he or she knows best, and draws on the material that's closest, and the lives that are observed. I try to write as close as I can to the heart of the matter. I write out of experience and imagination, toward blind faith and hope.
Some people find Southern Gothic Fiction to be dark, depressing, and an all-around downer. I find the glimpse into the darkest corners of our hearts and our minds--the chance to confront the worst of our human nature, the monster within, incredibly empowering. Dirty Work, indeed.
June 28, 2019
I read a long time ago but have very distinct memories of this as one of the most significant reading experiences of my life. Will reconstruct a review some day.
February 26, 2016
gut wrenching and tragic, two vietnam vets (usa vets) one white one black, talk back and forth in their sick beds, being wounded. a lit premise that perhaps has been done too many times, and sadly, never enough, as we keep making these situations over and over and over again. if in some twisted way one thinks war and violence is justified for the greater good, this book could disabuse one of that notion. the treasures we spend, we could spend in a different way?
dirty work has been compared, and rightly, with a classic anit-war/wounded warrior award trumbo novel Johnny Got His Gun and to me, reminded more so of this 2015 french novel of wwi The Great Swindle but what does it matter? it's the same fucking story. tragedy and brokenness and devastation no matter what we tell ourselves of our righteousness
author larry brown has such a stunning and wonderful and tragic story himself, he is a wonder and a miracle in himself
dirty work has been compared, and rightly, with a classic anit-war/wounded warrior award trumbo novel Johnny Got His Gun and to me, reminded more so of this 2015 french novel of wwi The Great Swindle but what does it matter? it's the same fucking story. tragedy and brokenness and devastation no matter what we tell ourselves of our righteousness
author larry brown has such a stunning and wonderful and tragic story himself, he is a wonder and a miracle in himself
April 3, 2017
Full review to follow.
July 11, 2017
Great book but not for everyone. This is a horror story told softly. What would it be like to be trapped in a VA hospital with all your limbs missing, year after year? Larry Brown was a great writer.
September 13, 2008
For background music I recommend the song Over Jordan by Papa M.
Larry Brown explained during a talk given at the Fifth Biennial Conference on Southern Literature, "One of the questions about human nature that interests me most is how people bear up under monstrous calamity..."
Here he writes with gut wrenching tenderness about broken bodies and how gaps of loneliness are cauterized with fantasy, faith, beer, weed, and fellow broken travelers marching down the road to eternity.
Over arching is a vast sadness of poverty, racism, war, and freak tragedy. But I'm trying to figure out why this book is not depressing me. I think because it's a good story.
Also, I never came across the term Legging Down before. Nice.
Hold it. I think I feel like crying.
November 12, 2008
powerful, powerful shit. The world has been granite-hard on us poor for eternity, and the crisp descriptive dialect in this short novel nails it.
April 28, 2017
Sad and well written. Personality dominates. Others have said it better than I could.
The more modern the war, the more survivors live with worse and worse physical handicaps.
The more modern the war, the more survivors live with worse and worse physical handicaps.
April 4, 2019
Awesome story of two Vietnam combat veterans in a VA Hospital. This novel
addresses some deep questions. Heart-rending, really.
addresses some deep questions. Heart-rending, really.
March 6, 2022
Vaya delicia, corriendo a comprar más libros de Dirty Works.
November 16, 2012
I guess that stories about the personal after-effects of the Vietnam War are not my thing, at least not this type of story. Maybe it's because stories such as Dirty Work require the reader to develop deep sympathetic feelings for the main characters. In fact, the impact of the ending of Dirty Work will be proportional to the sympathy felt for the two main characters and every part of this story is geared towards developing those sympathetic feelings.
From my perspective, a soldier that comes home as a victim of war is a tragic thing but wallowing in ones own tragedy for years without end is a bit annoying. Does it happen? Yes, but life is so full of opportunities that to focus on only one, the opportunity to forever remain a victim, seems pointless. Brown captures this meaningless existence perfectly, describes the mental distractions that are used to make this type of existence endurable, and serves up an ending consistent with each character’s individual path towards self-destruction.
And there lies the best part of this book in that the writing was outstanding. I enjoy writers that capture the heart of an instant with every sentence. Brown not only accomplishes this with the words he uses, but also with the structure of the book itself. He strategically uses the length of chapters to emphasize their importance as well as the movement of time. The setting is also expertly minimized such that the characters and their lives are the singular focus in the here-and-now.
I’m not yet done with Brown. I’m just done with Dirty Work.
From my perspective, a soldier that comes home as a victim of war is a tragic thing but wallowing in ones own tragedy for years without end is a bit annoying. Does it happen? Yes, but life is so full of opportunities that to focus on only one, the opportunity to forever remain a victim, seems pointless. Brown captures this meaningless existence perfectly, describes the mental distractions that are used to make this type of existence endurable, and serves up an ending consistent with each character’s individual path towards self-destruction.
And there lies the best part of this book in that the writing was outstanding. I enjoy writers that capture the heart of an instant with every sentence. Brown not only accomplishes this with the words he uses, but also with the structure of the book itself. He strategically uses the length of chapters to emphasize their importance as well as the movement of time. The setting is also expertly minimized such that the characters and their lives are the singular focus in the here-and-now.
I’m not yet done with Brown. I’m just done with Dirty Work.
Read
August 27, 2018At a conference on Southern Literature, Mississippi born Larry Brown stated that, “ [what] interests me most is how people bear up under monstrous calamity”.
The Idea of 'monstrous calamity' looms like a sentry gun throughout Dirty Work. The story follows two physically and emotionally broken men, each from Mississippi, one black, one white, laid up alongside each other in a southern VA hospital. Both men fought in Vietnam twenty years previous, and as a result have been inured to violence and left completely ravaged by both their memories and the physical trauma each received. Each have found their own ways to attempt to deal with their fractured existence, through alcohol, dope, lucid fantasies of tribal Africa and some starkly frank late-night conversations with Christ.
The format sees the two men essentially trade monologues of gut wrenching candour on their poverty-stricken, southern rural upbringing, some nightmarish accounts of the jungle-black hellscapes which haunt them both and their subsequent adjustment (or lack there-of) to American society after the war.
The entire story takes place over less than two days in hospital ward and yet the frankness of the protagonists makes for a localized, yet piercing reminder of the reverberations engendered by a society completely unable to cope when its most damaged members return home. Dirty Work is an unyielding and emotional novel and one which stays with the reader long after the dawn finally breaks on our damaged heroes.
November 29, 2015
Two Vietnam vets in a ward, many years after the war. One with no limbs. One with a blown apart face. They're unlikely friends, placed next to each other on a long night of getting wasted, smoking weed, telling literal war stories and stories from their sorrowful past of growing up poor and without options in rural Mississippi.
The writing is occasionally transcendent but in the same way you might be lifted off a barstool and taken on a flight around the ceiling of a tavern.
Dirty Work is a book of limited imagination, but pure grit and woe that focuses in on where humanity fails and where it might do a better job if it somehow learns from the mistakes of its fathers.
The characters in Dirty Work are doomed to repeat a cycle that could have been predicted from the lives of their predecessors and sometimes, the 'life doesn't have a code' sentimentality is so big it looms like some obscene mountain in the distance of the cotton fields the main characters were sentenced to as children.
Murder. War. Tough luck. Fleeting love. Religion as a coping mechanism ... Dirty Work is a strong book.
It doesn't take total flight or shake off its everyman roots though and enter into the stuff of elevated art, but I'm cool with that.
This book is a true thing.
There was only one part that was too corny to handle but I'll give it a free pass because I liked the writing.
The writing is occasionally transcendent but in the same way you might be lifted off a barstool and taken on a flight around the ceiling of a tavern.
Dirty Work is a book of limited imagination, but pure grit and woe that focuses in on where humanity fails and where it might do a better job if it somehow learns from the mistakes of its fathers.
The characters in Dirty Work are doomed to repeat a cycle that could have been predicted from the lives of their predecessors and sometimes, the 'life doesn't have a code' sentimentality is so big it looms like some obscene mountain in the distance of the cotton fields the main characters were sentenced to as children.
Murder. War. Tough luck. Fleeting love. Religion as a coping mechanism ... Dirty Work is a strong book.
It doesn't take total flight or shake off its everyman roots though and enter into the stuff of elevated art, but I'm cool with that.
This book is a true thing.
There was only one part that was too corny to handle but I'll give it a free pass because I liked the writing.
January 21, 2015
I hadn't heard of Larry Brown until recently when I was watching the film 'Joe' and saw that he was the author of the novel on which the film was based and because i really enjoyed the film i thought I would give some of his books a try.
I've no idea if 'Dirty Work' is the best place to start or how it compares to the rest of his novels but I really enjoyed it. It tells the story of two Vietnam vets who share a VA hospital ward over the course of a day and a night. Braidan is black and has lost both his arms and legs and has been bedridden for 22 years, since receiving his injuries, while Walter is white and was shot in the head and his face is severely disfigured but has managed to live a life of sorts but suffers from blackouts. Over the course of the novel we hear of both men's lives and loves prior to and since their dibilitating injuries. Braidan hatches a plan but needs Walters help but will he be able to persuade him to participate ? This is the main crux of the novel and I found that the story built to a truly gripping finale in which I found I couldn't put the book down until I reached the conclusion.
I may not have previously heard of Larry Brown but I do now and I'm going to make sure I read all his novels if they are going to be as good as 'Dirty Work'.
I've no idea if 'Dirty Work' is the best place to start or how it compares to the rest of his novels but I really enjoyed it. It tells the story of two Vietnam vets who share a VA hospital ward over the course of a day and a night. Braidan is black and has lost both his arms and legs and has been bedridden for 22 years, since receiving his injuries, while Walter is white and was shot in the head and his face is severely disfigured but has managed to live a life of sorts but suffers from blackouts. Over the course of the novel we hear of both men's lives and loves prior to and since their dibilitating injuries. Braidan hatches a plan but needs Walters help but will he be able to persuade him to participate ? This is the main crux of the novel and I found that the story built to a truly gripping finale in which I found I couldn't put the book down until I reached the conclusion.
I may not have previously heard of Larry Brown but I do now and I'm going to make sure I read all his novels if they are going to be as good as 'Dirty Work'.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 244 reviews