Work
Brown's first novel, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery (1994), received broad critical acclaim. In the New York Times, Margo Jefferson praised the books "seductive rhythmic murmur" In The Los Angeles Times, Charles Solomon noted the writer's "great sensitivity.". Reviewing the book for the Chicago Tribune, Charles Larson called the book a "triumph...much of its magnificence is the result of the author's decision to create imaginative voices other than his own," concluding "John Gregory Brown is both the beneficiary of and a worthy successor to our finest Southern writers." The novel received both the 1994 Lillian Smith Book Award and the United Kingdom's 1996 Steinbeck Award, for the year's best novel by a writer under forty years of age.
The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur, Brown's second book, was published in 1996. The Los Angeles Times called the novel "John Gregory Brown's gift of grace to us," and the Dallas Morning News wrote, "John Gregory Brown is a strong new voice in American—not just Southern—fiction, and his work deserves the widest possible audience.
Reviewing Brown's third novel, Audubon's Watch (2002), in the New York Times, novelist Stewart O'Nan praised Brown's "ambition and achievement," concluding, "This is a brazen performance that few authors would have the skill or the courage to risk." The novel received the 2002 Louisiana Endowment for The Humanities Award.
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Famous quotes containing the word work:
“There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: “More money for more work.””
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“It seemed pathetic and terrible to me and it still does, that men and women work eight hours a day at jobs that bring them no joy, no reward save a few dollars.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)