A Faithful but Melancholy Account of Several Barbarities Lately Committed w/ Jason Brown

A reading, discussion, and book signing with author Jason Brown.

About the Book

The ten linked stories in Jason Brown’s new collection, A Faithful but Melancholy Account of Several Barbarities Recently Committed (TMR Books, December 2019), follow John Howland and his descendants as they struggle with their New England legacy as one of the country’s founding families and the decaying trappings of that esteemed past. Set on the Maine coast, where the Howland family has lived for almost 400 years, the grandfather, John Howland, lives in a fantasy that still places him at the center of the world. The next generation resides in the confused ruins of the 1960s rebellion, while many in the third generation scatter in search of new identities. Brown’s touching, humorous portrait of a great family in decline earns him a place among the best linked-story collections—James Joyce’s Dubliners, Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, Alice Munro’s Beggar Maid, and Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son.

About the Author

Jason Brown grew up in Maine. He was a Stegner Fellow and Truman Capote Fellow at Stanford and now teaches in the MFA program at the University of Oregon. His stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s, Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, NPR’s Selected Shorts, and other places. He has published two story collections, Driving the Heart (1999) and Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work (2007).

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