All Over but the Shoutin' (Random House Large Print (Paper)) | 
| Author: Rick Bragg
Publisher: Random House Large Print
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  294 reviews
Sales Rank: 626580
Format: Large Print
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 0676529186
Dewey Decimal Number: 070.92
EAN: 9780679774426
ASIN: 0679774424
Publication Date: August 26, 1997
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Amazon.com
One reason Rick Bragg won a Pulitzer Prize for his feature articles at the New York Times is that he never forgets his roots. When he writes about death and violence in urban slums, Bragg draws on firsthand knowledge of how poverty deforms lives and on his personal belief in the dignity of poor people. His memoir of a hardscrabble Southern youth pays moving tribute to his indomitable mother and struggles to forgive his drunken father. All Over but the Shoutin' is beautifully achieved on both these counts--and many more.
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"Rick Bragg writes like a man on fire.And All Over But The Shoutin' is a work of art.While reading this book, I feel in love with Rick Bragg's mother, Margaret Bragg, a hundred times.I felt like I was reading one of the prophets in the Old Testament when reading parts of this book.I thought of Melville, I thought of Faulkner.Because I love the English language , I knew I was reading one of the best books I've ever read.By explaining his life to the world, Rick Bragg explained part of my life to me.You feel things in every line this man writes.His sentences bleed on you.I wept when the book ended.I never met Rick Bragg in my life, but I called him up and told him he'd written a masterpiece, and I sent flowers to his mother."--Pat Conroy
A haunting memoir about growing up dirt-poor in the Alabama hills--and about moving on but never really being able to leave.
The extraordinary gifts for evocation and insight and the stunning talent for story- telling that earned Rick Bragg a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996 are here brought to bear on the wrenching story of his own family's life. It is the story of a war-haunted, hard-drinking father and a strong-willed, loving mother who struggled to protect her sons from the effects of poverty and ignorance that had constricted her own life. It is the story of the life Bragg was able to carve out for himself on the strength of his mother's encouragement and belief. And it is the story of his attempts to both atone for and avenge the mistakes and cruelties of his past.
All Over but the Shoutin' is a gripping account of people struggling to make sense and solidity of life's capricious promises. A classic piece of Americana, it is made vividly, movingly particular by Rick Bragg's searching vision, generous humor, and richly nuanced voice.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 289 more reviews...
 Wonderfully Written Book July 23, 2008
This is one of the best well-written books I've read in a long time. His powerful story of a ragged, poverty-filled childhood with an abusive, neglectful, alcoholic father is very compellingly told.
Bragg's focus is on his strong and yet victimized mother. The only nagging thing that bothered me is Bragg's adulation of his mother to the point that he neglects the fact that she bears some responsibility for continually going back to the loser and exposing the kids to the financial and emotional depravation that occurred.
I will read his other books because the writing is so crisp and clean.
 failed revenge July 15, 2008
In this first volume of his trilogy of family memoir, Rick Bragg (b. 1959) takes us to rural Alabama's deep south, and through his deft story-telling introduces us to his people and their ways. With Shoutin' and his two subsequent bestsellers, Ava's Man (2001) about his maternal grandfather and The Prince of Frogtown (2008) about his father, Bragg has earned an avid readership. It's easy to see why. His family of origin epitomized the poorest of poor white trash. His grandfather could neither read nor write, his grandmother dipped snuff, they picked the banjo, danced a jig, cussed like sailors, drank their homemade moonshine like it was water, and brawled at the slightest insult to defend "honor." Bragg spent one semester in college, then started writing, first high school sports, local stories, anything. In 1993 he won a prestigious Nieman fellowship as a journalist to spend a year at Harvard, and in 1996 he won a Pulitzer for feature writing at the New York Times.
Shoutin' works well at many levels, but it's especially about embracing one's family with all its blessings and curses. Bragg introduces us to his violent alcoholic father who repeatedly abandoned his family until his early death at age forty-one, his two brothers, and most of all to his mother Margaret. In his telling, she's a hero's hero. She was effectively a single mother who raised three boys in destitute circumstances. She picked cotton and did other people's laundry at night, swallowed her pride and accepted welfare, and slept on the sofa in their tiny shack. His chapter on taking her to New York City for his Pulitzer award is worth the book alone. She had never been on a plane before and didn't own a suit case; for her few trips before then she stuffed her clothes in paper bags.
In an interview Bragg once described Shoutin' as a failed effort at revenge. His attitude toward his past is deeply ambivalent. On the one hand, he's deeply proud, as every person should be of their family. With brutal honesty he describes the angry chip he's carried on his shoulder about the endless putdowns and insults about his people. He'd prove the cultural snobs wrong, by God. On the other hand, his journey leaves rural Alabama as only a distant reflection in his rear view mirror as his professional reporting takes him around the world. The revenge he savored would come, he thought, when he finally saved enough money to buy his mother a real house for cash. And he did; it would be "a house of healing." But the day she moved in his two adult brothers brawled in the front yard, and his mother returned to her shack before settling in to the new house. And so, he admits, life and the power of place are far more complicated and rich. Bragg has now come full circle; today he teaches writing at The University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.
Destined to be a Southern classic ... ! July 14, 2008
Destined to be a Southern classic, Bragg's "All Over But the Shoutin'" rings true. It is not only a well-written, journalist's memoir, but offers readers who aren't from the South an insightful look at why Southern men often act as they do.
On the one hand the book is a rags-to-riches story about a poor white boy from the cotton fields of northeast Alabama who reads, works and writes his way out of poverty; from being a small-town sportwriter all the way up to to heading the Atlanta office the New York Times and winning the Pulitzer Prize. Like visiting with an old friend and having a glass of ice-tea and an all-afternoon, after-funeral conversation under the shade-tree in the back-yard back home, Bragg recounts his career via the Talladega Daily Home, the Anniston Star, the Birmingham News, the Miami Herald, the LA Times (very briefly), and the New York Times. Running throughout are stories and themes of: the homeless in the mean streets of Miami; the class-structure and deaths, rapes and tortures of Haiti (which he covered two or three times for the Miami paper and the NYT); his year at Harvard as a Nieman Fellow; covering Harlem and the violence experienced by the storeowners from robberies and murders; covering a tornado that hit on a Sunday morning near his hometown in 1994 (and the resulting shock to the faith of those who lost loved ones in a church that day); and, the 1994 Smith murders in Union, South Carolina and the Oklahoma City bombing.
That said, the real theme of the book is his love, concern and focus on his relationship with his mother back near Jacksonville, Alabama, his two brothers -- one older and one younger -- and, how to regard the life and his relationship with an abusive, hard-drinking and usually absent father. Having roots in the Sand Mountain area myself, I can attest to the fact that there must be something in the water (and moonshine) around there as meanness, drinking and sn snake-handling Sunday-morning gospel religion are "par-for-the-course." There's a tightrope facing folks around there trying to rise above their circumstances - it heads upward and, instead of a net, those who slip, fall into a hard life of factory-work, or worse yet, no work at all. Then, clutching for a Bible or the bottle -- and, sometimes both -- men and their families work like hell to survive.
This book will become a must-read for anyone interested in Southern area studies, Southern literature, or just understanding the Southern psyche. While we're all different, I have to admit that the "Southern man" I see throughout this book is similar to those of my own family, and men I've known all my life -- a different breed, with a hard, determined drive to succeed be it through books, muscle or whatever. And, as Bragg points out, though we're every bit as smart in our own way as well-schooled intellectuals, don't mess with the chip on our shoulders -- as that very well may bring out a bit of the rattlesnake that lurks in our dark side.
While not easy to read from cover-to-cover over a few days, it's a great book to place on the bedside table to read a few pages at a time.
The best insight of the Upland South written to date May 21, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I have never read, heard, seen a better picture of the South than that in the first five pages of this book. Not the Scarlett O'Hara fictional Old South, but the real red clay and hard rocky ground of the Upland where the overwhelming majority of people live.
This should be mandatory reading for anyone who trying to understand the current presidential election. You'll learn more about who these people are and why they do what they do than you will by listening to any political pundit or blogger.
It's also a great read. Bragg is a skilled and honest writer who is not afraid to show the whole picture, warts and all.
 I hated his writing style May 17, 2008
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
I bought this book based upon all the hundreds of positive reviews but almost instantly regretting the purchase. I found Mr. Bragg's writing style annoying. What works in a newspaper article doesn't seem to work for books. Mainly, I found the one liners coy (I think they were supposed to be zingers that put the chapter in perspective or gave it an ironic twist, or tried to overdramatize the chapter.) Whatever the reason, I hated the last lines of each chapter and felt they were smug and insulting. Really, please let me make my own emotional discovery at your words, don't insult me by forcing me to have the same emotional discovery you had when you wrote them.
Another annoying Mr. Bragg's has is another dramatic writers trick of starting many sentences with the same words. For example, the following string of sentences:
"He never said he was sorry.
He never said he wished things had turned out differently."
He never acted like he did anything wrong."
This trick is over used and jolts the reader out of the story. If you don't know what I mean, go to the library and read the prologue. Ugh.
Usually I stop reading a book that is this annoying but it was the only book available to me and I was stuck with it.
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