This River: A Memoir

James Brown
Counterpoint (2011)
ISBN 9781582437217
Reviewed by Joseph Yurt for Reader Views (3/11)

 

“We have ruined marriages, mine through drinking and using, hers (his mother) over the compulsion for money, and our separate paths both leave behind a long line of wounded. We are the last of a troubled family, and when our day comes, I pray the legacy ends with us.” - James Brown, “The River: A Memoir.

As a writer, James Brown has been referred to as “authentic” and a “truth teller.” In “The River: A Memoir,” the author’s sequel to the highly acclaimed “Los Angeles Diaries,” Some readers may just find the truth to be fathomless and unbelievable. As for this reader, I can attest to the authenticity of Brown’s “truth” about alcohol abuse.

Beginning where “Los Angeles Diaries” left off, Brown weaves together a series of connected narratives that provide insight into his past and recount his continuing, tireless struggles with alcohol, drugs melancholia, and the medications intended to treat his conditions. He writes openly, seemingly without holding anything back, about the psychological and physical wreckage he has sustained. He shares details of his relationship with his wife, his efforts to become a better father, his always and forever, tenuous link to sobriety and the ever present fear of yet another devastating relapse.

Even after finishing “The River: A Memoir”, you won’t really be finished. Passages like this one will likely resurface in your head for a long time: “…as they drive away from this hospital for the disturbed, he’ll look out the window. In it, he will glimpse the reflection of a hopeful man firmly determined to stay sober. In it, he will also glimpse what is burrowed deep inside his other self, the alcoholic, the addict, always waiting to reemerge.”

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