James Brown has had a long hard road; 
one that he faces head on in his memoir, The Los Angeles Diaries. I was fortunate enough to have James as a professor for one of my undergraduate creative writing classes. That same quarter I had the opportunity to hear him read an excerpt from his newest book, This River, which is, in some ways, a sequel to Los Angles Diaries. It maintains the same quiet integrity, but it gives us the opportunity to revisit some of the previous experiences with a new perspective. We are brought in to see, not the development of a character, but the development of a man.
Here is what Robert Olmstead, author of the national bestseller Coal Black Horse and winner of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award had to say about This River:
“As I was reading James Brown’s new book, This River, I thought, I did not know anybody wrote like this anymore. At any moment, my breath shortening, I thought the page would combust and explode in my hands. Not just for what I was being told, but also for the way of the telling, for how tightly crafted, limpid, economical the sentences. The way they build power and come from beneath, the way they disappear inside your mind and become your mind in seamless transport.
There are few artists who have loitered at the gates of hell and maintained their craft. Few artists who have given in to the demons and returned to tell about it. The journey empties them and the demons destroy them and what they have learned and we need to know is forever lost to 
us. Well, here is one of them where that is not so.
I am immediately reminded of William Styron’s Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness and John Berryman’s Recovery. Both are famous and important books, but neither is so self-lacerating, so honest, so truthful as Jim’s book. Neither demands so much of the reader and knows the reader is willing for the more and not the less. Neither is so inside out. Neither gives so much and gives again.
Sometimes a way to gauge the quality of a creation is to think about what it took, what was overcome, what price it extracted. In this case, the proof is in your hands. This River is raw and palpable and beats like a heart. Brown gave everything he had: infinite strength, exacting discipline, fearsome courage…When you put this book down, trust me, you will think about it for a long time.”
I have no doubt that Mr. Olmstead is right in every respect. I only have the twenty odd pages of This River that James read from at CSUSB, but even that excerpt resonates with me in a way unlike anything else I have read. Nearly a year later, the images are still clear, the emotion still visceral, and his voice still present, steady, and sincere. I highly recommend picking up The Los Angeles Diaries and though I have only ready the excerpt from This River, I am certain that the whole will live up to its part.
