Soi was younger and read A Feast Of Snakes and it's funny I forgot about it until this past year when a friend of mine gave me a signed first of Body for a birthday present. Holy shit, I loved that book. I love his writing style and i went onto amazon to see whats up about this guy i had no idea he had so many pieces so I just ordered the Harry Crews reader Any other fans in here and if so what are your favorite books by the man? I'm lacking direction. Haha
You picked up Classic Crews? That has my favorite ones in there, Car and The Gypsy's Curse, (A Childhood has some of the most beautiful sections of his writing as aswell.) So, like, the whole thing is amazing.
I haven't read Body yet, looking really forward to reading that and Karate Is a Thing of the Spirit, a couple of his books are pretty hard to find at reasonable prices.
Harry Crews is great! I've read a few of his books.
- A Feast of Snakes
- The Mulching of America
- Scar Lover
I loved all three of them.
I also have Celebration sitting on my shelf waiting to be read.
@Pete, read Body, man.
That'll go onto my wishlist. It's been a long time since I've read anything by him. Kinda forgot I liked him until you mentioned him here.
Renfield, awesome video, and looks like an amazing documentary series: The Rough South of Harry Crews. "His first story was returned with the suggestion that he should burn it." Commentary by Larry Brown. Great thread guys. Haven't read Crews yet, but I will.
Speaking of Larry Brown - he's an amazing writer. And I always lump him together with Crews for some reason. Southern writing? Their styles are similar, but Brown usually writes much longer stuff. Check out Father and Son by him and you won't be disappointed. That's some hard hitting writing!
I'm a huge Larry Brown fan. It's crazy how you can get holes on your bookshelf--I have nearly all of Brown, but didn't know anything about Crews (especially me being a Floridian). Larry Brown's short story "92 Days" from the collection Big Bad Love is one of my all time favorites, and the best story I've ever read about the struggles of becoming a writer, sending out your work, etc.
Just watched all the videos in The Rough South of Harry Crews documentary. Awesome stuff. Can't even imagine what a trip his classes must have been at UF. Saving the Rough South of Larry Brown for later in the week. Growing up in the south and now living in Tokyo, you can imagine what a homecoming it feels to watch these things, to hear the accents of Crews, or Flannery O'connor in the thread a while back...
In the collected interviews in Getting Naked with Harry Crews there's a particular interview between Crews and Sterling Watson, another big fiction professor here in FL (Eckerd college, he was Dennis Lehane's mentor,) and it's one of those jaw dropping interviews that makes you rethink fiction, then life, entirely. Like what you get with a few of Paris Review's Art of Fiction interviews or anytime Ray Bradbury talks, it's life affirming.
I'll look for that. I saw Lehane by chance at a BN when he was promoting The Given Day, and I remember his speaking of his time at Eckerd, and thinking I'd briefly considered going there (for non-writing reasons).
Unfortunately I didn't know I wanted to write till I was halfway through school. We also have Robert Olen Butler at FSU. It would seem hard to find a school in FL without a big time writer, but I somehow managed to do it (3 times...)
And a short piece from the maker of The Rough South of Harry Crews if anyone's interested:
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/05/24/reconstructing-harry-crews/
Like the bit about the mohawk.
