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This Thing Don't Lead to Heaven
Un nouvel inédit de Harry Crews !
Avec Les Portes de l'enfer , on retrouve toute la noirceur et l'humour légendaire de l'auteur de La Foire aux serpents .
Cumseh est une petite ville de Géorgie où il ne se passe jamais grand-chose. Hormis à la maison de retraite.C'est en effet dans cet établissement, tenu d'une main de fer par l'imposante Axel, que semblent s'être donné rendez-vous les personnalités les plus excentriques de la région.
Un jour, trois nouveaux arrivants en ville se retrouvent à la porte du " Club des seniors ", Sarah Nell Brownstein, une géante amoureuse du masseur nain de la maison de retraite, Bledsoe, représentant d'une entreprise de pompes funèbres, et Carlita Rojas Mundez, une adepte du vaudou.
Entre eux un drame va très vite se nouer et les précipiter dans une tragi-comédie aussi déchirante qu'irrésistible.
Avec ce roman court, dont l'action est concentrée sur 24 heures, Harry Crews s'attaque à tous les tabous de la vieillesse : abandon, solitude, misère sexuelle, etc., et nous offre un tableau poignant et sans concessions de la condition humaine.
Avec Les Portes de l'enfer , on retrouve toute la noirceur et l'humour légendaire de l'auteur de La Foire aux serpents .
Cumseh est une petite ville de Géorgie où il ne se passe jamais grand-chose. Hormis à la maison de retraite.C'est en effet dans cet établissement, tenu d'une main de fer par l'imposante Axel, que semblent s'être donné rendez-vous les personnalités les plus excentriques de la région.
Un jour, trois nouveaux arrivants en ville se retrouvent à la porte du " Club des seniors ", Sarah Nell Brownstein, une géante amoureuse du masseur nain de la maison de retraite, Bledsoe, représentant d'une entreprise de pompes funèbres, et Carlita Rojas Mundez, une adepte du vaudou.
Entre eux un drame va très vite se nouer et les précipiter dans une tragi-comédie aussi déchirante qu'irrésistible.
Avec ce roman court, dont l'action est concentrée sur 24 heures, Harry Crews s'attaque à tous les tabous de la vieillesse : abandon, solitude, misère sexuelle, etc., et nous offre un tableau poignant et sans concessions de la condition humaine.
186 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1970
1 person is currently reading
194 people want to read
About the author
Harry Crews
68 books665 followersHarry Eugene Crews was born during the Great Depression to sharecroppers in Bacon County, Georgia. His father died when he was an infant and his mother quickly remarried. His mother later moved her sons to Jacksonville, Florida. Crews is twice divorced and is the father of two sons. His eldest son drowned in 1964.
Crews served in the Korean War and, following the war, enrolled at the University of Florida under the G.I. Bill. After two years of school, Crews set out on an extended road trip. He returned to the University of Florida in 1958. Later, after graduating from the master's program, Crews was denied entrance to the graduate program for Creative Writing. He moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where he taught English at Broward Community College. In 1968, Crews' first novel, The Gospel Singer, was published. Crews returned to the University of Florida as an English faculty member.
In spring of 1997, Crews retired from UF to devote himself fully to writing. Crews published continuously since his first novel, on average of one novel per year. He died in 2012, at the age of 78.
Crews served in the Korean War and, following the war, enrolled at the University of Florida under the G.I. Bill. After two years of school, Crews set out on an extended road trip. He returned to the University of Florida in 1958. Later, after graduating from the master's program, Crews was denied entrance to the graduate program for Creative Writing. He moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where he taught English at Broward Community College. In 1968, Crews' first novel, The Gospel Singer, was published. Crews returned to the University of Florida as an English faculty member.
In spring of 1997, Crews retired from UF to devote himself fully to writing. Crews published continuously since his first novel, on average of one novel per year. He died in 2012, at the age of 78.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 17, 2020
“This Thing Don't Lead to Heaven” (by Harry Crews is a must read kinda book. It's funny as hell, The story concerns an old people's home run by Axel, an enormous woman dominated by her midget masseur, Jefferson Davis, a dwarf who has convinced everyone that his hands hold the power of life.
An accidental newcomer to the home is Carlita, a Spanish-speaking Negro that no one can understand, particularly since her speech is punctuated with voodoo incantations.
Jefferson Davis becomes convinced that Carlita can ""magic him"" to full height.
Another new arrival at the home is Junior Bledsoe s seller of cemetery plots with witch he struck gold in St. Petersburg and is determined to do the same in the home.
Mr, Crews comes to the Conclusion that True love will triumph over the madness of society.
From Mr. Crews, “When I first got out of the Marine Corps, I travelled with a circus for about six months, and it had a freak show. One guy had a deformity in the middle of his forehead that looked just like an eye, so they billed him as Cyclops. And there was a woman with a beard—I don't mean just fuzz, I mean a black beard. They let me sleep in the back of the trailer.”
An accidental newcomer to the home is Carlita, a Spanish-speaking Negro that no one can understand, particularly since her speech is punctuated with voodoo incantations.
Jefferson Davis becomes convinced that Carlita can ""magic him"" to full height.
Another new arrival at the home is Junior Bledsoe s seller of cemetery plots with witch he struck gold in St. Petersburg and is determined to do the same in the home.
Mr, Crews comes to the Conclusion that True love will triumph over the madness of society.
From Mr. Crews, “When I first got out of the Marine Corps, I travelled with a circus for about six months, and it had a freak show. One guy had a deformity in the middle of his forehead that looked just like an eye, so they billed him as Cyclops. And there was a woman with a beard—I don't mean just fuzz, I mean a black beard. They let me sleep in the back of the trailer.”
June 13, 2016
Where the shine first fades from the apple…
It’s not there is anything essentially wrong with This Thing Don’t Lead to Heaven, it’s that there isn’t anything essential. A rather perfunctory story for Crews; the Midget Trick feels a little too easy, the subtext too super-textual. The setting is plumb for a great exploration of mortality and its intersection with faith, but that handshake misses. Instead, we’re left with an obviousness which, frankly, the author is too good to put his name to.
Crews had his hook in a hell of a story, but went after the wrong fish in my opinion. The sections where he does connect, and there are a few, are strong. The thematic concern of the absolutely extreme lengths that people will sink to get what they want, despite Nature, is explored in fascinating ways, albeit far too inconsistently. Obsession, as Crews pens it, equals monocularity, and there is hell to pay should anyone obscure the pathway to the ultimate reward. That these same foci include growing a few feet in height (literally), abnegating death, and stealing love through witchcraft are all hallmarks of the author’s sensibility. It just seems that three novels in as many years proved too taxing a strain on creating anything truly compelling. I don’t want to use the word ‘rote,’ but I just did.
I do, however, give Crews credit for treating the elderly not as props but as full-bodied humans—people whose desires and fears have not ebbed with time. There is a gorgeous chapter of octogenarian bonage that engenders the book to me for its frankness and heart. I wouldn’t start with This Thing Don’t Lead to Heaven, but I sure as hell wouldn’t stop here, either. There are some truly majestical peaks on both sides of this temporary valley.
It’s not there is anything essentially wrong with This Thing Don’t Lead to Heaven, it’s that there isn’t anything essential. A rather perfunctory story for Crews; the Midget Trick feels a little too easy, the subtext too super-textual. The setting is plumb for a great exploration of mortality and its intersection with faith, but that handshake misses. Instead, we’re left with an obviousness which, frankly, the author is too good to put his name to.
Crews had his hook in a hell of a story, but went after the wrong fish in my opinion. The sections where he does connect, and there are a few, are strong. The thematic concern of the absolutely extreme lengths that people will sink to get what they want, despite Nature, is explored in fascinating ways, albeit far too inconsistently. Obsession, as Crews pens it, equals monocularity, and there is hell to pay should anyone obscure the pathway to the ultimate reward. That these same foci include growing a few feet in height (literally), abnegating death, and stealing love through witchcraft are all hallmarks of the author’s sensibility. It just seems that three novels in as many years proved too taxing a strain on creating anything truly compelling. I don’t want to use the word ‘rote,’ but I just did.
I do, however, give Crews credit for treating the elderly not as props but as full-bodied humans—people whose desires and fears have not ebbed with time. There is a gorgeous chapter of octogenarian bonage that engenders the book to me for its frankness and heart. I wouldn’t start with This Thing Don’t Lead to Heaven, but I sure as hell wouldn’t stop here, either. There are some truly majestical peaks on both sides of this temporary valley.
June 13, 2013
This Thing Don't Lead to Heaven was, for me, an extremely elusive book. For years it was the only Crews book I hadn't attained. I finally picked up an ex-library copy for $70. The book was never released in paperback. Crews said in interview that this one had performed especially poorly and that reviewers hated it. Well, I didn't hate it, but it's nowhere near the level of Crews' best work, e.g. A Feast of Snakes. Here the author produces one of his typical oddball settings (a retirement village of sorts, a theme he'd return to in the much later, and far worse, Celebration). We have a typical Crews cast, including a beautiful (and very tall) woman, a midget, a sleepy black man named Lummy, and some old people on the verge of carking it. Crews tumbles these characters together in a plot that doesn't make a lot of sense but is poignant in places.
I can't say I recommend that people outlay the $100+ it'd cost to attain a copy for themselves. It is a sad thing that this was never released in paperback, and I think that it's high time that there was a Crews revival, but This Thing Don't Lead to Heaven deserves its obscurity, I believe.
I can't say I recommend that people outlay the $100+ it'd cost to attain a copy for themselves. It is a sad thing that this was never released in paperback, and I think that it's high time that there was a Crews revival, but This Thing Don't Lead to Heaven deserves its obscurity, I believe.
January 29, 2010
American Gothic freakshow at a hilltop nursing home with a dwarf masseuse, a voodoo queen exile, gas pump yokels, women giants...classic Crews, good stuff though a little slower out of the gate than the Bard of Badass is usually known for. I get a lot of people asking me about Crews since he has sort of two eras (one amazing, the other not as so--I'll elaborate on this some other time) and here's my advice:
START with CHILDHOOD: BIOGRAPHY OF A PLACE and/or FEAST OF SNAKES
I have read KARATE IS A THING OF THE SPIRIT five times, more than any other book, and it's a fucking crime that it's not in print
BLOOD AND GRITS is next.
DIG ON these other early classics: THE GYPSY'S CURSE, CAR, and THE GOSPEL SINGER
if you dig these then move on to the later stuff but STEER CLEAR of AN AMERICAN FAMILY, of which Crews was obviously duped into publishing by some slimy cocksucker opportunist publisher who should be dragged into the streets and stoned by way of substituting hardcover copies of this book for stones.
That said, LONG LIVE CREWS
START with CHILDHOOD: BIOGRAPHY OF A PLACE and/or FEAST OF SNAKES
I have read KARATE IS A THING OF THE SPIRIT five times, more than any other book, and it's a fucking crime that it's not in print
BLOOD AND GRITS is next.
DIG ON these other early classics: THE GYPSY'S CURSE, CAR, and THE GOSPEL SINGER
if you dig these then move on to the later stuff but STEER CLEAR of AN AMERICAN FAMILY, of which Crews was obviously duped into publishing by some slimy cocksucker opportunist publisher who should be dragged into the streets and stoned by way of substituting hardcover copies of this book for stones.
That said, LONG LIVE CREWS
January 31, 2015
one of crews's early novels...could be there's a midget in this one. is that correct? or someone going to run in here and call me a part of the vast racial-industrial complex? securely fetter me? munching munching, crowd noise. crews writes some good yarns. check him out. read this one eons ago, early 80s...alachua county library...or was/is it the gainesville public library? or maybe it was the university of florida library? i dunno. check it out if you can find a copy.
September 18, 2016
This was Harry Crews's third published novel. While it fails to stand up to his earlier works ("The Gospel Singer" and "Naked in Garden Hills"), thanks to a weak plot, it is much funnier in a laugh out loud way as long as you are not offended by racial, sexual, and human deformity jokes ( in which case you really should read a different author).
I do not know if Crews meant this to be a whimsical comedy, but I like to think he was not very serious about this one.
I do not know if Crews meant this to be a whimsical comedy, but I like to think he was not very serious about this one.
October 17, 2018
Not the best. If you want midgets named after Jefferson Davis read Karate is a Thing of the Spirit. If you want funeral homes read Scar Lover or, better yet, The Hawk is Dying. Still, mediocre Crews is better than most writers' best work.
March 1, 2011
I found this awesome, weird, dark, twisted story oddly touching. Harry Crews just does it for me.
December 26, 2017
Ce qui fait que les romans d'Harry Crews soient étranges, ce sont les atmosphères qu'il décrit, les personnages qui gravitent dedans, leurs histoires personnelles.
C'est ce tout qui fait que ces romans ne soient pas comme les autres et qui pourraient en rebuter plus d'un parce qu'on ne peut pas dire qu'il se passe des choses folles dans ce home, qu'il y a du suspense à mourir, mais tout de même, je me suis faite happer par ce huis-clos à la limite du sordide, quand on y pense bien.
Tout se passait bien à l'Axel's Senior Club avant que ne débarque du Greyhound carlita, une cuisinière espagnole et prêtresse vaudou ; Junior Bledsoe, un vendeur de concession funéraire qui sent qu'il a touché le filon en or avec cette maison remplie de vieux prêts à casseur leur pipe ; et une femme amoureuse du nain, et qui croit qu'il fait un mètre nonante !
Quand vous réunissez dans le même endroit un prêtre qui ne croit plus, un vendeur sans scrupules, une femme amoureuse, un nain qui voudrait grandir, une patronne qui aime être touchée, des petits vieux qui veulent revivre le grand amour, une vaudou espagnole qui trimbale des os et des poils avec elle, croyez-moi, si ça ne fait pas des étincelles, ça reste tout de même des choses intéressantes à regarder d'en haut.
C'est tragique, c'est cru, ça donne des phrases chocs entre un vendeur de concession funéraire et un prêtre qui dit que la mort n'existe pas, alors que le pavillon où finissent les mourants du home nous rappelle cruellement notre condition de mortel et de retour à ce que nous étions : poussières.
Mon seul bémol sera pour le fait qu'en aussi peu de pages, avec autant de personnages clés, avec un huis-clos et tous les ingrédients qui vont avec, Harry Crews ait parfois du mal à lier sa sauce.
Sans jamais m'embêter une seule seconde, j'ai parfois eu l'impression que ça partait dans tous les sens.
Dans tout les cas, il faut sans doute être amateur du style de Harry Crews pour l'apprécier à sa juste valeur. Et j'apprécie l'auteur.
C'est ce tout qui fait que ces romans ne soient pas comme les autres et qui pourraient en rebuter plus d'un parce qu'on ne peut pas dire qu'il se passe des choses folles dans ce home, qu'il y a du suspense à mourir, mais tout de même, je me suis faite happer par ce huis-clos à la limite du sordide, quand on y pense bien.
Tout se passait bien à l'Axel's Senior Club avant que ne débarque du Greyhound carlita, une cuisinière espagnole et prêtresse vaudou ; Junior Bledsoe, un vendeur de concession funéraire qui sent qu'il a touché le filon en or avec cette maison remplie de vieux prêts à casseur leur pipe ; et une femme amoureuse du nain, et qui croit qu'il fait un mètre nonante !
Quand vous réunissez dans le même endroit un prêtre qui ne croit plus, un vendeur sans scrupules, une femme amoureuse, un nain qui voudrait grandir, une patronne qui aime être touchée, des petits vieux qui veulent revivre le grand amour, une vaudou espagnole qui trimbale des os et des poils avec elle, croyez-moi, si ça ne fait pas des étincelles, ça reste tout de même des choses intéressantes à regarder d'en haut.
C'est tragique, c'est cru, ça donne des phrases chocs entre un vendeur de concession funéraire et un prêtre qui dit que la mort n'existe pas, alors que le pavillon où finissent les mourants du home nous rappelle cruellement notre condition de mortel et de retour à ce que nous étions : poussières.
Mon seul bémol sera pour le fait qu'en aussi peu de pages, avec autant de personnages clés, avec un huis-clos et tous les ingrédients qui vont avec, Harry Crews ait parfois du mal à lier sa sauce.
Sans jamais m'embêter une seule seconde, j'ai parfois eu l'impression que ça partait dans tous les sens.
Dans tout les cas, il faut sans doute être amateur du style de Harry Crews pour l'apprécier à sa juste valeur. Et j'apprécie l'auteur.
March 13, 2023
As much as I am a Crews fan, I didn’t come into this book with high expectations. I am aware that Crews himself didn’t rate it as being close to his best works, and that his publishers really didn’t like it. It was only ever released in hardback.
It was his third novel, published in 1970, and following the wonderful and successful The Gospel Singer and Naked in Garden Hills. Though this has the same bizarre elements, it misses some of the humour of the first two books. It may seem just a small aspect of his writing to play down, but it does how much of a role that dark wit plays in his best novels.
It is set in the ‘Senior Club’, an old people's residence run by Axel, an enormous woman dominated by her midget masseur, Jefferson Davis, who manages to convince everyone that his hands hold the power of life. A newcomer arrives, Carlita, having not returned to the Greyhound bus as she was in the lavatory. She is from Cuba and speaks a variety of Spanish that no one can understand, punctuated with voodoo incantations. Jefferson Davis becomes convinced that she can ‘magic him’ to an average person’s height.
The cast is filled with eccentrics as ever with Crews; for example Junior Bledsoe, a salesman of cemetery plots who struck gold in St Petersburg and is on a missionto do the same at the Club.
Crews’s books are rarely plot based, so the ending is not really a climax, but here it is disappointing, abrupt and curiously incongruous.
It was his third novel, published in 1970, and following the wonderful and successful The Gospel Singer and Naked in Garden Hills. Though this has the same bizarre elements, it misses some of the humour of the first two books. It may seem just a small aspect of his writing to play down, but it does how much of a role that dark wit plays in his best novels.
It is set in the ‘Senior Club’, an old people's residence run by Axel, an enormous woman dominated by her midget masseur, Jefferson Davis, who manages to convince everyone that his hands hold the power of life. A newcomer arrives, Carlita, having not returned to the Greyhound bus as she was in the lavatory. She is from Cuba and speaks a variety of Spanish that no one can understand, punctuated with voodoo incantations. Jefferson Davis becomes convinced that she can ‘magic him’ to an average person’s height.
The cast is filled with eccentrics as ever with Crews; for example Junior Bledsoe, a salesman of cemetery plots who struck gold in St Petersburg and is on a missionto do the same at the Club.
Crews’s books are rarely plot based, so the ending is not really a climax, but here it is disappointing, abrupt and curiously incongruous.
July 16, 2025
A dwarf, the daughter of a Haitian hoodoo master, and a casket/gravesite broker walk into an old folks home…
September 5, 2016
What a bizarre read.
I love Crews - the motley cast of his novels never ceases to amaze me. The man had the strangest, wildest imagination. There are certain themes that become readily apparent, once you've read two of three novels, but the presentation is just unique enough every time that it doesn't become ponderous.
Strange, and oh so entertaining.
I love Crews - the motley cast of his novels never ceases to amaze me. The man had the strangest, wildest imagination. There are certain themes that become readily apparent, once you've read two of three novels, but the presentation is just unique enough every time that it doesn't become ponderous.
Strange, and oh so entertaining.
June 14, 2010
Super weird. One of my favorites by Crews.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews