Classic Crews: A Harry Crews Reader

by Harry Crews

From Simon & Schuster, Classic Crews is a collection of works from the master Harry Crews, including his memoir and short stories.

Collected here is the best of Harry his astoundingly beautiful memoir A The Biography of a Place ; two if his most memorable novels, Car and The Gypsy's Curse ; and three masterly essays, "Climbing the Tower," "The Car," and "Fathers, Sons and Blood," as well as a new introduction to these works by Crews himself.

Genres: Fiction, Southern, Short Stories, Southern Gothic, Essays, Literature, 20th Century

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Harry 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.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, people. I don't remember too much about this book to be honest. Is that the books fault? Probably not. This was an entry into the Book Olympics, from 2006/2007, a time unfortunately not fully captured by Karen and I on goodreads.com; but which basically was a 'race' through the entire fiction section of the store by reading one book (already owned, or else a penalty book) by someone else's choosing from each bay (set of shelves). I don't know exactly how many books that is, but it's close to a hundred probably. Karen won, and she also took it more seriously than I did. I broke from the olympics many times out of annoyance with not being able to choose my own books, and feeling like it would be another year before I got to choose another book to read.

So anyway, back to the start of this review.

Ok, people. This is unacceptable. Harry Crews is a pretty fine good writer, very southern in feel, not quite as edgy as for some reason I expected him to be, for some reason I expected him to be a cross between Bukowski, Tom Robbins and Hunter S. Thompson; which fortunately he is not. He writes good stories. The kind that read well, even if a few years later the details beyond enjoying them is a little weak.

So anyway, back to the start of this review.

Ok, people. Seriously this is unacceptable. Apparently Harry Crews is in danger of being returned from our store as 'dead stock' because he hasn't sold in a year. What the fuck? 8 million people live in the city, throw in a couple of more million people in NJ/Westchester/CT who work in the city and that's a whole lot of people not buying any Harry Crews. He's probably better than just about everything on the New York Times bestseller list right now.

Will this review make you read him? Probably not, but maybe it will shame/interest you enough to go out and pick up one of his books and at least read the back cover. Maybe it will make you then buy the book, or take it out of the library. Or maybe not. I don't know what the fuck I expect to do from any of these reviews.

Literature will not be removed from bookstores without a fight!

[Kirk Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection and it starts with A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, a novel that can do no wrong. I recommend it to Everyone. The other two novels, The Gypsy's Curse and Car: A Novel are just quite literally freak shows. Skip them. Get over this entire book and move on. **** Go buy a copy of Blood and Grits for some of Harry's best non-fiction. Don't stop there, for Fiction go straight for The Gospel Singer and A Feast of Snakes. He was really proud when South Africa banned Feast of Snakes in their country, he carried the newspaper article around in his pocket. So there were a couple of great short stories here. Move on. And I'm just wild about Harry, if I could run across his ghost I would want to have a beer with him. What a guy.

[Carla Remy · Rating 4 out of 5]

02/2021

(previously I read the novels in this book, The Gypsy's Curse and The Car, this time I read the non fiction).
A Childhood is a memoir about growing up poor in Georgia during the Depression. The essay Climbing the Tower has Crews lecturing at the University of Texas, Austin, on an unspecified day in the late 70s or 80s, and becoming obsessed by the sight of the tower where Charles Whitman did his famous shooting spree in 1966.

[Deki Napolju · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've vowed to spend 2015 filling in some gaps in my reading history by picking a single author each month and reading as many of their works I can as well as a reputable biography of them. I've limited to my choices to authors who aren't one-hit wonders (eg. Heller) and whom are dead (I've a hunch that being alive prevents the greatest possible biography from being published).

Harry Crews is my first author and someone criminally under-read and unknown. I don't understand why we revere someone like Bukowski, yet Crews is out-of-print in the country. start by reading his short piece Fathers, Sons, Blood in this collection and tell me he's not an incredible writer.

In thinking about this reading project I began to establish a shortlist that is now rather long. It includes:

F.Scott
Capote
Patricia Highsmith
Tolstoy
Joyce
Jack London
Hesse
P.G.Wodehouse
Evelyn Waugh
Amis (Snr)
Vonnegut
Graham Greene
David Foster Wallace
GG Marquez
Carson McCullers
Twain
Borges
Patrick White
Steinbeck
Norman Mailer
Gore Vidal
Iris Murdoch
Whitman
Saul Bellow
Joseph Conrad
Katherine Mansfield
Bruno Travern
Henry James
EM Forster
Faulkner
Bolaño
Fante
J.G. Ballard
Richard Yates
Orwell
Proust
Nabakov

Next month is Louis-Ferdinand Céline.

[Wade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crews does redneck freaks like a more modern Flannery O'Connor without being informed by Catholicism. He also cusses a lot more. Really this should be broken up into a number of reviews, but I'm too lazy for that. Car is perhaps my favorite Crews book, which is enough for this collection to be worthwhile, though the essays and childhood biography are excellent as well.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories and essays in this were all excellent. All 5 star in my opinion.

They aren’t for everyone though and there is some problematic language that might set some people off. I just thought it let me get to know the characters better.

Most of the characters in these stories are not likable but you can find some small decent aspect about each one of them that maybe makes you sympathize with them a teensy bit or at least want to know what happens to them in the story. That’s the beauty of it despite the dark themes.

I enjoyed this despite some of the language which I honestly thought fit with the characters and the story being told.


5 stars and best reads pile. Crews was a great storyteller and these stories will stick with me for a while.

[Charles Stahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had never heard of Harry Crews until I read the recommendations of one of the employees of book soup. And I am glad that I did. This is an interesting book in that it's at once autobiographical, (although not an autobiography, but a collection of real-life anecdotes) and fiction - a collection of short stories / novellas.

In the 1st, A Childhood, The Biography of a Place, Crews recounts his early years in Bacon Country Georgia, with a family a dirt-poor sharecroppers. Crews has a very gritty style of narrative, and paints a vivid word-picture of the places and events of his life at that time, including how the early death of his father affected him, that is very engrossing.

Then, in Fathers, Sons, and Blood he recounts the accidental death of his first child in very stark terms - you can feel his pain.

Next, The Gypsy's Curse is the first novella / short-story of the book. Que encuentres un cono a tu medida is the Gypsy's Curse - May you find a cunt that fits you, the curse being that when you find your "cono" you'll do anything, knock down any wall, kill anyone or anything that stands between you and the cunt that fits you. And boy, does Marvin ever find his cono! See, Marvin doesn't have much going for him - he's got malformed legs, dropped off by his parents at the Fireman's gym, run by Al whom he loves like a father - but he does have 22 inch arms and can peform a variety of acrobatic performances to bring in a little cash for the gym and Al. And then he meets Hester - his cono - and life is never the same for him, or Al or the boys at the gym after Hester persuades him to let her live there with him. Hester indeed puts the curse on Marvin...

Then we have Car, a very short non-fictional account of Crews relationship with cars over the years, and I do mean relationship, as an introduction to the next novell, Car: A Novel.

The novella Car: A Novel, incorporates some elements of Car, elements of Crews personal memories and the emotional connection he's had with specific cars in his life based on experiences and events that have taken place in cars from his past. It takes these experiences to a visceral level in the story of a family car-crushing business and the members of that family. The younger brother in this family has big dreams and big ideas, dreams and ideas that haven't born fruit for one reason or another, until he reaches his crowning dream, that of eating a Ford Maverick. No, I am not making that up. You'll have to read the book to see how he plans to accomplish this task. Things don't turn out as expected however, in this gritty story of a family torn apart by the son's actions.

Final, another non-fiction account, Climbing the Tower, a very short segment that takes place on a book-reading visit to the University of Texas at Austin, the very same place that Charles Whitman gunned down passers-by from the Tower. The author expresses how he believes that we're all just a heartbeat away from climbing our own towers, and how we live our lives trying to keep away from that end.

Crews has a realistic and engrossing way of spinning a yarn with a fine mist of dust and dirt and blood hanging over it all. Gritty and Raw and engaging all at once, I'm looking forward to reading more of his works.

[Judi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic Crews is a varied collection of novellas and short stories.

A Childhood is among my favorite works included in Classic Crews. A Childhood is a beautifully written biography of Harry Crews in pre World War Two rural Florida. Detail perfect down to his facination with the Sears catalogue and the picture perfect people featured therein. Crews writes "Nearly everybody I knew had something missing, a finger cut off, a toe split, an ear half-chewed away, an eye clouded with blindness from a glancing fence staple."

The Gypsy's Curse was my least favorite in this collection. This is the story of a young man, born with "tad pole" like legs attached to a normal sized torso. He must bind them and navigate the world supporting himself on his hands. Oh, and he is also deaf and cannot speak due to a deformity in his mouth. This novella got tedious after a bit, despite my facination with freaks.

To me the strongest work in this collection is Car. This tale brilliantly captures the uniquely American Obsession with cars during the hey day of American automobile manufacturing. Set in Florida in 1971 the story centers around a family owned auto salvage yard. A Father and his three offspring. Two twin boys and a daughter . . . young adults. The entire family is obsessed with cars. Forty three acres of wrecked cars. One of the twins, Herman, so infatuated by cars, sets up a tourist venue in the junkyard that he calls "History on Parade". It boasts a collection of wrecked, rusting vehicles from 1920 to 1970. Herman posts a billboad: See The Car It Happend In - The Event That Changed Your Life. Herman's love of cars doesn't end with the car collection. He proposes that he will eat the car of his dreams, a 1971 Ford Maverick. Every bite. That endeavor turns into a carnivalesque money making opportunity. Two shows a day. The first show being the comsumption of several small pieces of the Maverick. The second being the passing of the Maverick bits. Crews even manages to insert a group of interested Japanese businessmen as special invited guests on Day One of this spectacle. (A foreshadowing of the auto industry several years later?)
I too have memories that are strongly associated with American cars and car related events of those times. I can still have a vivid memory of riding down Pacific Coast Highway with my brother at the wheel of a new 1967 Chevrolet Chevelle SS, Tahoe Turquoise, big engine. Listening to the Rolling Stones full blast on the radio. My brother's sixteenth birthday. He got his drivers license that morning. That day he also got his first speeding ticket and locked the car keys in the trunk. He still has the car, forty five years later. Harry Crews. One of the best.

[David Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic Crews: A Harry Crews Reader by Harry Crews (Poseidon Press 1993) (818 / Biography). In 2016, I read and reviewed Harry Crews' novel A Feast of Snakes and was seriously underwhelmed. I have no recollection of who or what commended me to pick Harry Crews' work up again, but I'm glad I did. This book, Classic Crews: a Harry Crews Reader, is a compilation of three lengthy short stories or novelettes as well as three short essays. I found Crews' writing at times to be incredibly evocative. The first major passage in this book is entitled “A Childhood – The Biography of a Place.” It is a memoir of his childhood growing up dirt-poor on a farm in Bacon County, Georgia. I found myself more and more drawn in by his narrative of childhood, and I realized that I had been completely absorbed by the tale when I found myself cringing and hiding my eyes from the words on the printed page as Crews described a terrible accident that occurred during a hog killing. His autobiographical writings transported me to my own grandfather's farmstead in the 1960's, and every word on the pages rang true.
I was not impressed with the other two novelettes in the volume, but the strength of the autobiographical tale described above was enough for me to heartily recommend Classic Crews: A Harry Crews Reader to others. My rating: 7.25/10, finished 6/15/18.

[Dana Jerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book Car is bananas. You think you’re on one trip and then… well, stuff happens.
I would love to read more HC, regardless.

Some will disagree with me entirely here, but the trouble I find is that the brief essays contained herein are better than the books in their presentation of concise theses and intentionality.
The concepts condensed so beautifully, as if in an introduction and afterword combined, that you might get away with just reading them-
escaping the wolly path of his fictive exploits altogether.

[Redheadreader · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fascinating man! I loved the autobiography, it read like some of the most colourful fiction I’ve ever read, leading into some dark, twisted, yet utterly engrossing stories. Try it, you’ll never forget you’ve read it!

[Rory Costello · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this book from the library because it's the only really convenient way to obtain two of Crews' short novels, "The Gypsy's Curse" and "Car". It's certainly worth it for them alone, even though I wouldn't give either of them individually five stars (both four). "Car" is a satire that retains a lot of its bite and is still quite funny. "The Gypsy's Curse" visits a favorite Crews theme: freaks (actually, freakish behavior is at the heart of "Car" too). The writing shows Crews' hard-acquired self-taught craft.

Really, this collection is more than the sum of its parts. The three essays that are included too are first-rate, especially "Fathers, Sons, and Blood". And if you're a Crews fan, the introduction by the author is a big reward, with great insight onto what made him the man he was. For that, though, there can be nothing better than the truly amazing memoir "A Childhood: The Biography of a Place".

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is worth the read just for "Childhood: Biography of a Place." Crews had one of the weirdest and most difficult childhoods of anyone who's ever admitted to it, so far as I can tell, and his memoir is pretty startling.

"The Gypsy's Curse" is my least favorite here -- Crews at his most Palahniukian (even if it WAS before Palahniuk). It just keeps trying to outdo itself with the weirdness.

The essays "Fathers, Sons, Blood" and "Climbing the Tower" are two of the best essays I've ever read. By anyone.

So yeah, this collection rocks overall. I always heard that Crews was a man to be feared -- literally -- but he's also one to break your heart, and this book represents him at his both scary and heart-wrenching best.

[Jerry Wemple · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my all-time favorites. The centerpiece of this book is A Childhood, Crews' memoir where he describes growing up during the Depression in rural South Georgia. However, there is a lot of other great stuff in this collection as well including two novels and a few essays. "Climbing the Tower," an essay about the infamous 1965 shooting at UT Austin is especially haunting.

[Donal Mosher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most compassionate of all his writing, certainly the most tender. This book has much of the dreamy ache of Member the Wedding, but keeps that clean, hardcore Crew's voice.

[EC Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Monumental, essential, classic. Contains three rare books: "Car" is not really one of Crews best, but it's a funny, weird one. About a man who eats a car slowly, piece by piece in a freakshow like publicity stunt, it has Crews satirical, fantastical worldview in the frame of a somewhat slight narrative. "The Gypsy's Curse" shows his gift for tragicomedy in full bloom, about a man with no legs, who is also mute, and way deep in what kids today would call a 'toxic relationship'. "A Childhood" is the autobiography, and it's for sure one of Crews two or three most memorable and definitive works. Growing up truly in the middle of nowhere, eating nothing but pork and flour, having all his skin below the neck boiled off and spending a year bedridden, not learning to read until he was eighteen, but teaching himself storytelling in the old caveman way by taking scraps of photos from a Sears catalog and making stuff up for his one friend who came from miles away to hear it. And running off with the circus. Harry Crews terse, powerful language makes nearly every other writer sound forced, flashy and stuffed up. His worlds are alive with blood, sex, and mysticism in a way that feels both timeless and immediately relevant. This man rules. (And also deserves a better book cover. Seriously? Who is that kid? Who made this? With no context, this looks like some kinda "Chicken Soup for People Who Like Leave It To Beaver and Andy Griffith" baloney. Inappropriate! Fix it! FIX IT!)

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

As he says in the essay that closes this collection of his works, Harry Crews did not want to be a “Southern writer.” He just wanted to be a writer. He just wrote what he knew about, which was growing up quite poor on a farm in Georgia. In the 40’s. With an alcoholic father/father figure. His autobiography of his childhood is full of hardships, sadness, and humor.
The two short novels are twisted and full of deformed people. There’s a guy whose legs don’t work so he walks on his hands and performs with a strong man. It’s also a bizarre love story (triangle?). And there’s another one where a guy tries to eat a whole car because he loves the car. And it’s somehow realistic.

[Paul Dinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Unless you eat of my flesh, you cannot enter heaven." The act of communion is when you become close to Jesus by eating something which represents him. This book is about communion, the son of an auto wrecker Herman is obsessed with cars as is his family. By eating one, he thinks he can be in communion with it. But eating one isn't easy, considering it is made of metal ; it is impossible. Crews often writes of things that he doesn't fully explain as though he were trying to understand, this book is about our obsession with cars and it is hard to understand, they aren't just transportation. I enjoyed this book.

[Teo smite · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of writing from Harry Crews was a roller coaster.

His non fiction piece The Biography of a Place was a vivid window into Crew's early life in sharecropping south Georgia. It was a tough life full of tough people. This was why I read the book.

The short stories are interesting.

The two novels are well written, weird, and disturbing pieces.

[Chris Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like the writing of Harry Crews
In this book amongst other works is his depiction of growing up in rural Georgia
This is a razor sharp and poignant account of a hardscrabble existence which resonated with me greatly
I loved his description of all the people he knew who were all carrying some ailment, injury or deformity caused by the exacting nature of their existence
An amazing read

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

he doesn't get enough credit, and not nearly enough of his books are in print. Southern art owes a lot to Mr. Crews.

[Terry Meier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crews autobiography and view of Southern life.

[Stevolende · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dirty realism or something like that.
So macho they named an all women NY noise band after him.
Fits in with Bukowski and Jim Thompson and fun things like that

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Childhood: The biography of a place and the “Fathers, Sons, Blood” essay are great; everything else is not very good.

[Saganam · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS AUTHOR IS EXCEPTIONALLY GREAT.

[Vel Veeter]

I went back and looked at when this was originally published, which was 1978. I was wondering about this because of one, how this situates within Harry Crews’s writing career and two, how it situates within the broader publishing world of a certain kind of Southern US literature. The memoir is harrowing and amazing. It’s called “Biography of a Place” because so much of the memoir is not about Crews at all, and most is not told from memories, but of memories of being told. We begin with Crews’s father. At the time of this book coming out, Crews has already outlived his father by about a decade. Crews was pretty hard-living himself, but his father died from probably a combination of drinking, fatigue, stress, attrition, and possibly from a heart defect/condition. He was 33. Crews talks about his father having a kind of death-drive built into him that led him not only to these specific forms of hard-living, but also a penchant for fighting that almost got him killed a few times, and may well have gotten others killed. Crews discusses how sadness and tragedy and loss in the South (and he’s in Florida and Georgia in this book) is not so much that there’s more (but I don’t think he’s right about that) but that it often leads to more of it once something happens. His father embodies this.

In addition to the stories of his home county (imagine a place called Bacon Co, Georgia in the 1920s and 1930s): Crews talks about his own run-ins with injury and illness. Some of these include biting a piece of lye and falling into a vat of boiling pig fat, and all such descriptions should be understood through a sense of artistic license and hyperbole. They were certainly bad things, but couldn’t have been as bad as Crews describes them or else he would have died. Instead, they’re told through the sense of how they felt to him as a child and how the adults around him reacted to them.

Lastly, this book has a lot of animals. You’re going to learn a lot about mules in this book (again, no clue if any of it is accurate) and you’re going to see some animals die, so be forewarned.

[Debra Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent read from an undervalued, talented author. His work is as forceful as his personality. Crews writes about the poor rural folks of Georgia in his exceptional stories. The first story in this collection is autobiographical and tells the story of the author's very humble childhood as a child of sharecroppers. This book was a real eye-opener for me. What a great introduction to this author whose writings bring the work of Flannery O'Connor writing about a similar population only from a different point in time. Both authors' stories are dark, complex, literate, and engrossing. O'Connor is well known as a giant of short storytelling and Harry Crews gives her a run for the money. This book is not to be missed. I have since read everything he wrote and have a nice collection of signed first editions by Harry Crews. I am very glad to add his work to my personal library... The story Car is not to be missed. It is in this collection though it is long out of print as a stand-alone book.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harry Crews was a fairly unknown but good author of books and stories in the "Southern Gothic" genre (a label he hated). He was also a professor at the University of Florida at Gainesville, and (after discovering his work) I wanted to go back to school specifically to take his courses (I never did).

Classic Crews collects three of his novellas with a couple of essays to provide an interesting introduction to his work. Not his best work, mind you, but not bad at all. The autobiographical "A Childhood" is an intimate portrait of pre-World War II rural Georgia and the lifestyle of the poor sharecroppers there. "Car" tells the story of the heir to an auto salvage empire who dreams of more. "The Gypsy's Curse" describes the tragedies that befall one man when he gets what he wished for (with strings attached).

I'd recommend this to fans of Faulkner's dark side, Flannery O'Connor's characters, or the outsiders and oddities the lurk just under the surface of American culture.

[Alice Nalepka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man oh man what to say about Harry Crew’s’ collection. This copy has three short stories and a few essays as well. They all happen to be pretty mind blowing.

The first story is of his childhood and easy to get sucked into whereas the others take a little time to grow on you. From a man who walks around on his hands and another who eats a car, Crews has some great novels, although I feel his memoir is the most astounding of them all.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Childhood is a beautiful book, both hilarious and somber. My favorite moments are when the young Crews tells tales out of the Sears catalogue and later when he's boiled like a hog while his uncle runs alongside the slow family car, trying to speed it up on the way to the hospital. The Gypsy's curse and Car are two of his best novels, two of my favorites from Crews. Gypsy's Curse seems to echo Carson McCuller's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, and the fact that both novels feature "deaf-mute" characters is only one similarity. Car is a quick read (all three are, really) and packs quite a surprising punch in the junkyard at the end. Highly recommended for anyone interested in reading Crews.