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Getting Naked with Harry Crews: Interviews
Harry Crews on getting naked:
"If you’re gonna write, for God in heaven’s sake try to get naked. Try to write the truth. Try to get underneath all the sham, all the excuses, all the lies that you’ve been told. . . . If you’re gonna write fiction, you have to get right on down to it."
"Harry Crews cannot refrain from storytelling. These conversations are blessed with countless insights into the creative process, fresh takes on old questions, and always, Crews’s stories: modern-day parables that tell us how it is to live, to work, and to hurt."--Jeff Baker, Oxford American
"Harry Crews has indelible ways of approaching life and the craft of writing. This collection shows that he elevates both to a near-religious artform."--Matthew Teague, Oxford American
In 26 interviews conducted between 1972 and 1997, novelist Harry Crews tells the truth--about why and how he writes, about the literary influences on his own work, about the writers he admires (or does not), about which of his own books he likes (or does not), about his fascination with so-called freaks, and about his love of blood sports. Crews reveals the tender side under his tough-guy image, discussing his beloved mother and his spiritual quest in a secular world.
Crews also speaks frankly about his failed relationships, the role that writing played in them, and his personal struggles with alcohol and drugs and their impact on his life and work. Those seeking insights into his work will find them in these interviews. Those seeking to be entertained in Crewsian fashion will not be disappointed.
Harry Crews on his tattoo and mohawk . . .
"If you can’t get past my ‘too’--my tattoo--and my ‘do’--the way I got my hair cut--it’s only because you have decided there are certain things that can be done with hair and certain things that cannot be done with hair. And certain of them are right and proper and decent, and the rest indicate a warped, degenerate nature; therefore I am warped and degenerate. 'Cause I got my hair cut a different way, man? You gonna really live your life like that? What’s wrong with you?"
On advice to young writers . . .
"You have to go to considerable trouble to live differently from the way the world wants you to live. That’s what I’ve discovered about writing. The world doesn’t want you to do a damn thing. If you wait till you got time to write a novel or time to write a story or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read--if you wait for the time, you’ll never do it. 'Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week."
On being "well-rounded" . . .
"I never wanted to be well-rounded, and I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design."
Harry Crews is the author of 23 books, including The Gospel Singer, Naked in Garden Hills, This Thing Don’t Lead to Heaven, Karate Is a Thing of the Spirit, Car, The Hawk Is Dying, The Gypsy’s Curse, A Feast of Snakes, A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, Blood and Grits, The Enthusiast, All We Need of Hell, The Knockout Artist, Body, Scar Lover, The Mulching of America, Celebration, and Florida Frenzy (UPF, 1982).
Erik Bledsoe is an instructor of English and American studies at the University of Tennessee. He has published articles on southern writers and edited a special issue of the Southern Quarterly devoted to Crews. His 1997 interview with Harry Crews from that magazine is included in this collection.
"If you’re gonna write, for God in heaven’s sake try to get naked. Try to write the truth. Try to get underneath all the sham, all the excuses, all the lies that you’ve been told. . . . If you’re gonna write fiction, you have to get right on down to it."
"Harry Crews cannot refrain from storytelling. These conversations are blessed with countless insights into the creative process, fresh takes on old questions, and always, Crews’s stories: modern-day parables that tell us how it is to live, to work, and to hurt."--Jeff Baker, Oxford American
"Harry Crews has indelible ways of approaching life and the craft of writing. This collection shows that he elevates both to a near-religious artform."--Matthew Teague, Oxford American
In 26 interviews conducted between 1972 and 1997, novelist Harry Crews tells the truth--about why and how he writes, about the literary influences on his own work, about the writers he admires (or does not), about which of his own books he likes (or does not), about his fascination with so-called freaks, and about his love of blood sports. Crews reveals the tender side under his tough-guy image, discussing his beloved mother and his spiritual quest in a secular world.
Crews also speaks frankly about his failed relationships, the role that writing played in them, and his personal struggles with alcohol and drugs and their impact on his life and work. Those seeking insights into his work will find them in these interviews. Those seeking to be entertained in Crewsian fashion will not be disappointed.
Harry Crews on his tattoo and mohawk . . .
"If you can’t get past my ‘too’--my tattoo--and my ‘do’--the way I got my hair cut--it’s only because you have decided there are certain things that can be done with hair and certain things that cannot be done with hair. And certain of them are right and proper and decent, and the rest indicate a warped, degenerate nature; therefore I am warped and degenerate. 'Cause I got my hair cut a different way, man? You gonna really live your life like that? What’s wrong with you?"
On advice to young writers . . .
"You have to go to considerable trouble to live differently from the way the world wants you to live. That’s what I’ve discovered about writing. The world doesn’t want you to do a damn thing. If you wait till you got time to write a novel or time to write a story or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read--if you wait for the time, you’ll never do it. 'Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week."
On being "well-rounded" . . .
"I never wanted to be well-rounded, and I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design."
Harry Crews is the author of 23 books, including The Gospel Singer, Naked in Garden Hills, This Thing Don’t Lead to Heaven, Karate Is a Thing of the Spirit, Car, The Hawk Is Dying, The Gypsy’s Curse, A Feast of Snakes, A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, Blood and Grits, The Enthusiast, All We Need of Hell, The Knockout Artist, Body, Scar Lover, The Mulching of America, Celebration, and Florida Frenzy (UPF, 1982).
Erik Bledsoe is an instructor of English and American studies at the University of Tennessee. He has published articles on southern writers and edited a special issue of the Southern Quarterly devoted to Crews. His 1997 interview with Harry Crews from that magazine is included in this collection.
376 pages, Hardcover
First published June 6, 1987
2 people are currently reading
130 people want to read
About the author
Harry Crews
69 books634 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 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 11, 2020
Harry Crews isn't for everyone, I understand, but he was a fascinating guy, and a very good writer. He's been described as "Flannery O'Conner on steroids". That sounds about right to me. I love all his work, so finding this collection of essays was like finding a pot of gold for me. I've read some of them multiple times. He answers questions with a straight-forwardness that's refreshing. If you are a writer or aspire to be, this is must read.
July 18, 2009
“If you wait until you got time to write a novel, or time to write a story, or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read - if you wait for the time, you will never do it. ‘Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week.” - Harry Crews
The first time I ever heard of Harry Crews - some 30 years ago now - was when a friend gave me a copy of The Gospel Singer and said, “Don’t tell anyone where you got this.” I read it immediately, and in the parlance of some of my young friends now, Crews “cleaned and polished my brain stem.” It was a darkly humorous tale, filled with gothic figures, murder, sex and mayhem. I’ll never forget the funeral parlor scene in the opening, the terrifying lynchings (two of them) at the conclusion, and the bizarre events in between. My favorite characters were Foot (a midget with a 27-inch inch appendage), Willalee Bookatee Hull (a black minister and rapist), and the protagonist, who has a magically sweet voice and a black heart. I still remember the quote, “In a world where God is dead, mankind worships each other.” When I finished the book, I just opened it and started again.
Occasionally, I gave The Gospel Singer to friends but they frequently returned it unfinished and asked me why I read “that trash.” I had no answer. I only knew that I had read something that spoke to me as no other writer had ever done. For years, I read everything Crews wrote. The Hawk is Dying followed by the quirky Car (the protagonist decides to eat an automobile), Naked in Garden Hills, This Thing Don’t Lead to Heaven, and finally the book that told me why Crews appealed to me - Childhood: The Biography of a Place. In this painful autobiography, Crews, records the details of his own origin, a story of hardship and grinding poverty in rural Bacon County, Ga.
Crews acknowledges that he grew up bitterly ashamed of his voice (that means his red-neck dialect), his family and the place where he lived. For years, he made desperate attempts to escape the ignorance and poverty of his roots, only to discover that it was bred into him - blood, bone and soul. “I have Georgia in my mouth,” he is fond of saying, “every time I speak.” Finally, after years of trying to escape his origins, Crews came full circle. He realized that the only subject he could write about with accuracy was his own life. Eventually, he learned that what he viewed as his greatest shortcoming was ... a gift! He could speak from the perspective of a poor white Southerner at a time when no one was doing that in Southern literature - someone who had experienced crippling poverty, a daunting host of childhood ailments (including polio), and the pity and contempt of those who judged him, including the school system, the privileged town folk and the world beyond Bacon County.
Crews came to feel a passionate kinship with outcasts - people who had been rejected because they were physically and emotionally “different.” In effect, for Crews, physical abnormalities became the outward embodiment of the inner disfigurements that we all have. Consider this incident from his childhood: When Harry was about six years old, he accidently fell into a barrel of scalding water during a hog killing. Jerked from the boiling water by a neighbor, Harry watched the skin unroll down his arms and drop off his fingers (along with his fingernails). He carried severe scars for the rest of his life. A short time after the incident, he recalls sitting on the porch with a number of other children and turning the pages of a Sears catalogue. He and his friends amused themselves by making up stories about the people pictured in the catalogue. Several of his playmates wondered why “the pretty people” didn’t have any scars - no acne, no disfigurements. Crews knew that it was impossible to grow up in rural south Georgia (or Appalachia, for that matter) without being “marked by your environment” - scars, missing fingers, broken teeth, etc. Crews said that his playmates decided that the beautiful folks in the advertisements had scars. You just couldn’t see them. In a sense, that is what Crews finally came to write about - the scars that are not visible - the ones that are inside.
Getting Naked With Harry Crews is a comprehensive collection of interviews with the author from 1968 until the present. The title is a Crews metaphor for telling the unvarnished truth. The result is a bit overwhelming. Beginning with interviews that reveal Crews as a boastful, garrulous and angry writer determined “to write 20 novels,” the collection progresses through the author’s violent and provocative career.
Some early interviewers treat him with pompous condescension while others view him with awe and trepidation. He discusses his alcoholism (“the dark twirlies”), his legendary propensity for violence - at the present his nose has been broken nine times, along with both hands, most of his ribs, his neck and both legs - and his checkered career as a journalist for Esquire and Playboy, including his famous pieces on Robert Blake, Charles Bronson, Vic Marrow, and the Texas sniper Charles Whitman.
This impressive collection contains a diversity of motifs. Crews has spent 40 years defending himself against charges of populating his works with freaks, raw sex and gratuitous violence. His defense is impressive and consistent, although the repetitive questions of his interviewers occasionally becomes an irritation. Again and again, he laments the rapid loss of Southern language (“Eventually, we will all talk like disc jockeys!”), the loss of family, manners, customs, a “sense of place,” the decline of reading, and the destruction of nature. He also unabashedly endorses blood sports (boxing, cock fights, dog fights) and reasserts his belief that mankind has a black and beastial heart. There are other themes, too: a smoldering rage at the loss of his own youth; despair at his lack of critical success; and the belief that his next book will be “the best one.”
Not too long ago, I saw a PBS interview with Crews, and it was memorable. Harry’s scarred and broken body was covered by tattoos and he sported a bristling, gray Mohawk haircut. To me, he resembled one of those ancient carcasses unearthed from some Icelandic peat-bog. Under the timid prodding of his interviewer, Harry explained his appearance. In effect, he had given up trying to look “academically presentable.” He said that from here on out, he chose to be the old maverick freak that he was. Obviously, he took considerable delight in discomfiting his colleagues at Florida University where he has been a full professor for 20 years (in the school that had once denied him acceptance to their graduate program).
The final interviews in Getting Naked With Harry Crews are a bit more reflective and somber. Crews has a multitude of ailments now and he tends to think more about death and dying. “I’ve always been interested in the skull beneath the flesh,” he says as he considers his own mortality. “Now, I’m gonna find out what it is like to die.”
March 28, 2012
Interesting collection....(there's more?...where are they?)...that Erik Bledsoe edited. The title for this comes from a quote from Crews:
"If you're gonna write, for God in heaven's sake try to get naked. Try to write the truth. Try to get underneath all the sham, all the excuses, all the lies that you've been told...If you're gonna write fiction, you have to get right on down to it."
Verily.
I've been hitting this one here and there, pick and choose....I think I saw that it has 26 interviews...I have not counted them. So...one can read one from 72 and then another from 97 and then one from 85 and so forth and so on.
I knew Harry Crews in/around '85-86. I only had the opportunity to take one seminar with him and others like me, one undergraduate class...if I had two I do not recall. One interviewer, I forget which one, said he took classes for two years.
Incredible, considering that I went to Florida to escape to write to take a course or two. And...I did all that. So, knowing the man, this is nice to read.
Some things I knew, some I did not. He almost won some sort of Bram Stoker (Harlan Ellison won) for some short piece someone almost dared him into writing....said 'you can't'...and Crews wrote a piece...shorts. I lost the location in the book that tells the title of the piece. Two words. The title.
Ummm...he never talked about Korea, as the matter ended while he was still in P.I. Not the islands, the marine boot camp. Always wondered why nothing about...war. We have war enough, don't we?
He talks about his writing, Andrew Lytle, who gave him a hand up.
I know when I took his class, he read from All We Need of Hell...that chapter where the lady tells the man to put it in the hangar? He talks a bit about that one, others.
He'd also read a bit from Knockout Artist....both in manuscript form at the time. He conveyed a joy of writing...we were already there...with him.
I recall that he'd also spoke about an academic that was writing about one of his early stories...the midget with the 22" arms....and the academic translated that to be length, not girth. Well, Obama got a few history lessons wrong, too, hey? Verily. The man walks on water...all he needs, Obama, is a wife-beater tee-shirt and it would all dawn on us, or would it?
And...I recall that he spoke about A Feast of Snakes...just me and him in his office at the time, same time he told me about the academic...said something about how in the geography of the telling that he was trying for a wheel with spokes....the way they come in from around...this, I spose, like all those long-dead 17th Century poets who tried to build candlesticks with their poems. Crews made the wheel. File that one in the bibliography, budding-academic...who knows if he'd ever told anyone else that, or if they recall if they did.
Anyway, this is a good read, short pieces, some telling, some not so. The man has been influenced by story-tellers and that joy is evident here. And, story-telling is a need for him.
update
completed or close enough...28 MAR 12, Wednesday evening, 7:21 p.m. e.s.t.
I skipped around, reading them as I saw fit, more interested in the interviews that came after 85-87, after I left Florida.
Crews got into some script writing from time to time sounds like...no money to create a film in one case...Knockout Artist, Sean Penn...
Haven't been to a movie since that movie that jackass from the lower peninsula made that one...Michael Moore? Makes fun of the "coalition" at one point in the film...the Moroccan monkeys...the vikings...Iceland? Sposed to make light of the other countries....yet in the next clip the shithead made light of a Japanese soldier who was wounded. Why didn't he include Japan in the "coalition" he made light of? Because he is a jackass, that's why....and the jackasses of the world worship the dirtbag. Movies? Meh! And what's incredible about that shithead Michael Moore's film is the pure-hatred in it that is given a free pass...what was it? 2004? First he makes fun of Morocco, Iceland and one other that I forget, then he goes after Japan...and the idiots worship at his feet! Why is that? Does the film qualify as a "hate-crime" in 2012? No? Why not?
Anyway, an entertaining and enlightening read. Makes me want to try to finish the darn thing sitting on my desk...how many re-writes can one do? And then move on to that other...or do the whole thing completely over again...and then pick up one of the many others I set aside.
Time to get busy.
"If you're gonna write, for God in heaven's sake try to get naked. Try to write the truth. Try to get underneath all the sham, all the excuses, all the lies that you've been told...If you're gonna write fiction, you have to get right on down to it."
Verily.
I've been hitting this one here and there, pick and choose....I think I saw that it has 26 interviews...I have not counted them. So...one can read one from 72 and then another from 97 and then one from 85 and so forth and so on.
I knew Harry Crews in/around '85-86. I only had the opportunity to take one seminar with him and others like me, one undergraduate class...if I had two I do not recall. One interviewer, I forget which one, said he took classes for two years.
Incredible, considering that I went to Florida to escape to write to take a course or two. And...I did all that. So, knowing the man, this is nice to read.
Some things I knew, some I did not. He almost won some sort of Bram Stoker (Harlan Ellison won) for some short piece someone almost dared him into writing....said 'you can't'...and Crews wrote a piece...shorts. I lost the location in the book that tells the title of the piece. Two words. The title.
Ummm...he never talked about Korea, as the matter ended while he was still in P.I. Not the islands, the marine boot camp. Always wondered why nothing about...war. We have war enough, don't we?
He talks about his writing, Andrew Lytle, who gave him a hand up.
I know when I took his class, he read from All We Need of Hell...that chapter where the lady tells the man to put it in the hangar? He talks a bit about that one, others.
He'd also read a bit from Knockout Artist....both in manuscript form at the time. He conveyed a joy of writing...we were already there...with him.
I recall that he'd also spoke about an academic that was writing about one of his early stories...the midget with the 22" arms....and the academic translated that to be length, not girth. Well, Obama got a few history lessons wrong, too, hey? Verily. The man walks on water...all he needs, Obama, is a wife-beater tee-shirt and it would all dawn on us, or would it?
And...I recall that he spoke about A Feast of Snakes...just me and him in his office at the time, same time he told me about the academic...said something about how in the geography of the telling that he was trying for a wheel with spokes....the way they come in from around...this, I spose, like all those long-dead 17th Century poets who tried to build candlesticks with their poems. Crews made the wheel. File that one in the bibliography, budding-academic...who knows if he'd ever told anyone else that, or if they recall if they did.
Anyway, this is a good read, short pieces, some telling, some not so. The man has been influenced by story-tellers and that joy is evident here. And, story-telling is a need for him.
update
completed or close enough...28 MAR 12, Wednesday evening, 7:21 p.m. e.s.t.
I skipped around, reading them as I saw fit, more interested in the interviews that came after 85-87, after I left Florida.
Crews got into some script writing from time to time sounds like...no money to create a film in one case...Knockout Artist, Sean Penn...
Haven't been to a movie since that movie that jackass from the lower peninsula made that one...Michael Moore? Makes fun of the "coalition" at one point in the film...the Moroccan monkeys...the vikings...Iceland? Sposed to make light of the other countries....yet in the next clip the shithead made light of a Japanese soldier who was wounded. Why didn't he include Japan in the "coalition" he made light of? Because he is a jackass, that's why....and the jackasses of the world worship the dirtbag. Movies? Meh! And what's incredible about that shithead Michael Moore's film is the pure-hatred in it that is given a free pass...what was it? 2004? First he makes fun of Morocco, Iceland and one other that I forget, then he goes after Japan...and the idiots worship at his feet! Why is that? Does the film qualify as a "hate-crime" in 2012? No? Why not?
Anyway, an entertaining and enlightening read. Makes me want to try to finish the darn thing sitting on my desk...how many re-writes can one do? And then move on to that other...or do the whole thing completely over again...and then pick up one of the many others I set aside.
Time to get busy.
April 9, 2012
hilarious. of course.
June 12, 2023
Essential reading for any Crews fan. Many mentions by Harry that Naked in Garden Hills, an early novel, was his best. That's significant and WHY is it no longer in print?! Hardcover copies going for $500. Fix this!
January 4, 2021
Changed something in me
July 11, 2008
I got to work with Harry Crews at the UF MFA CW program before his retirement, and he is still a teacher whom I would gladly sit at the feet of and pay every respect to.
And this collection of interviews gives one not just a biographic and historic perspective on Harry Crews by giving interviews through Crews' career to offer tidbits of his ideas and progress as he worked through novel after novel, but also provides a good view of the spirit of this man who is currently the last surviving member of the Great Triumvirate of Writers Who Should Be Dead But Aren't Yet (the two drop-outs being William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson). Harry Crews is a wily, intelligent, thoughtful, wild and generous man. In his heyday, he seemed to have more notoriety for his personal antics than his writing (in the day of the Novelist, the wild character who happens to find some time somewhere to write). While others like Normal Mailer let their public personas take over and let the writing become dimmer and dimmer, Crews took the other route and focused more and more as a writer, another progress denoted in this set of interviews.
But I am most impressed in this collection that Bledsoe edited and rummaged through most likely tons of interviews to find the ones that best presented the spirit of conversing with Harry Crews the man--sometimes rambling and repetitive, Crews is wonderful at talking himself towards great stories and nuggets of wisdom about the working of the world (including the realm of bloodsports) and, of course, invaluable advice about being a writer. Crews talks about writing as an effort of the soul, not just an act of making things up. The articles that are more summaries of interviews are not always as enlightening, but the classic Q & A structured interviews are wonderful here. Many kudos for Bledsoe for compiling some of the choicest bits of Crews that would be valuable for any budding writer.
And this collection of interviews gives one not just a biographic and historic perspective on Harry Crews by giving interviews through Crews' career to offer tidbits of his ideas and progress as he worked through novel after novel, but also provides a good view of the spirit of this man who is currently the last surviving member of the Great Triumvirate of Writers Who Should Be Dead But Aren't Yet (the two drop-outs being William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson). Harry Crews is a wily, intelligent, thoughtful, wild and generous man. In his heyday, he seemed to have more notoriety for his personal antics than his writing (in the day of the Novelist, the wild character who happens to find some time somewhere to write). While others like Normal Mailer let their public personas take over and let the writing become dimmer and dimmer, Crews took the other route and focused more and more as a writer, another progress denoted in this set of interviews.
But I am most impressed in this collection that Bledsoe edited and rummaged through most likely tons of interviews to find the ones that best presented the spirit of conversing with Harry Crews the man--sometimes rambling and repetitive, Crews is wonderful at talking himself towards great stories and nuggets of wisdom about the working of the world (including the realm of bloodsports) and, of course, invaluable advice about being a writer. Crews talks about writing as an effort of the soul, not just an act of making things up. The articles that are more summaries of interviews are not always as enlightening, but the classic Q & A structured interviews are wonderful here. Many kudos for Bledsoe for compiling some of the choicest bits of Crews that would be valuable for any budding writer.
September 8, 2010
Some parts interesting but a lot of repetition. Funny how Andrew Lytle was a mentor, nothing alike. Crews and Howard Stern live on the outrageous; the biggest problem derives not from them but the copycats. You can see intelligence in the stupidity of Crews and Stern but few can do the same.
December 20, 2012
An awesome collection of interviews with and essays about Harry Crews. I learned a lot about what made the man tick.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews