The Hawk Is Dying

by Harry Crews

Everybody wanted something from George Gattling. They wanted sex and new seat covers, money and confessions, a little bit of love and a lot of answers. That's why George liked his hawk. All it asked of him was an opportunity to kill.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Southern, Southern Gothic, United States

226 pages, Hardcover

First published January 28, 1973

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

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Hawk is Dying is Crews' sixth published novel, and similar to Vonnegut's five works before Slaughterhouse Five, this book feels like the culmination of everything he was circling in those first five works. Make no mistake, this is Crew's Hamlet - it is a striking, brutal and important work of southern literature and it is an outright shame that it is not only out of print for decades, but that it is mostly forgotten.

Crews tethers his narrative to George, the Southern everyman that Crews knew intimately. I'm a near completionist of Harry Crews, and there is one chord that he strikes in all of his works - mostly with timpanic resonance - but in this novel he tries his hand at a subtle strum of these notes, and it works. The inescapable poverty and genetic collaring of his people, a.k.a. grits - the ones today we would call white trash - create such a crushing gravitational shackling that the escape velocity from it is a near impossibility. Education, travel, financial improvement - these are dreams rarely achieved. When you seemingly can't control a single thing in your environment, is it shocking when you turn toward said environs and rage against it in a quixotic attempt to give meaning to your existence? Crews looks into the void and performs a swan dive. Correction: hawk dive.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prior to reading Harry Crews's autobiography A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, I read A Feast of Snakes. That book blew me away. I had never read anything quite like it and I was instantly a fan. Then, by reading his autobiography, it made me empathize, yet be amazed at his life and what he went through. From what I've read since, his books have subtle symbolism and a darkness from within. "The Hawk is Dying" is no different.

The book leaves a lot more questions than answers.

Are we a product of our upbringing and can we ever get away from the trauma it's caused?
Are those who seem close to us really close or just controlling us for the rest of our life?
Can we block out reality and deny things are happening around us?
Is everyone around us crazy are are we the crazy ones?
Are memories fixed or ever-changing?

He's a great writer. If you haven't read him yet, please do.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sad and beautiful. I have no idea why this is not in print. Little point writing a review as there are almost no copies out there. I only got to read it due to the kindness of an instagram friend who sent me his ex-library edition. Damn shame.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this, raved like a bastard about it, and wrote a very long, very gushing review as part of my 2016 Harry Crewsathon. I see now that said review has disappeared, into the digital ether or malignantly destroyed by the hobgobs at GR/Amazon that are trying to penetrate by lobes (tin foil! A ha!). I suspect the latter.

Shine trying to write another one. This is all you need to know: of the ten Crews books I read in a row, Hawk is the jewel, his unequivocal masterwork. If you only ever read one of Harry's booze-soaked books in your life, make it this one. I know that Feast of Snakes gets all the love, but I swear to you that this is the heartbreaking best o' the bunch. It is a tragedy that it goes so unrecognized these days. Almost as much of a tragedy as my awesome fucking review disappearing while I was constrained to my sick bed! Hats off to you, GR—you killed a little part of my soul.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I purchased a 1st edition at the big Gainesville book sale, never really planning to read it...but picked it up one day and am really glad I did. Great book. Here's a snippet from page 20....

"In the living room, he leaned against the stone fireplace and shook with anxiety that was close to terror. It was not a feeling that was new to him. It had been growing in him slowly like a secret cancer for years. He never knew what would set it off. Tonight three smoke rings refused to break up. And behind that a stoned tripping hippy sat on a toilet and refused to let him out of a shower. And behind that, a hawk refused to live. And behind that was all he did not know about himself."

[Zevi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haven't read this book yet, but recently saw the movie based on it and thought it was fantastic. The image of the hawk attacking the buzzards as the grandfather was dying in the field will be with me forever. I hadn't even heard of Harry Crews before seeing that movie and I love Southern Gothic fiction. Crews seems like a great writer and I'm going to be reading all of his books soon. Check out the book Red Zen by Jason Earls.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thank my lucky stars that I recognized Harry Crews’s name on the spine of a mass-market paperback of this novel when I saw it at the thrift store when I was 16. Despite getting a film adaptation in 2006, it’s out of print and impossible to find online for less than $100, which is a shame because it is Crews’s masterpiece. Normally I find his novels to be mixed bags, suffering from too many lazy and repetitive sentences interspersed throughout otherwise keen and riotous prose. This one, however, is nearly perfect from beginning to end, showcasing all of Crews’s laudable qualities and omitting all his bad ones. It’s full of insightful and uniquely Crewsian meditations on voids and how we fill them, people and how we love them, and nature and how we treat it. Manning that hawk is something we all have to do, nephew’s funeral be damned.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a shame this title is out of print. The Hawk is Dying really struck a chord with me. So much so that I would put it in my top ten of books read.

I enjoyed the plot of the protagonist, George, training the hawk. H is for Hawk has been at the top of my to read list for awhile. It is definitely next now.

I grew up and still reside in the South. Crew's portrayal of how Southerners behave in their grief is spot on.

Highly recommended. Six stars!

[wally · Rating 5 out of 5]

read this one years ago, owned the paperback...that i wish i still owned so i could read it again. one of his early stories. looks like i gave it five stars which is being nice maybe too nice but he does write some good yarns. i'd read it again if i had it in front of me

[Brendon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harry Crews never disappoints. Trapped in a life that holds no meaning, a man seeks freedom via taming a hawk. A small book that manages to touch on some very large and frightening truths. He reminds me a lot of Camus... it's all very existential and I'm positive Crews is popular in France.

[Franc · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel (in my humble opinion) is the high point of Crews' fiction. Crews himself felt his best was Naked in Garden Hills, but I prefer this one.

[EC Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strange little book, seemingly quaint, even within Crews own bibliography. But there is something special about it. It has maybe Crews most passive protagonist, with seemingly a passive foil. But not all is quite as it seems, and the dark undercurrent of this one is strong indeed. Not the first one I'd recommend, but it's either his strongest minor book, or his black sheep masterpiece (amongst his four or five prize bull masterpieces).

[Stephen Griffith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quintessential Crews. Complete fixation on the need to train a hawk caught in the wild despite everything around him, including the death of his nephew, interfering. I'm furious that so many of his books are out of print because he was a true original whose appeal transcended ideological boundaries in ways that are increasingly rare.

[adele · Rating 3 out of 5]

The thing about this/my Crews-Cruise is that I have nothing intelligent to say. Lovin his work as a whole. Did not love this. Love this cover and need to acquire a copy of this edition at all costs just for that cover.

[Al Kratz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh man, I thought I had read all the great Harry Crews books. What a pleasant surprise to find one that rivals Feast of Snakes.

Classic Crews without the extreme weirdness. Yes, George is intensely into the hawk, but it’s one thing of weirdness and then the rest is just pure raw life.

[Michael Monoc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting and weird book that has sadly gone out of print. A bit melodramatic but I found the main character endlessly interesting. If you like intense psychological and familial narratives then this would be up your alley.

[Eukariot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastično remek djelo. To želim čitati, a ne neka ljubavna “ljudi se vole” sranja s kojima se ne mogu poistovijetiti. Daj mi majstora koji je odlučio biti jastrebar, kompletni je degenerik i ne zna se ponašati!

[Holden · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Maerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one got my balls wet.

[Andy Hendricks · Rating 4 out of 5]

You ask nothing when you’re born; you ask nothing when you die. Everything in between is suffering.

[Neven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dudes rock.

[Ava · Rating 5 out of 5]

reread is mandatory

[alexggrandma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to read this by renting it on the internet archive and sending that encrypted epub to an app called Adiko Next that let me read it for the length of the loan while swimming through a river of scanning-spelling-mistakes and page headings/numbers

Look. Go read it. Do that.

If you like stories about monomaniacal obsession and sad tender beauty then you owe it to yourself to read this bizarre short novel, one of my favorites ever and i will be spending 200 dollars to buy a copy

Lowkey mumblecore

I refuse to watch the paul giamatti movie version, not my george

[Troy Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

JW

[Barb Elliott]

Such an amazing book. Such a shame it's remained out of print for so long.

[Matt Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great one from Harry Crews...