The Gospel Singer

by Harry Crews, Kevin Wilson (Foreword)

“Harry Crews is magnificently twisted and brutally funny.” - Carl HiaasenA Penguin Classic Golden-haired, with the voice of an angel and a reputation as a healer, the Gospel Singer appeared on the cover of LIFE and brought thousands to their knees in Carnegie Hall. But for all his fame, he is a man in mortal torment that drives him back to his obscure and wretched hometown of Enigma, Georgia. But by the time his Cadillac pulls into Enigma, he discovers an old friend is being held at tenuous bay from a lynch mob. As Harry Crews’s first novel unfolds, the Gospel Singer is forced to give way to his torment, and in doing so he reveals to the believers who have gathered at his feet just how little he is God’s man, and how much he has contributed to the corruption of each of them. 

Genres: Fiction, Southern Gothic, Classics, Literary Fiction, Gothic, Southern, Literature

221 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 15, 2022

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

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Gospel Singer is a fine piece of the wicked Southern Gothic…
God is above and folks are below… And the Gospel Singer is a voice of God… He is a living wonder…

When Willalee Bookatee turned on that Muntz television and the Gospel Singer’s voice slipped out into his cabin, it was balm poured into a wound. Nothing mattered. The world dropped down a great big hole. Everything – whether it was a razor cut, or a tar-scalded eye, or a burning case of clap off a Tifton high-yellow whore – everything quit but that voice and it went in his head and down his flesh to where his soul slept.

Sleepy existence of a jerkwater town is disturbed… The grim murder… The merry freak fair… The Gospel Singer’s visit… This hole is his hometown…
An atmosphere of macabre mockery encompasses everything…
He sings to God but Original sin is his true vocation…

…a sea of female flesh, wet, violently heaving, smelling slightly of salt, surrounding him at the altar after the hymnsinging had ceased, the warm waves pressing in, eddying about him, a collective air coming off them smelling of breath and love.

Repentance isn’t a coin that can buy innocence.

[Guille · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nos encontramos en ese profundo sur estadounidense, entre esa llamada basura blanca que gusta de refocilarse en su barbarie, que renuncia a cualquier clase de ayuda como si ello significara reconocer su fracaso, esa gente que prefiere ahogarse en el barro que exponer sus taras al mundo. Y como en esas películas del oeste, tenemos a dos hombres enfrentados, dos hombres que representan polos opuestos de como afrontar la vida.

Teniendo de fondo un episodio de brutalidad contra una belleza blanca supuestamente cometido por un hombre negro en peligro de linchamiento, vamos conociendo a la corte que rodea a un famoso cantante de góspel de alma atormentada y supuestos poderes curativos que vuelve a su localidad de origen, un mesías irreconciliable con su causa, atormentado por la farsa de la que es protagonista ante la multitud de impedidos o deformes, física o espiritualmente, que van tras sus pasos. Un mesías que quiere huir de sus orígenes y de su María Magdalena a base de profanar su capilla una y otra vez en una viciosa escalada sin salida.

Y frente a esta beldad de voz divina encontramos al ser deforme, al enano de pie monstruoso procedente de lo más selecto de la ciudadanía norteamericana que posee unas enormes ganas de disfrutar de la vida y la sabiduría más que suficiente para conseguirlo, por muy grotesco que sea el camino.

Puede que no sea un libro perfecto (no hay que olvidar que es una primera novela) pero este relato, de ritmo algo lento en sus inicios, muy de sol de justicia, y cuyos acontecimientos se van sucediendo de forma cada vez más angustiosa envueltos en una fina e incesante lluvia, suena a culpa pero también a la necesidad de esperanza o, al menos, de justificación del fracaso, y siempre a verdad.

[Ned · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a fan of Crews, frustrated by how hard it is to acquire his books (why don’t they get reprinted?). I fear he will be lost to history and as his memory is erased so goes my existence. As his first book, the un-named gospel singer is morally repugnant yet treated as holy by the hordes who see his beauty and godliness in his voice. People are saved on the spot and he merely takes advantage of his pickings, burying himself in lust. Everyone wants a piece of him, even the killer of his sexual nemesis. This novel is aswath in deep southern poverty-stricken pathos. The writing is sharp and the moralism exudes in spite of itself. Crews is shocking today, beyond O’Connor and Welty, and goes deep into pathopsychology. The writing is sharp, and the characters memorable. Deep racism, so far beyond normal is nearly un-recognizable in this scramble. Even the black man in a small southern prison, fearing his own lynching, is seduced (p. 11): “..the Gospel Singer’s voice slipped out into his cabin, it was balm poured into a wound. Nothing mattered. The world dropped down a great big hole. Everything- whether it was a razor cut, or a tar-scalded eye, or a burning case of clap off a Tifton high-yellow whore- everything quit but that voice and it went in his head and down his flesh to where his soul slept. And he could stand whatever it was for another week.”

You’ll find freaks galore, hogs in homes, tobacco sucking women, seductive nymphets, a crazed religious manager and all manner of people in this book. The protagonist is touched by god, or so all the supplicants believe in spite of his protestations. He can’t escape, the will is on him and he must pursue his fate and the end will always be shatteringly cruel (thank you Harry). (p. 53) “…the people would stand nervously about, secretly touching him, whispering impossible requests in his ears, always there at his back like hungry doges over red meat. He would be forced to stand in their midst, impotent, castrated by his inability to relieve their suffering. All he could do was bleed for them, bleed for their ignorance and the condition of their world.”

Through these misanthropes somehow a dialectic arises (p. 82) “..If evil gave the opportunity for good, it ceased to be evil; if evil set into motion a chain of events that caused an eventual good, larger than the original evil, then it ceased to be evil. He had seen the logic of that once. And from that logi he had concluded that pain and suffering was God’s greatest gift to man… His mother, of course, had confirmed the reasoning. As she pointed out, without suffering there can be no hope for martyrdom.” Nietzsche would be proud.

The fine writing and the writhing of this sadly beautiful boy are but tragedy of the highest order. I’ll keep Crews on my top shelf.

[La loca de los libros · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maravillosa la conjunta elegida por mi queridísima Devoradora de libros para este mes de marzo. Lo terminé hace ya unos días y mi mente sigue en Enigma, ese pueblo que mi mente creía que era ficticio pero no, existe y se localiza en Georgia.
Anteriormente, ya había leído al autor con su novela "La maldición gitana" editada por @DirtyWorks, y desde entonces me enamoré de esa prosa tan característica y que tanto me gusta; descarnada, cómica y mordaz, pero también violenta y siempre con ese toque de denuncia a una realidad que le tocó muy de cerca a Crews.
Como digo, ahora le ha tocado el turno a su ópera prima.
Publicada en 1968, en "El cantante de Gospel" seremos testigos de ese intento desesperado de sus gentes (unos más que otros) por huir y buscar un futuro mejor. De la visión de ese don musical como una maldición y el talento como un estigma del que le será imposible huir.
En una ocasión, Pie, que no es otro que el máximo representante de ese circo de Freaks, comenta: "Hay Enigmas por todo este país. Por todo el mundo, y en todas partes hay hombres que luchan por salir de ellos," mostrando así la cruda realidad de sus gentes.

Ya el extenso prólogo; casi treinta páginas me parecen excesivas y me hicieron pensar que estaba leyendo una tesis de la vida y obra del autor en lugar de una presentación a la obra 😅 pero que el propio prologuista nos invita a leer al finalizar, al márgen de esto, Kiko Amat nos prepara para lo que nos vamos a encontrar, aunque como digo y también Amat, es mejor leerlo al finalizarlo porque contiene spoilers importantes de la trama. Haciendo también alusión a múltiples aspectos de la vida de Crews, entre ellos a uno que es clave y se refleja en cada una de sus novelas; en su pueblo todo el mundo era tullido, cojo, bizco o manco.
Gente que hace lo que puede con lo que tienen y así lo plasma en sus personajes, tan llenos de aristas.

Lo cierto es que lo cogí con muchas ganas pero esas expectativas iniciales hacia la mitad de la novela reconozco que mermaron un poco para volver a remontar con uno de esos finales que me gustan a mí 💥🤐
Tiene mucho que ver el hecho de que esperaba más presencia del circo de "freaks" y menos comportamientos obsesivos de parte del susodicho cantante de gospel con las mujeres. Toda esta parte, llegando al último tercio de la novela, se hace muy repetitiva, haciendo continuamente hincapié en esas conductas, unas conductas que me recordaron, en más de una ocasión, al alter ego de Bukowski que no es otro que Henry Chinaski; mostrando las más bajas pasiones, vicios y repetidos fracasos del cantante. Un personaje atormentado que se odia a si mismo y que te produce rechazo, aunque también cierta pena.
A pesar de esos pequeños altibajos, para mí el balance final es muy positivo, logrando remontar, y con creces, en ese pedazo de final 💥

"Un negro es como una mula. Aras la tierra con ella durante veinte años, pensando que es la mejor mula del mundo, hasta que un día te agachas un momento y te arranca la cabeza de una coz."

Otro aspecto que me ha gustado mucho fueron esas conversaciones absurdas, repletas de diálogos burdos, vulgares, expresando así la propia forma de hablar de la gente de Enigma, ese pueblo que parece estar sumido en la desgracia hasta que El Cantante de Gospel, del cual nunca sabremos su nombre, hace su aparición, revelándose como una suerte de Dios para sus múltiples seguidores.
Aquí algunos ejemplos de esa forma de hablar a la que me costó un poco acostumbrarme ⤵️
"¿No las tienes registrás?, ¿nunca has llevao la cuenta?"
"Encantao", "toa", "librao", "dao", "usté" o "cortao", son algunos ejemplos más.

Fanatismo religioso, masas enfervorizadas, y mucha denuncia social encontraremos entre sus páginas.
Una historia donde todo vale con tal de tener notoriedad, exponiendo una realidad muy presente hoy en día, con esa hipocresía tan patente que hace que parezca que estás leyendo una novela más reciente, y con un final apoteósico que hace que todo lo demás haya valido muchísimo la pena 🖤

"Cuando un hombre miente es porque le da vergüenza la verdad o porque desea que la mentira sea cierta."

¿Aún no has leído a Harry Crews?
¿Y a qué esperas, insensato? 😂

https://www.facebook.com/LaLocadelosL... 💀📖🖤

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.8) If you know of Harry Crews's background, you know he had a tough childhood - - He wasn't always the nicest guy, but he was a hell of a writer. "The Gospel Singer" is his debut novel and it's one of the best satires on evangelism that I've ever read. Crews never did shy away from controversy. His mix of crude humor, downright nastiness and extreme violence with great prose makes him the epitome of the Southern Gothic style. If I hadn't had read A Feast of Snakes, I may have rated this higher, but I'm used to the shock factor and it didn't hit me as hard as it had when I initially came across his writing. I am happy to see this along with A Childhood: The Biography of a Place re-printed by Penguin Classics and hope to see a lot more of his out-of-print books reborn in the near future.

[Lori Keeton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was quite a story in many weird, freakish and fantastical ways. We are introduced to a dead-end small southern town of Enigma, Georgia in which the title character grew up in a family of poor pig farmers and has escaped the humdrum life that goes nowhere and the people who are just too dumb to realize the world beyond their boundaries. The Gospel Singer is blonde and beautiful with a golden voice to charm and save souls wherever he sings. He is a famous and wealthy TV evangelist and his manager drives him around in a fancy Cadillac. Every once in a while he comes back to his hometown to visit his family and his sweetheart, MaryBell Carter. But this time, MaryBell has been raped and murdered. He is never named but we are privy to all of his shortcomings, sins, and escapades with the women. The people of Enigma are portrayed as worshippers of the Gospel Singer and the news of his return for a revival concert ramps up the excitement and fervor that a celebrity can elicit. In addition, a Freak Fair run by a man named Foot, who has a deformed 27 inch foot, has been following The Gospel Singer’s tour locations. The Gospel Singer is faced with being believed to something he is not - many believe he can heal the sick and lame - and we see how the false perceptions affect him negatively. He begins to deal with the deceptions he has inflicted as The Gospel Singer as the foolish, senseless idolization of the people of his hometown is brought to the forefront and he is forced to reckon with them.

This is Southern grotesque at its best. My first Harry Crews experience and I have to say that I didn’t love it but I didn’t hate it. As long as you enter into the experience with the realization that you’re reading a dark satirical novel, then you should be ok.

No matter how hard he argued against it, sinners at every turn accepted God on the strength of his voice. All his troubles, he told himself, stemmed from that. Because it was true, people began insisting he was something he was not; because it was true, people began insisting that he could do other things he could not. He was not willing to give up singing gospels because singing was what had allowed him to escape Enigma and live as he pleased just because the songs he sang, in some mysterious way he had never understood, saved souls.

[Devoradora De Libros · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una de las características que tiene que tener un libro para que despierte mi interés casi de manera instantánea es el ambiente que se forja en los pueblos pequeños de la América profunda, con férreas creencias religiosas, fanatismos y un toque de excentricidad. Por lo que no dudé en elegirla para este mes en mi lectura conjunta con La loca de los libros.

Nos situamos en Enigma un pueblo de Georgia. En él se ha cometido un asesinato. Han matado a la jóven MaryBell, el culpable: el negro Willalee Bookatee y es tanta la gente que va a verlo que el sheriff se ha visto obligado a poner un cartel a lápiz informando del crímen.
Todo ello se superpone con la llegada del Cantante de Góspel, todos le conocen desde que era pequeño. Se ha convertido en una eminencia a la que venerar ya no sólo por su belleza, sus bucles dorados y su bonita voz sino porque aseguran que al oirlo cantar los ciegos recobran la vista y los inválidos vuelven a andar.

Este caldo de cultivo es ideal para que el ambiente sea opresivo y agobiante. Todos esperan que el Cantante de Góspel le dedique unos minutos, hacen colas hasta bajo la lluvia para hablar con él, para verlo. Y él...tiene su propia condena, la doble moral hace aparición a cada instante y ha de ir expiando pecados.

Sus vecinos abruman y presionan, MaryBell está siendo velada en el tanatorio, una mosca verde revolotea, se hacen los preparativos para que el Cantante de Góspel cante...

Me ha fascinado la lectura y ha acabado tal y como esperaba, no habría podido tener otro final.

Si te gustan este tipo de ambientaciones, este libro lo vas a disfrutar de principio a fin.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concoction dripping with cult value. But how to describe it? It's rather like a National Enquirer exposé with literary merit. I read it in less than a day. Once it gets on its track, it rides (and reads) like a locomotive. 

But is it art? Penguin Classics thought so, since that's how it was recently re-released. That was a decision as amusing as Criterion's go-ahead in adding Russ Meyer's 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls' to its library (but don't get me wrong, I'm glad they did, esp. in blu-ray!). 

To give it its propers, 'TGS' is a fairly pungent rebuke of phony celebrity; a Southern Grotesque view of how (in different ways) opportunists and the easily-duped are likely to respond to the funhouse mirrors of fame - when it's in close proximity. 

A distant cousin to 'Elmer Gantry', the story tells of a young man with a golden voice who uses evangelism with non-religious intent; mainly to get out of his hometown in Georgia:

Gospel singing was a way to make money, a way to escape Enigma, a way to keep from having to spend his life wading around in hog slop. He had not planned on God getting into it. He was not even particularly religious, and to have someone tell him that he was responsible for saving a soul was confusing and scary.

In this 1968 debut novel, Harry Crews certainly delivered the goods in terms of page-turning storytelling. Though it's natural to compare him to fellow Southerners like Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor or Carson McCullers at their darkest, Crews, In his own way, can be as smooth and compulsive a read as Raymond Chandler. 

Particularly, he can be very effective with description.:

Myrtle and Bob's place was between Tifton and Cordeleon on U.S. 41. ... Inside, three tired-looking waitresses hurried about with bored expressions on their faces between tables of truck drivers who still wore crushed, black-peaked caps while they wolfed their food. The faint odor of gasoline hung over everything. A jukebox with small explosions of red and green and purple lights going off in its cracked plastic face screamed of love and dying at only sixteen. Behind the counter were stacks of doughnuts and NoDoz pills and waxpaper-wrapped sandwiches and racks of Zippo lighters and postcards full of naked women and stunned-looking Indians in full headdress wrestling alligators and glittery signs that said: WE DON'T PEE IN YOUR ASH TRAYS--DON'T THROW CIGARETTE BUTTS IN OUR URINAL...

Though ultimately neither as scandalous nor as lurid as its reputation might suggest, the book is still generally freewheeling in nature and even occasionally a bit erotic. Needless to say for something this propulsive, it all leads to unbridled frenzy. 

All told, a work that holds a certain fascination, without making you feel you need a shower afterwards. Apparently, subsequent Crews books get darker. (Note to self: Stop here?)

[Charlie Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

El cantante de gospel

Hay que ver lo mal que sienta la verdad, la verdad que no quieres oír, la auténtica verdad.

El cantante de gospel regresa a su pueblo, Enigma, en Georgia ,un pueblo de pueblerinos y paletos atrasados en el tiempo. Gente religiosa que idolatra al cantante, que lo tiene como un ser con poderes curativos que todo lo puede.

No crean que el cantante no es real, lo es, es el mejor en lo suyo y allá donde va, triunfa, tanto cantando como con las mujeres.

Pero tampoco es para tanto, no le gusta volver a su pueblo en el que solo hay gente atrasada, envidiosa y racista que creen que él es como un Dios. Y no es ningún ser superior. La verdad es otra muy distinta. ¿Hasta qué punto el pueblo de Enigma idolatra al cantante?
¿Podrán admitir la verdad?

Ahora regresa a Enigma luego que un negro haya matado a su antigua novia. El pueblo se prepara para linchar al negro con o sin razón, eso es lo de menos. Alguien tendrá que hacer justicia.

Para completar el cuadro, un circo de lleno de Freaks al mismo tiempo llega al pueblo, también siguen al cantante. Gente con algún defecto o tara extraordinaria que en realidad son los más cuerdos del panorama del sur Georgiano.

Un retrato del sur norteamericano visto por Crews que no tiene nada que envidiar al sur de cualquier pais. En todas partes cuecen habas, que se suele decir. Gente muy apegada a su tierra unos, y otros con muchas ganas de salir de su pueblo.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s A Feast of Snakes meets Darin Morgan’s “Humbug” meets The Apostle, and that’s just where I’m trying to come up with a sentence that, had I told it to myself before I ever opened the cover, would have given me a hint of just what it contained. It still falls woefully short of doing the book justice. It’s a mix of freaks and geeks and saints and sinners that only Harry Crews can write.

And that’s not to mention the story structure, too: taking pass after pass at the story, and each pass through a different character’s eyes adds layers you couldn’t have imagined at first. Shapes you wouldn’t think possible, until they’re only the shapes that make perfect sense.

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Gospel Singer is a veritable case study in Southern Gothic. All the usual suspects are present and accounted for: crown of thorn-twisted religiosity, atrocious subjugation of Blacks, fucking in the outdoors, et. al. What distinguishes Crews’ first novel is his idiosyncratic voice—even here in its nascent form, you sense that you’re reading an original with something special about the eyes. If Flannery O’Connor had picked up a bottle of Early Times instead of a fatal case of lupus, she might have written a not dissimilar book. As it happens, ye Gods had other plans for the Madame, and, in my unqualified opinion, Crews was the only author who had any rightful claim to her throne. Though he never attained it (no one has), he came mighty goddamn close here and in a few other bright spots in his career.

Side note: this review is a case study all its own in why you should write your reviews as fast to finishing a book as possible. With Leon Forrest and no less than Herman Fucking Melville (what a middle name!) having clogged my brainpipe since finishing this, I can’t think of a proper way to sing the substantial praises it entirely deserves. Let it be said that this book is a whole backseat's bonk of immoral fun with some imagistic flashes of brilliance. Crews, to me, is a great cleanser in between heavier fare. If that makes him sound like a laxative, then I say poo—I’m taking my ball and going home.

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone wants to leave Enigma, but like Hotel California, “you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave.”

What a tale! This is quite a quirky story populated with strange individual characters, and a story filled with the absurdity of life and its afflictions and maladies, and with the existential struggle to live with authenticity.

Five well-earned stars for this imaginative novel! Who thinks up stories like this? I guess the answer is Harry Crews, whose unique stamp could never be repeated.

I listened to the Audible version, deftly narrated by Kevin Wilson.

[Kirk Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I propose this book as the canon of Southern Grotesque. The best I've read from Crews. Everything I want in one book, a joy and a pleasure to read!! I was surprised to see it was released in 1968. The addition of 1994's Where Does One Go When There's No Place Left To Go? was a wonderful and hilarious bonus!

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah, so this is pretty much perfect.

[Vicente Ribes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entretenida y divertida primera novela de Harry Crews. Es una novela de gótico sureño y salvando las distancias podría decir que el estilo de Crews es como si mezclaras a Bukowski con Curson Mccullers.
Por un parte tienes todo lo políticamente incorrecto, el sur de Estados Unidos visto como un lugar de pobreza, vicio y paletos redomados. Por otra parte tienes personajes memorables como Didymus, MaryBell o el propio cantante de gospel peleando por su futuro de diferentes formas.
La novela es una crítica a la influencia de la religión, la fama masiva y las oportunidades que la vida nos da a unos y otros.
Un pedazo de Sur francamente disfrutable.

[WJEP · Rating 5 out of 5]

SEE THE FREAK FAIR--MARVEL AT HUMAN WONDERS!

After reading the first couple of chapters, I jumped to the opinion that this book was Harry Crews attempting to out-do (gross-out, out-grotesque, freak-out, out-freak) Flannery O'Connor and Erskine Caldwell. Crews succeeds. But the freakophillia is merely backdrop.

A beloved TeeVee-evangelist returns to his hometown and solves a murder mystery. At first, the motive is obvious:

"Why, rape," said the Gospel Singer. "Why else would a Negro kill a poor girl like MaryBell?"

Then the Gospel Singer uncovers the twisted truth. But can the truth satisfy the vengeful mob? Shockingly, yes.

[🐴 🍖]

folks the flannery-ness is off the charts here. you got a protagonist w/ a brother named gerd who almost gets recruited into a traveling freak show helmed by a guy with a 3' long foot. do you even have to ask if gerd has a cousin named maze who got kicked in the head by a mule? & i mean gerd & mirst & maze aside, there's a mess of xtian allegory, but xtian allegory that's been kicked around a bit by the fedex guy: there are disciples, martyrs, &c. but nobody maps neatly 1:1 onto a biblical figure. penguin classics is kinda killing it this year huh? recommended soundtrack: palace brothers - there is no-one what will take care of you (1993, drag city)

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible and disturbing depiction of southern evangelism, desperation, racism, and guilt. As someone who grew up in southern Appalachia, parts of this book were upsettingly all too familiar. I can particularly relate to the desperate need to escape from southern small town life, which makes the motivations of the main character and others real and, at times, uncomfortably understandable to say the least. If you grew up in the south, especially if you are familiar with the influence of Southern Christian Evangelism, small town desperation, jealous guilt tripping, and the tragic, yet particularly difficult to articulate, mindset that is overwhelming evident in many poor southern towns (If you know, you know).

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

One hell of a dirty grit filled bowl of southern goodness. Just need a biscuit.

[MM Suarez · Rating 2 out of 5]

"So by now he knew that there was nothing so monotonous in its sameness as man’s vice."

I am definitely an outlier here so I won't belabor the point, I must admit I had never heard of Harry Crews or the subgenre Southern Grotesque, turns out I don't like either one. This novel is described as satirically hysterical, I get the satire but missed the funny, simply not a good fit.

[Yolanda Cazadora Onírica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es una gloria que este autor esté traduciéndose en castellano, pertenece al tipo de escritores que escriben sobre los antihéroes, los desahuciados de la sociedad, la brutalidad y a la vez, la compasión, y la moralidad y la falta de ella.
Por otro lado, me encantan las historias donde aparecen predicadores, sumergirme en la América profunda sureña.
El personaje que da título al libro, el cantante de gospel es un personaje mezquino que solo actúa en su provecho, y que a la vez busca redención de sus actos, y no estoy haciendo spoiler ya que desde el primer momento no engaña a nadie con que su voz cura con el sólo hecho de oírla, deja que lo crean aunque este hecho le agobia, una especie de superstar con su legión de fieles.

Es una novela escrita en un tono duro y a la vez moralista según se vea, llena de humor negro con personajes que discurren entre la pena y el asco.
Una historia de huida y un deseo de redención, que se reencuentra con sus propios secretos, y la llamada White Trash que vive anclada en el pasado, porque no conoce otra cosa, o porque no quiere salir de un pueblo llamado Enigma, pero que si esperan la salvación de sus almas.

Hasta aquí puedo hablar de la novela, y os aseguro que es un placer conocer autores tan reales, y que escriben, no por éxito, en carne viva imprimiendo retazos de sus experiencias, una vida muy interesante del autor, para crear los personajes.
Las gracias a que no solo está editorial Acuarela, le está publicando novelas, sino la editorial Dirty Works, a la cual recomiendo mucho para la gente que le guste de lo peculiar por su amplio catálogo tan original.

[LouLou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crews' first novel published in 1968, the story centres around a gifted, deified singer returning to his poor hometown and a life and family he is so far removed from he now holds in contempt. The novel is as relevant today as when it was published, The Gospel Singer reveals the absurd blind faith of those who follow religion and idol worship, and the hypocrisy that results when sex and money are offered, its a vicious chain of flesh eating off flesh. The main protagonist is the aforementioned Gospel Singer, other characters include his manager, a dead girl awaiting his melodic eulogy, his dysfunctional family of swamp dwelling pig loving simpletons, a murderer, the fevered townsfolk and the ever present shadow of a travelling freak show. It's a highly enjoyable book that covers the two day visit of the Gospel Singer, stepping back in places to divulge the secrets of each character, and as such confusing judgements of empathy and disdain.

If you like Southern Gothic loaded with sex, death, religion and freaks then i cant recommend this highly enough ....

[Arantxa Rufo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mediados del siglo XX, en la América más profunda, conocemos la historia de un hombre agraciado en su aspecto y en su voz, una voz que lo ha convertido en un afamado cantante de gospel que realiza giras por todo el país.
Sin embargo, este don tiene un aspecto negativo. Quienes lo escuchan llegan a sentir que es el mismísimo Dios quien les habla, hasta el punto de que algunos llegan a achacar al cantante de gospel poderes sobrenaturales e incluso sanadores.
El cantante de gospel es un hombre normal que solo quiere ganar mucho dinero, ligarse a todas las mujeres que pueda y mantenerse lo más lejos posible de su pueblo natal.
El contraste entre lo que es y lo que los demás creen que es alcanzará cotas trágicas con su regreso a ese pueblo en el que le espera el cadáver de su única debilidad.
Una historia cínica y cruda, violenta, salvaje, grotesca y absurda como el mismo pueblo de Enigma, con un protagonista inolvidable, tanto como el resto del elenco que lo rodea: fanáticos, freaks, adoradores, aprovechados...

[wally · Rating 5 out of 5]

my copy is a dell paperback, 95cents on the cover, the gospel singer and two women standing there, "a torrid novel by harry crews" in block lettering at the bottom.

i believe this was crews's first novel. "men to whom god is dead worship one another."

i've read this one several times. the gospel singer returns to enigma, georgia. home. family. friends. willalle bookatee is in jail. the people believe the gospel singer can do no wrong. the gospel singer has a manager. things happen.

the gospel singer has an incredible voice, incredible looks, and he uses both to get what he needs, wants. i think any quarterback and then some in the s.e.c. is held in the same esteem. and so it goes.

[Mariano Hortal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inmensa macarrada con sentido la de Crews en la que fue su novela debut y que ha constituido mi bautismo de fuego del autor. Una historia mesiánica que adquiere proporciones épicas en el final y en la que no falta el buen humor al entrelazar un cantante de góspel con un circo de freaks y un pueblo de paletos supersticiosos del medio oeste norteamericano. Un cóctel explosivo que pretende reflejar de alguna manera la sociedad norteamericana y su desintegración de una manera como mínimo jocosa y que consigue la leas sin aparente esfuerzo. Un hasta pronto en toda la regla.

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrific...a fine Southern Gothic novel that is nearly impossible to find at a reasonable price. I delighted in Crews’ turn of phrases and the way he captured the backwoods Georgian accents I but felt the ending was a bit unsatisfactory. Some things were a bit confusing as well. For instance, the Gospel Singer's manager is a ex-monk who scribbles manically in his "Dream Book" and who demands that the Gospel Singer perform penance by way of singing hymns. Still, a great debut novel!

[Bethany · Rating 5 out of 5]

a deranged southern gothic masterpiece!

[Hanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm having a hard time describing the book. I could say that it's about the strange, dissonant pull of faith and depravity. Not a story, but an exhumation, a digging through the layers of dirt and shame and longing that define a Southern town bound to its own undoing. The prose has the hard edge of the gothic, its sentences sharp as broken glass and soaked in the sweat of desperation. This is a place where god is wielded as both shield and sword, and where salvation, like sin, is bought and sold.

The Gospel Singer’s voice is salvation commodified, less a divine gift than a transaction. The town becomes a grotesque stage, a microcosm of moral decay where spiritual emptiness thrives under the guise of righteousness. Its collective obsession with the Gospel Singer transforms faith into a carnival act, a lurid spectacle that exposes the performative nature of both judgment and redemption. Even the church, ostensibly a sanctuary, reeks of the same rot as the town. It’s less a house of God and more a theater for power and exploitation, reinforcing the theme of disillusionment.

For all its brutal honesty, the narrative sometimes strains under its own weight. The characters, vivid and unforgettable, risk becoming symbols rather than people; archetypes burdened with more meaning than flesh and blood can bear. And there are moments when the grotesque veers into indulgence, as though Crews cannot help but linger too long in the shadows he has summoned. The resolution feels less like a revelation and more like an inevitability, the final act of a play too preordained to surprise.

Yet to dismiss the book for its excesses would be to miss its raw power. Crews writes not of faith as it is preached but as it is lived, tangled with hypocrisy and yearning, soaked in the sweat of men who cannot escape their own darkness. His is a voice unafraid to ask what happens when salvation fails, when belief sours, curdles and turns inward, leaving only hunger where once there was hope. It's not a tender book, nor does it aim to offer comfort. It challenges you to confront the ugliness beneath the surface of grace: the pettiness, the cruelty, the desperate hunger that push its characters to extremes. For all its flaws, it remains fearless, carving raw truths from the still festering wounds of its world and leaving them to linger, unhealed and unhidden, on the pages.

[Eleanor]

Crews’s memoir was the first, and best, book I read in 2023. This novel doesn’t have quite the same heft, but is deeply steeped in the tropes of Southern writing, strongly reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor: the physical grotesque as displayed by the presence of disabled people (“freaks” and “cripples”, per the text), incongruous tableaux (pigs live in a beautiful mansion the main character has had built for his family), and sudden extreme violence; the “Christ-hauntedness” and the racism; the poverty. Somehow, though, I like Crews more. I always want to fight with O’Connor despite being seared by her vision. Perhaps precisely because Crews’s Gospel Singer (no other name is ever given him) doesn’t believe in the God to whom his voice brings sinners home all over the nation, he’s a little easier to warm to. The parallels between the Singer and Foot—the successful, sane and affluent proprietor of a traveling freak show, who has one normal foot and one that’s twenty-seven inches long—are obvious but very effective: both are exceptional in an undeniable way, but one has allowed what looks like a gift to become a curse and one has forced what looks like a curse to become a gift. Yes, the ending is an explosion of appalling violence, but it lacks the nauseating aura of complete existential disorientation that O’Connor’s violence sometimes exudes—which, for me as a reader, is a good thing. I’ll read more of Crews.

[Gregory Duke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Southern Gothic that leans heavily on the grotesque. It's a novel rampant with images of decay, poverty, anything deemed "freakish" (including a freak show). I read probably 60% of it and skimmed the rest for plot details. The Gospel Singer's relationship with sin and the self (he's a mythologized, God-like figure but actually *gasp* is a slimy guy with a high libido) motivates much of this narrative, but Crews' ruminations grow redundant by the halfway point to the point that the novel appears to become a series of intriguing set pieces rather than a wholly realized milieu. As such, The Gospel Singer rings somewhat shallow as a pulpy take on destitution rather than something greater. But the style is good! So I'll probably try another Harry Crews at a later date.