Perspectives on Harry Crews

Perspectives on Harry Crews

Author: Erik Bledsoe

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2001-02-19

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1578063221

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A look into the poor-white world of one of the South's spellbinding storytellers


Book Synopsis Perspectives on Harry Crews by : Erik Bledsoe

Download or read book Perspectives on Harry Crews written by Erik Bledsoe and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2001-02-19 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look into the poor-white world of one of the South's spellbinding storytellers


Perspectives on Harry Crews

Perspectives on Harry Crews

Author: Bledsoe, Erik

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2001

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781604736519

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Book Synopsis Perspectives on Harry Crews by : Bledsoe, Erik

Download or read book Perspectives on Harry Crews written by Bledsoe, Erik and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2001 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:


Perspectives on Harry Crews

Perspectives on Harry Crews

Author: Erik Bledsoe

Publisher:

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13:

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A look into the poor-white world of one of the South's spellbinding storytellers


Book Synopsis Perspectives on Harry Crews by : Erik Bledsoe

Download or read book Perspectives on Harry Crews written by Erik Bledsoe and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look into the poor-white world of one of the South's spellbinding storytellers


A Childhood

A Childhood

Author: Harry Crews

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-03-15

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0143135333

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“One of the Finest Memoirs Ever Written” –The New Yorker The highly acclaimed memoir of one of the most original American storytellers of the rural South A Penguin Classic Harry Crews grew up as the son of a sharecropper in Georgia at a time when “the rest of the country was just beginning to feel the real hurt of the Great Depression but it had been living in Bacon County for years.” Yet what he conveys in this moving, brutal autobiography of his first six years of life is an elegiac sense of community and roots from a rural South that had rarely been represented in this way. Interweaving his own memories including his bout with polio and a fascination with the Sears, Roebuck catalog, with the tales of relatives and friends, he re-creates a childhood of tenderness and violence, comedy and tragedy.


Book Synopsis A Childhood by : Harry Crews

Download or read book A Childhood written by Harry Crews and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the Finest Memoirs Ever Written” –The New Yorker The highly acclaimed memoir of one of the most original American storytellers of the rural South A Penguin Classic Harry Crews grew up as the son of a sharecropper in Georgia at a time when “the rest of the country was just beginning to feel the real hurt of the Great Depression but it had been living in Bacon County for years.” Yet what he conveys in this moving, brutal autobiography of his first six years of life is an elegiac sense of community and roots from a rural South that had rarely been represented in this way. Interweaving his own memories including his bout with polio and a fascination with the Sears, Roebuck catalog, with the tales of relatives and friends, he re-creates a childhood of tenderness and violence, comedy and tragedy.


Getting Naked with Harry Crews

Getting Naked with Harry Crews

Author: Harry Crews

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 9780813017099

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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.


Book Synopsis Getting Naked with Harry Crews by : Harry Crews

Download or read book Getting Naked with Harry Crews written by Harry Crews and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.


Florida Frenzy

Florida Frenzy

Author: Harry Crews

Publisher: University Press of Florida

Published: 1982

Total Pages: 138

ISBN-13: 9780813007267

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"Fourteen essays and articles and three short stories that will hit you right between the eyes. Crews writing is informed by a deep love of language, literature, nature, blood sports, and his own kind of people--namely rural, southern, hard-drinking, honest-measure hell-raisers. We are all lucky to have him to tell us about cockfighting, dogfighting, mending an injured hawk, becoming a great jockey, poaching gators, and taking ourselves much too seriously"--Chicago Tribune "The author's gifts include an elegant and easy style, a knack for telling a good story, and a wry and riotous sense of humor. . . . Unforgettable characters whose preoccupations evoke such memorable detail. Despite the concreteness of his descriptions, his sports cronies and the bar rats he encounters take on a universality in his graceful prose."--Newsday In this collection of fiction and essays, Crews focuses on the people and places of Florida--full of natural wonders and other, grimier delights that make perfect grist for his forceful style, Southern Gothic sensibilities, and rowdy sense of humor. From poaching gators, to the Gatornationals, to cockfighting--a must-have collection for Harry Crews fans new and old.


Book Synopsis Florida Frenzy by : Harry Crews

Download or read book Florida Frenzy written by Harry Crews and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 1982 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Fourteen essays and articles and three short stories that will hit you right between the eyes. Crews writing is informed by a deep love of language, literature, nature, blood sports, and his own kind of people--namely rural, southern, hard-drinking, honest-measure hell-raisers. We are all lucky to have him to tell us about cockfighting, dogfighting, mending an injured hawk, becoming a great jockey, poaching gators, and taking ourselves much too seriously"--Chicago Tribune "The author's gifts include an elegant and easy style, a knack for telling a good story, and a wry and riotous sense of humor. . . . Unforgettable characters whose preoccupations evoke such memorable detail. Despite the concreteness of his descriptions, his sports cronies and the bar rats he encounters take on a universality in his graceful prose."--Newsday In this collection of fiction and essays, Crews focuses on the people and places of Florida--full of natural wonders and other, grimier delights that make perfect grist for his forceful style, Southern Gothic sensibilities, and rowdy sense of humor. From poaching gators, to the Gatornationals, to cockfighting--a must-have collection for Harry Crews fans new and old.


The Mulching of America

The Mulching of America

Author: Harry Crews

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13:

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Harry Crews turns the classic rags-to-riches story on its head in this hilarious saga of the trials and tribulations of a beleaguered salesman. "An over-the-top comedy in which the veteran wild man of redneck fiction casts his satirical eye on the all-American world of door-to-door sales".--Kirkus Reviews.


Book Synopsis The Mulching of America by : Harry Crews

Download or read book The Mulching of America written by Harry Crews and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harry Crews turns the classic rags-to-riches story on its head in this hilarious saga of the trials and tribulations of a beleaguered salesman. "An over-the-top comedy in which the veteran wild man of redneck fiction casts his satirical eye on the all-American world of door-to-door sales".--Kirkus Reviews.


The Postsouthern Sense of Place in Contemporary Fiction

The Postsouthern Sense of Place in Contemporary Fiction

Author: Martyn Bone

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2005-06-01

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780807130537

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For generations, southern novelists and critics have grappled with a concept that is widely seen as a trademark of their literature: a strong attachment to geography, or a "sense of place." In the 1930s, the Agrarians accorded special meaning to rural life, particularly the farm, in their definitions of southern identity. For them, the South seemed an organic and rooted region in contrast to the North, where real estate development and urban sprawl evoked a faceless, raw capitalism. By the end of the twentieth century, however, economic and social forces had converged to create a modernized South. How have writers responded to this phenomenon? Is there still a sense of place in the South, or perhaps a distinctly postsouthern sense of place? Martyn Bone innovatively draws upon postmodern thinking to consider the various perspectives that southern writers have brought to the concept of "place" and to look at its fate in a national and global context. He begins with a revisionist assessment of the Agrarians, who failed in their attempts to turn their proprietary ideal of the small farm into actual policy but whose broader rural aesthetic lived on in the work of neo-Agrarian writers, including William Faulkner and Eudora Welty. By the 1950s, adherence to this aesthetic was causing southern writers and critics to lose sight of the social reality of a changing South. Bone turns to more recent works that do respond to the impact of capitalist spatial development on the South -- and on the nation generally -- including that self-declared "international city" Atlanta. Close readings of novels by Robert Penn Warren, Walker Percy, Richard Ford, Anne Rivers Siddons, Tom Wolfe, and Toni Cade Bambara illuminate evolving ideas about capital, land, labor, and class while introducing southern literary studies into wider debates around social, cultural, and literary geography. Bone concludes his remarkably rich book by considering works of Harry Crews and Barbara Kingsolver that suggest the southern sense of place may be not only post-Agrarian or postsouthern but also transnational.


Book Synopsis The Postsouthern Sense of Place in Contemporary Fiction by : Martyn Bone

Download or read book The Postsouthern Sense of Place in Contemporary Fiction written by Martyn Bone and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2005-06-01 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For generations, southern novelists and critics have grappled with a concept that is widely seen as a trademark of their literature: a strong attachment to geography, or a "sense of place." In the 1930s, the Agrarians accorded special meaning to rural life, particularly the farm, in their definitions of southern identity. For them, the South seemed an organic and rooted region in contrast to the North, where real estate development and urban sprawl evoked a faceless, raw capitalism. By the end of the twentieth century, however, economic and social forces had converged to create a modernized South. How have writers responded to this phenomenon? Is there still a sense of place in the South, or perhaps a distinctly postsouthern sense of place? Martyn Bone innovatively draws upon postmodern thinking to consider the various perspectives that southern writers have brought to the concept of "place" and to look at its fate in a national and global context. He begins with a revisionist assessment of the Agrarians, who failed in their attempts to turn their proprietary ideal of the small farm into actual policy but whose broader rural aesthetic lived on in the work of neo-Agrarian writers, including William Faulkner and Eudora Welty. By the 1950s, adherence to this aesthetic was causing southern writers and critics to lose sight of the social reality of a changing South. Bone turns to more recent works that do respond to the impact of capitalist spatial development on the South -- and on the nation generally -- including that self-declared "international city" Atlanta. Close readings of novels by Robert Penn Warren, Walker Percy, Richard Ford, Anne Rivers Siddons, Tom Wolfe, and Toni Cade Bambara illuminate evolving ideas about capital, land, labor, and class while introducing southern literary studies into wider debates around social, cultural, and literary geography. Bone concludes his remarkably rich book by considering works of Harry Crews and Barbara Kingsolver that suggest the southern sense of place may be not only post-Agrarian or postsouthern but also transnational.


Twentieth-Century Southern Literature

Twentieth-Century Southern Literature

Author: J. A. BryantJr.

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-11-21

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 0813187400

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Authors discussed include: Wendell Berry, Erskine Caldwell, Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Shelby Foote, Zora Neal Hurston, Bobbie Ann Mason, Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O'Connor, William Styron, Anne Tyler, Alice Walker, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Thomas Wolfe, Richard Wright, and many more. By World War II, the Southern Renaissance had established itself as one of the most significant literary events of the century, and today much of the best American fiction is southern fiction. Though the flowering of realistic and local-color writing during the first two decades of the century was a sign of things to come, the period between the two world wars was the crucial one for the South's literary development: a literary revival in Richmond came to fruition; at Vanderbilt University a group of young men produced The Fugitive, a remarkable, controversial magazine that published some of the century's best verse in its brief run; and the publication and widespread recognition of Faulkner (among others) inaugurated the great flood of southern writing that was to follow in novels, short stories, poetry, and plays. With more than forty years of experience writing and reading about the subject, and friendships with many of the figures discussed, J. A. Bryant is uniquely qualified to provide the first comprehensive account of southern American literature since 1900. Bryant pays attention to both the cultural and the historical context of the works and authors discussed, and presents the information in an enjoyable, accessible style. No lover of great American literature can afford to be without this book.


Book Synopsis Twentieth-Century Southern Literature by : J. A. BryantJr.

Download or read book Twentieth-Century Southern Literature written by J. A. BryantJr. and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-11-21 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Authors discussed include: Wendell Berry, Erskine Caldwell, Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Shelby Foote, Zora Neal Hurston, Bobbie Ann Mason, Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O'Connor, William Styron, Anne Tyler, Alice Walker, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Thomas Wolfe, Richard Wright, and many more. By World War II, the Southern Renaissance had established itself as one of the most significant literary events of the century, and today much of the best American fiction is southern fiction. Though the flowering of realistic and local-color writing during the first two decades of the century was a sign of things to come, the period between the two world wars was the crucial one for the South's literary development: a literary revival in Richmond came to fruition; at Vanderbilt University a group of young men produced The Fugitive, a remarkable, controversial magazine that published some of the century's best verse in its brief run; and the publication and widespread recognition of Faulkner (among others) inaugurated the great flood of southern writing that was to follow in novels, short stories, poetry, and plays. With more than forty years of experience writing and reading about the subject, and friendships with many of the figures discussed, J. A. Bryant is uniquely qualified to provide the first comprehensive account of southern American literature since 1900. Bryant pays attention to both the cultural and the historical context of the works and authors discussed, and presents the information in an enjoyable, accessible style. No lover of great American literature can afford to be without this book.


Classic Crews

Classic Crews

Author: Harry Crews

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 1993-10-08

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 0671865277

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Includes two of Crews' full-length novels, The Gypsy's Curse and Car, his autobiography, and three of his essays.


Book Synopsis Classic Crews by : Harry Crews

Download or read book Classic Crews written by Harry Crews and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1993-10-08 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes two of Crews' full-length novels, The Gypsy's Curse and Car, his autobiography, and three of his essays.