Perspectives on Harry Crews / edited by Erik Bledsoe.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bledsoe, Erik, 1965-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Crews, Harry, 1935-2012--Criticism and interpretation.

Crews, Harry.

Crews, Harry, 1935-2012.

Criticism and interpretation.

Southern States--In literature.

Southern States.

Rural poor in literature.

White people in literature.

Physical Description:

xiv, 237 pages ; 24 cm

Other Title:

Harry Crews

Place of Publication:

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2001]

Summary:

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

Critics have called Harry Crews a "mad genius" and "Flannery O'Connor on steroids." His novels chronicle the southern world on the edge of insanity. His characters set out to eat an entire car on national television, attend rattlesnake round-ups, and become obsessed with training hawks when their suburban lives collapse. Crews has created a bizarre literary landscape, and this book is a critical collection devoted to helping readers traverse it.

Much of the previous critical work on Crews has focused on a rather narrow range of topics, primarily the grotesque elements. Here is an exploration of new avenues as well as revisits in Crews's unique literary terrains. Essays examine his redneck masculinity, the political implications in his writing, and his curious absence from the cutting edge of present-day critical theory despite the richness of his novels in subjects generally of interest to these critical theorists. Other essays examine his literary naturalism, the impact on his work of the particular area of southern Georgia from which he hails, and the nature of his relationship with the British novelist Graham Greene, whom Crews long has claimed as one of the writers who influenced him most.

Rounding out this collection are an interview with Crews, a critical bibliography, and two chapters from Assault of Memory, Crews's work-in-progress and the sequel to A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, his widely acclaimed memoir.

Contents:

Harry Crews, mentor and friend / Larry Brown

"Is your novel worth a damn?": meeting Harry Crews / Tim McLaurin

"The use of I, lovely and terrifying word": autobiographical authority and the representation of "redneck" masculinity in A childhood / James H. Watkins

Travels in Greeneland: Graham Greene's influence on Harry Crews / Richard Rankin Russell

Silences, criticisms, and laments: the political implications of Harry Crews's work / Gary L. Long

"Everthing is eating everthing else": the naturalistic impulse in Harry Crews's A feast of snakes / Tim Edwards

Having a hard time of it: women in the novels of Harry Crews / Elise S. Lake

Harry Crews's home place: an excursion into Wiregrass Country and the carnivalesque / Jerrilyn McGregory

The grit émigré in Harry Crews's fiction / Matthew Guinn

Harry Crews's away games: home and sport in A feast of snakes and Body / Scott Romine

The performative body in Harry Crews's Karate is a thing of the spirit / Nicholas Spencer

An interview with Harry Crews / Erik Bledsoe

Assault of memory / Harry Crews

Keeping up with Harry Crews: a bibliography of works, interviews, and critical texts / Damon Sauve.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-227) and index.

ISBN:

1578063213

1578063221

OCLC:

44619408