Stories was Everthything: RIP Harry Crews

It might seem alright to diminish the swath of considerable influence, the sheer force of impact the fiction of Harry Crews has left in its wake given he hasn't published a novel since 2006. It ain't. Sure, his last book An American Family was his first in eight years, published quietly by the Los Angeles small press Blood and Guts. Yes, somehow that name is appropriate. Blood and Guts. He was a prolific writer, over twenty novels, a few short story collections--and some non-fiction--his writing was all blood and guts. Not in violence, per se (though his books were often violent), but as an expression of the innards, the real, the grim insides. Harry died March 28 2012 from complications of neuropathpathy and while his name may not be as familiar to readers in the Midwest, living in Gainesville, Florida in the late 1990s and early 2000s he was surely a towering literary presence of near mythic proportions. Fledgling writers would relocate to Gainesville to enroll in the University of Florida's Creative Writing Program to be schooled, to learn from him.





He cajoled and berated many of them. He terrified others, the poor unsuspecting undergrad who unknowingly registered then stumbled into his class. In Gainesville, the stories abound about Harry. Not all of them good. They were set in the humid Florida air like some hazy folklore. But as Harry mentions in the film clip (below) from the documentary Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus: "stories was everything and everything was stories". If this doesn’t make him sound so appealing, then maybe that’s ok too. His fiction certainly isn’t for everyone. A Southern writer, both blunt and grotesque, in the great tradition of Flannery O’Connor with the grace, perception and the heart of Eudora Welty. I sure hope Harry had been working on another book before he shuffled off this mortal coil.



Check out some of his books from our collection, I'd recommend A Feast of Snakes or All We Need of Hell to get started.

For more information, there's a really great remembrance here.