The Gospel Singer

“The Gospel Singer was an assertion of Crews’s Southernness, of his claim both to the lofty inheritance of Faulkner and O’Connor and to the clipped, enchorial rhythms of Bacon County.”
—Charlie Lee, Harper’s

“Flannery O’Connor on steroids.”
—John Williams, GQ

“I don’t know where [Harry Crews’s] narrative magic comes from, but it is firmly there.”
—Joseph Heller

“…a bona fide Southern writer in the vein of Flannery O’Connor, whose unvarnished language and absurdist take on life among the lower rungs of the region’s social ladder [is] shot through with a rough-and-tumble kind of empathy….it was with great pleasure that I spent last weekend reading The Gospel Singer,… a darkly funny tragedy…. The world he writes about is violent and ruthless….But there’s a point to Crews’ madness, and always present is a throughline of empathy…”
—Atlanta Journal Constitution

“Critics and awards anoint some authors as legends. Others depend on word-of-mouth and prose that stands the test of time….There is nothing folksy, never mind pastoral or genteel, about Crews. With caustic and fabulist writing, he exhumed the ghosts of America’s original sin…..Crews captured the raw essence of humanity in both fiction and nonfiction. Side by side, these reissues form the complete picture of an imperfect man who charged hard into extremes to escape his cultural inheritance.”
—Lauren Leblanc, Los Angeles Times

Harry Crews was born in 1935 in Alma, Bacon County, Georgia. His childhood was marked by hardship, including the death of his father before he was two, a mysterious childhood paralysis, a scalding accident, and his mother’s tumultuous second marriage. These experiences fueled his desire to write.

After serving in the Marine Corps, Crews attended the University of Florida on the GI Bill, earning degrees in literature and education. He taught English at the high school and junior college levels.

A protégé of Southern novelist Andrew Lytle, Crews published his first short story in the Sewanee Review in 1962 and his first novel, The Gospel Singer, in 1968. This success led to a teaching position at the University of Florida and the publication of seven more novels within eight years, including Naked in Garden Hills (1969), Car (1972), The Hawk Is Dying (1973), The Gypsy’s Curse (1974), and A Feast of Snakes (1976).

Crews gained recognition as a bold voice in Southern literature. During the 1970s, he also wrote for popular magazines, contributing essays and screenplays. His acclaimed memoir, A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, was published in 1978. Two compilations of his nonfiction, Blood and Grits and Florida Frenzy, followed in 1979 and 1982.

After a period of substance abuse, Crews returned with his ninth novel, All We Need of Hell, in 1987. He retired from teaching at the University of Florida after thirty years.

Crews, who died in 2012, was a prominent figure in the “Dirty South” or “Grit Lit” literary genre, known for its eccentric characters, graphic violence, and satirical surrealism. He drew inspiration from authors like William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, but forged his own distinctive style in eighteen novels, numerous nonfiction pieces, and a notable memoir. His works include Karate Is a Thing of the Spirit (1971), The Knockout Artist (1988), and Body (1990).

In 2002, Harry Crews was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.