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, a rural community near the Okefenokee Swamp. His father, a tenant farmer, died before Harry was two years old. A childhood paralysis, a scalding accident, his mother’s turbulent marriage and divorce, and a move to Jacksonville, Florida, 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 Andrew Lytle, Crews published his first short story in the Sewanee Review in 1962 and his first novel, The Gospel Singer, in 1968. This led to a teaching position at the University of Florida and the publication of seven more novels in eight years, including Naked in Garden Hills (1969), Car (1972), The Hawk Is Dying (1973), The Gypsy’s Curse (1974), and the acclaimed A Feast of Snakes (1976).

Crews’s reputation as a bold Southern writer grew. He wrote for magazines like Esquire and Playboy, and penned screenplays. His memoir, A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, was published in 1978 to acclaim. Two compilations of his nonfiction, Blood and Grits and Florida Frenzy, were released in 1979 and 1982. After a period of substance abuse, he published 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 at seventy-six, was a prominent figure in the “Dirty South” or “Grit Lit” genre, known for its eccentric characters, violence, and satire. His influences included William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, but he forged his own distinct Southern gothic style in eighteen novels, numerous nonfiction pieces, and a notable memoir. In 2002, he 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.