"Agile, mobile and hostile": the death of Harry Crews.
Dwight Garner had a nice overview of tough-guy Southern novelist Harry Crews in yesterday's (Thursday, 29 March) "ArtsBeat" blog on the New York Times's website ("Reading Crews, a Novelist as Swaggering as His Characters"); Crews passed away on Wednesday, 28 March, at the age of 76.
(SIDEBAR: the NY Times will restrict non-subscribers to ten articles -- including pictures -- from their site per month beginning 1 April, down from the twenty articles previously allowed. Freeloaders Non-subscribers, such as myself, will have to either exercise even greater discretion in selecting their articles, or access NYT's site on multiple devices.)
I've had his novel The Knockout Artist on my shelf for a number of years; while I've considered reading it at various times, it just might be his death that finally bestirs me into picking it up. Garner cites Russell Banks's review of Crews's All We Need of Hell for this description of Crews's writing: "His prose has the qualities he says Coach Jake Gaither of Florida A.& M. required of football players: ‘Agile, mobile and hostile.’ ” For his part, Crews -- at least in his later years -- was self-aware enough to see the untenability of his mucho-macho posturings and pastimes: "'Anybody who is going to defend much of the way I've spent my life is mad.'"
Garner's concluding sentence is a touching coda to Crews's life and career: "The literary world needs its outsiders and outlaws, now more than ever, and with Mr. Crews’s passing there are very, very few of them left."
(SIDEBAR: the NY Times will restrict non-subscribers to ten articles -- including pictures -- from their site per month beginning 1 April, down from the twenty articles previously allowed. Freeloaders Non-subscribers, such as myself, will have to either exercise even greater discretion in selecting their articles, or access NYT's site on multiple devices.)
I've had his novel The Knockout Artist on my shelf for a number of years; while I've considered reading it at various times, it just might be his death that finally bestirs me into picking it up. Garner cites Russell Banks's review of Crews's All We Need of Hell for this description of Crews's writing: "His prose has the qualities he says Coach Jake Gaither of Florida A.& M. required of football players: ‘Agile, mobile and hostile.’ ” For his part, Crews -- at least in his later years -- was self-aware enough to see the untenability of his mucho-macho posturings and pastimes: "'Anybody who is going to defend much of the way I've spent my life is mad.'"
Garner's concluding sentence is a touching coda to Crews's life and career: "The literary world needs its outsiders and outlaws, now more than ever, and with Mr. Crews’s passing there are very, very few of them left."