All We Need of Hell

A Failure of the Imagination

alternativereel — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:34:27 +0000

“The reading public bothers me, though. They don’t want to read about the blood and bones and guts of an issue. They want to read about something they’re not going to have to think about, and if it does hurt them, as say Love Story does, it won’t last very long. What has happened in this country is a failure of the imagination.” — Harry Crews, quoted in Getting Naked with Harry Crews (edited by Erik Bledsoe, University of Florida Press, 1999)

Alaska

alternativereel — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:30:11 +0000

“It was no doubt gratuitous, even sentimental, but looking at the butterfly on the young whore’s ass, I thought of the long snaking pipeline falling from Prudhoe Bay across the interior of Alaska to the Bay of Valdez. I thought: If Alaska is not our young whore, what is she? She is rich, but who can live with her? She is full of all that will pleasure us, but she is hard and cold to the bone. And if we scar her, leave her with pestilence and corrupted with infection, irrefutably marked with our own private design, who can blame us? Didn’t we buy her for a trifling sum to start with?”
—Harry Crews, “Going Down in Valdeez,” Blood and Grits, 1979

Dumbasses

alternativereel — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:56:40 +0000

“So, the dumbasses out there that are watching television until they are rotting in their souls, watching Walter Cronkite and Happy Days, who cannot read my fiction, and say that it’s gratuitous, I say they have no eyes, no ears, no heart, no mouth, no sympathy, no charity for the human predicament. And they think that the human predicament and situation is living over in suburbia with a high wall around yourself and worrying about annuities and your tax-sheltered income.” —Harry Crews, Getting Naked with Harry Crews

Make Something Happen

alternativereel — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:40:57 +0000

“. . . domesticity just bores the living shit out of me. And when I get bored, I have to go out and make something happen. And wives don’t take kindly to that. They send you out for a loaf of bread, and you come back three days later all beat and broken up and full of vomit. They naturally don’t like that.” —Harry Crews, Getting Naked with Harry Crews

Harry Crews on Writing, Part 2

alternativereel — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:46:02 +0000

Harry Crews on Writing, Part 1

alternativereel — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:43:40 +0000

Survival is Triumph Enough

alternativereel — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 03:13:51 +0000

Lakes of Fire

alternativereel — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:41:16 +0000

“Hell came right along with God, hand in hand. The stink of sulfur swirled in the air of the church, fire burned in the aisles, and brimstone rained out of the rafters. From the evangelist’s oven mouth spewed images of a place with pitchforks, and devils, and lakes of fire that burned forever. God had fixed a place like that because he loved us so much.” —Harry Crews, A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, 1978

Harry Crews on “The Dennis Miller Show,” 1992

alternativereel — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:34:20 +0000

Harry Crews discusses his latest novel, Scar Lover, on “The Dennis Miller Show,” February 4, 1992.

A Shirt Full of Puke

alternativereel — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:36:49 +0000

“Alcohol whipped me. Alcohol and I had many, many marvelous times together. We laughed, we talked, we danced at the party together; then one day I woke up and the band had gone home and I was lying in the broken glass with a shirt full of puke and I said, ‘Hey, man, the ball game’s up.’”
—Harry Crews, quoted in Getting Naked with Harry Crews (edited by Erik Bledsoe, University of Florida Press, 1999)