A Feast of Snakes

by Harry Crews

[jamiereadthis]

“I don’t like snakes,” she said.
“You’re in a hell of a place if you don’t like snakes. Why’d you come?”

Faulkner said— or, it’s something close enough to what Faulkner would say— you can’t understand the world until you’ve understood a place like Mississippi.

This, right here, seems to add: you can’t understand the world until you’ve understood Mystic, Georgia.

Harry Crews doesn’t put this place on the map. This is the map. Joe Lon and Elf and Beeder and Big Joe and Lummy and Lottie May. It’s the hundred-and-fifty-pound guy who could get three hundred pounds on the bench: “A hundred-and-fifty pound guy who could get three hundred pounds on the bench was nobody to fuck with. It meant that somewhere there inside him was a little knot of craziness that made him pay the price.”

Meaning, this is one hell of a book. And his dialogue sings.

He saw his life too clearly, knew too well where it was going, and all the time Berenice sat on the other side, her crazy face oblivious to the speed, flashing her thighs and humming Dixie a little high and off-key.