The Back Alley Archives

Hearing word today that novelist and Gainesville resident Harry Crews has passed away. Very sad news if true.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Harry Crews, an author best known for his gritty tales of the rural South, died Wednesday in Gainesville, Fla. He was 76 and had suffered from neuropathy, said his ex-wife, Sally Ellis Crews.

“He had been very ill,” she told The Associated Press on Thursday. “In a way it was kind of a blessing. He was in a lot of pain.”

Crews, author of 17 novels and numerous short stories, also taught graduate and undergraduate fiction writing workshops at the University of Florida from 1968 until his retirement in 1997.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obi ... story.html

Used to see him out jogging all the time when I was in high school. If you didn't know he was a professor at UF, you'd think he was a crazy street person with his mohawk, Oakland Raiders shirts, and sunglasses.

I knew he wasn't well these past years. I has a sad.

Took a year's worth of classes with him; seen the drunk days and the sober. He was a remarkable model.

When I was in grad school, people used to tell stories about Crews showing up for a faculty party drunk with a young lady on his arm and the night ending with him and Padgett Powell about to beat the shit out of one another.

A friend of mine went to a book signing with him one time and ended up telling Crews a story about going fishing with some locals he met at the fishing spot he was at. Crews signed his book, "Keep on fucking and fishing and fucking and fishing." Classic. I have a couple of signed copies of his books around here somewhere.

I have at least one signed first edition Crews book. I always wish I could have just run into him in Gainesville.