Blood and Grits

by Harry Crews

Profiles of Charles Bronson and Robert Blake, descriptions of Appalachian hillbillies, and an account of life with a traveling carnival are among the nonfiction selections which, taken collectively, provide insight into Harry Crews the man

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Essays, Short Stories, Southern Gothic, Southern, Travel

213 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Harry Eugene Crews was born during the Great Depression to sharecroppers in Bacon County, Georgia. His father died when he was an infant and his mother quickly remarried. His mother later moved her sons to Jacksonville, Florida. Crews is twice divorced and is the father of two sons. His eldest son drowned in 1964.

Crews served in the Korean War and, following the war, enrolled at the University of Florida under the G.I. Bill. After two years of school, Crews set out on an extended road trip. He returned to the University of Florida in 1958. Later, after graduating from the master's program, Crews was denied entrance to the graduate program for Creative Writing. He moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where he taught English at Broward Community College. In 1968, Crews' first novel, The Gospel Singer, was published. Crews returned to the University of Florida as an English faculty member.

In spring of 1997, Crews retired from UF to devote himself fully to writing. Crews published continuously since his first novel, on average of one novel per year. He died in 2012, at the age of 78.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

17 essays written by fiction author Crews - all published in Playboy and Esquire in the early '70s - ranging widely in topic from bio sketches of Charles Bronson and William Blake to life as a carny or independent trucker. Crews inserts himself as a major character in all of these essays; his upbringing in poor Georgia swampland provides bedrock for all of his reflections and the filters through which he sees his subjects.

The opening piece "A Walk in the Country" and the very personal "The Hawk is Flying" are my two favorites - but each of the pieces held something for me, even if it simply Crews' ability to bring a character to life on the page. I have not yet read any of his fiction - this book has convinced me to add him to my 2014 list.

Recommended.

[Kirk Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection was published in 1979, so the writing reflects the 60's and 70's and is extremely good and very amusing. Harry Crews is best described as rough around the edges. Boy, do Harry and I get along! It was mentioned that if you loved reading about his early years in A Childhood: The Biography of a Place, and would like to understand his adult life, then this is the book of choice. Great short stories that are fantastically fun!

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a good thing that when I was a pre-teen my intake of Southern stories fell more towards Lewis Grizzard than Harry Crews. I'm not saying anything bad would have happened to me, but these are the kinds of stories that might well warp young minds, and not in the most profitable of ways.

On the other hand, I probably have had to live until now to truly understand what emotions generated the sentiment behind some of these stories, and will probably need to live longer to process the rest, and at the rate I'm going (versus the rate at which Crews went) I may never get there.

A few years ago I learned of Crews and immediately went out and bought A Feast of Snakes, a book in which I was disappointed in a manner that I can not articulate. It will just have to suffice that the book did not touch me directly or move me significantly.

Crews died recently, as you have probably heard, and upon learning of his death I thought, "I really need to give this guy another chance" so I polled the library and found Blood and Grits and once it was in my possession I put off opening it, thinking I was going to be disappointed again. I can tell you that when I finally started the book I was waiting on some timer in the kitchen and when it went off I didn't want to put the book down, and I was only 10 pages in.

This man writes powerful hooks.

I want to quote the following two passages, not to intimate that Crews was some sort of Southern Hunter S. Thompson, no, but to at least say that they were in the same tribe, men with potent stirrings in their heads that can't be satisfied with words or action and that lead them through strange courses.

The first one makes me sad because Crews just sounds so powerless against whatever was rioting inside him:

"She was right, of course. I was in a boiling, seething, sourceless rage. I thought I was on my way to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I meant to go. Where I was actually on my way to was a jail cell in Grapevine, Texas. Nothing serious. Just your run-of-the-mill hate that had surfaced during the night from wherever it keeps itself and it had to be worked out. The cops let me walk the next morning. Someday I'd like to write a thing called Jails I Have Known. One thing I'll be damn sure to include is how the cops in Grapevine handcuff you. If you'll just reach over your right shoulder with your right hand, and then take your left hand and put it on your left kidney and go on up with it until your fingers touch between your shoulder blades, you'll have it. I'd never been fitted to a a pair that way before, and it hurt like hell. But them good ole boys in Grapevine know what they're doing. The pain from the cuffs and lying cold all night on a naked cement floor cooled my fever like Vicks poultice from the soothing hand of my dear old mama."

and the second makes me laugh in a half-sorrowful way:

"The bartender said we must have gone right through Pasadena to get where we were, which was the next town over, called Arcadia, I think. I had just switched to whiskey sours, explaining to Morrow that it had just occurred to me that I had not eaten in several days and when that happened I always switched from vodka to whiskey sours because the sugar and the orange slice and the cherry are great sources of energy.

By the time the bar closed I was as confused as a ten-dick dog, but it had nothing to do with the small grove of oranges and cherries I'd eaten my way through."

I wish there were a way I could be my age now and have Crews around the same and we could go on an adventure. Maybe just an hour. Not a Thompson high-toned madcap drug-fueled adventure, but a leaden one plastered with dull heartache. Basically I want to have been there for at least one of these stories. I also want, after having read all these pages, to tell Crews that it's all right, everything is okay - but I know there's no way on Earth or in Hell that anyone could have gotten that through to him.

[Michael Tower · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I have quite enough craziness in my own head without borrowing any from somebody else.”

“I was an hour late because somebody had boosted my tape recorder out of the room where I was staying in what was called a motel but was actually a whorehouse, and I was wet because it had been raining for two days in Los Angeles, where it never rains, and I’d had trouble getting a ride because the largest cab company in town was not operating. Everything was running with such a predictable rightness- at least predictable for my life- that I knew everything was going to be fine.”

[Michela · Rating 5 out of 5]

With this collection Crews cements himself as one of my all time favorite writers. He picks the best subject matter and finds the most interesting people and then climbs inside his source material and writes his way out with unbelievably stupendous prose. Hilarious and scary and truly awesome.

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Likely Crews' strongest single collection of journo pieces, made possible by the 10-years from which to pull the best. Exceptional breadth here.

[wally · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought I'd read this in the somewhat distant past although I have not marked it as read. If so, it was a library copy, from either the Alachua County or Gainesville Public Library, I forget what it was called, or the UF Library there in town where I'd heard and read of Harry Crews and later I did take at least one course taught by the man.

These are essays, many originally appearing in Esquire and the few I've read to date do not sound familiar, although they have that familiar Crews' voice. He has a quote from someone, usually, in most of his stories and this one has a nice one, from Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass:

"I can't believe that," said Alice.
"Can't you?" the Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again; draw a long breath, and shut your eyes."

Onward and upward.

In "A Walk in the Country" that originally appeared in Playboy Crews writes about hiking the Appalachian Trail, about meeting a man name Jake Leach in a bar in Tennessee, Jake, a lawyer by avocation, tells Crews and the three others with him about the hanging of Alice, that Jake had witnessed when he was five. Alice is an elephant.

There's some nice description here:

If a Grit meets another Grit who is formal and courteous in his speech, he immediately begins to trade formality for formality. They call it manners, and it's quite a lovely thing to see.

Some comic happenings, too. And some deadly serious as well.

And then we have this from "Going Down in Valdeez"

In typical fashionable ideology so common in our time, this man, Barry Commoner, director of the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Washington University in St. Louis said in a July 1974 interview in Playboy, concerning the proposed Trans-Alaska Pipeline, "It's been estimated that the oil on Alaska's North Slope may provide the U.S. with a two-or-three year supply....For that, we may permanently wreck the ecosystem in Alaska. Is it worth it? I don't think so."

From a man on the government dole and who can afford $5 gas. Who was he? Two-or-three year supply? What is it? 2012? And this was the 70s? And although I could be mistaken, though I'm confident that I am not so, the jackrabbits claimed the caribou would be put off their feed. I believe the caribou like to hang around the pipeline. Even if not, this jackrabbit at Washington University in St. Louis, on the government tit--foundation and tax money paying his salary I've no doubt--can and does influence policy.

Well, here we are, what, 30-40 years after the fact, the pipeline is still in use far as I know, and this jackrabbit that made this outlandish claim likely asked for, and received more money to fund his ideology. When I make a mistake on my job--I PAY FOR IT--not so with these jackrabbits on the government tit. They vomit mistake after mistake repeatedly and they are rewarded handsomely for doing so! And...that is perfectly all right with some. I liken it to an abusive marriage. These jackrabbits abuse their spouse--in this case the common man and woman and their children--and we allow it, we in fact, take them back after repeated beatings. Bizarre, or what?

update
finished, noon, 5 APR 12. Thursday.

Essays, but they read like stories, they are stories of Crews here and there. Most of these are well worth the read as I don't believe you'd read anything like these anywhere else. Like the essay called "Carny" about carnival people. Imagine a woman taking six hard-boiled eggs, peeling them, and using them, high-kicking it and firing one at a time into the audience of men only. Or the essay called "The Trucker Militant" about an independent trucker who started a magazine called Overdrive, an essay that is enlightening and baffling, but it did go a long way toward explaining to me, a "licensed contractor," how the world works...for the big man...as the song says, "they're killing the little man". And the world says hallelujah, verily, and just so. It's enough to make a man go climbing the tower, another essay in here, the last, one not published previously in Esquire, Playboy, or Sport magazine like the remainder.

An independent trucker has to fill out and complete paperwork that amounted to 1 pound, nine and three-quarters ounces before he could work for a living, and then, because the politicians are in bed with the unions and we have gleefully allowed the bastards to destroy our liberty, the independent trucker cannot haul most items. He cannot work for a living without giving 30% or better of his take to an outfit that has a piece of paper from the government. Makes one want to line the bastards up and shoot them, one and all. I can't imagine it NOT coming to that, eventually.

Sharecropping can make a good man dangerous.

[Stephen Griffith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm going to have to do this piecemeal because as I was completion a somewhat lengthy review my stupid iPad rebooted and saved nothing. So here goes.

I first became aware of Crews when "All We Need of Hell" was first published, picked it up and was immediately hooked. I subsequently read most, not all (he was extremely prolific), of his fiction which became increasingly strange but still retained the Crews imprint which made it compulsively readable, at least to me. And apparently lots of others I encountered. Widely different people: liberals, conservatives, academics and blue collar guys. Harry Crew's appeal transcends ideological boundaries.

I found this book decades ago (the sticker on the cover looks like some now defunct book store marked it severely down and I snagged it) and promptly stuck it in a large bookshelf where it sat. Recently a trusted online acquaintance recommended "A Childhood: The Biography of a Place" so I added it to the stack of books I read at any time. It was like discovering him all over again. Once I quickly finished that I took this out of the shelf. These articles, whether they're about camping on the Appalachian Trail, a portrait of Charles Bronson or ruminations on the tower where Charles Whitman shot people all have the Crews imprint on them. If you like him, you'll like these and if you don't you won't. It's really that simple.

[Duffy · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Look,” I said this has all gone off in the wrong direction. We just looking for some water.”
One of the cowboys sitting on the hood of the car said “I don’t know what you looking for, and I don’t give a shit. But I know what you found.”
The door opened, and the girl got out of the backseat.

“Ronnie, wait a minute,” I said. “You—“
Ronnie turned to look at me and his eyes seemed glazed and his mouth had a strange kind of droop to it. Or else I was so scared his face wasn’t focusing.

“I’ll tell you one damn thing: if you pick up something in this town, don’t set it back down. Because if you do set it back down even for a minute, it’ll be another price when you pick it back up.” He got off his chair, hustled his balls again, sat back down, crossed his legs, uncrossed them, and sat kicking one heavy boot against the other. “Went into town there to buy a damn alarm clock. Wanted to make sure the crew was up and ready. Went in the store there. Didn’t have but one kind of clock. Looked like a piece of shit, but I thought it’d get us up. Young kid behind the counter. Asked him how much it was. Said he didnt know, but the boss was next door and he’d run ask. While he was gone, I picked up one of the goddamn things. Had a sticker on it said six dollars and fifty cent. Kid come back and said the boss said nine dollars and fifty cent. I told the kid the one in my hand said six-fifty. He said he just knowed what the boss said. Fuck it, I didn’t want to stand around there all day talking to a shirtrail kid, so I bought it. Brought it down here to camp and the goddamn thing quit working in the middle of the night. Crew was half a fucking hour late. Took the goddamn thing down there a while ago. Man runs the place said he was sorry, but it was as is. Sold as is. No refund, no nothing. But the sonofabitch did say he was sorry. I told him to stick it up his ass, and I hope the alarm went off. I’d already checked all over town and there weren’t no more clocks. Not another goddamn one in town. I guess he knowed it too because when I told him I’d have to buy another of the goddamn sorry things, he looked at me dead in the eye and said just as slick as you’d want: ‘That’ll be twelve dollars and fifty cent.’”

Graham Greene said ‘the artist is doomed to live in an atmosphere of perpetual failure’

[David James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Southern-fried gonzo journalism. Fueled by alcohol, amphetamines, and acid, Crews worms his way through the underbelly of America, meeting truck drivers, carnies, Southern white trash (whom Crews - himself the product of a dirt poor Southern upbringing - calls "Grits"), disturbing he-man actors like Charles Bronson and Robert Blake, derelicts working the Alaska pipeline, and a host of other disreputable types, all of whom he finds deep brotherly kinship with. He gets beat up, mugged, and even involuntarily tattooed while passed out. The threat of violence that sends most of us scurrying off in the opposite direction is an irresistible magnet for him.

Although primarily known as a novelist, these nonfiction essays from the 1970s will appeal to fans of Hunter S. Thompson and Charles Bukowski. But Crews - who died earlier this year - had an edge all his own. Recommended for anyone who considers literary slumming the finest of arts.

[Nick LeBlanc · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subject of all Harry Crews nonfiction is the same, people. He throws himself in with them, develops bonds, strides alongside them as they plumb strange and often dangerous depths. This is true southern gothic nonfiction. It is laid out wonderfully and almost reads like a novel. A better collection that Florida Frenzy--in fact, some of these pieces were later re-used in it. The subjects he chooses to write about are fantastic and interesting and in today's world they are quickly disappearing. I can't really get enough of Crews' work lately and this one is another great read. Highly recommended.

[Julianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crews has become one of my favorite authors largely through this pure grit that shines through in all of his pieces. Underneath you can sense a real tenderness though, which is what really brings everything to life. He is as real as they come and it amazes me what he managed to live through. His experiences are largely ones I will never and would never want to have myself, but I can’t help but latch onto every little detail of each of them. In reading his nonfiction, I get the feeling of sitting in a dive bar listening to whatever story he’s willing to share with me. He has become someone who I must now consume everything he’s ever written.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection—mostly comprised of pieces from his ‘70s Esquire column, “Grits,” and miscellaneous Playboy assignments—is an excellent representation of Crews’s writing, especially his brief stint as a practitioner of New Journalism. You get the grit and irreverence that make him a joy to read without all the repetition and cheap shock value that plague his fiction. Highly recommended as a place to start if you haven’t read him. “Going Down in Valdeez,” “A Night at a Waterfall,” and “Carny” are particular highlights, although I’d venture that every essay in the collection is worth reading.

[Erik Prime · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hit-or-miss collection of shorter pieces by the gritty Southern author previously published in various periodicals such as Playboy and Esquire. Worth a look for the profile/interview of notoriously press-shy actor Charles Bronson as well as some of the quieter pieces such as the story of nursing an injured hawk back to health.

[Shelley Diamond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Powerful and intense. Personal and insightful regarding others. Strong and articulate. All despite the influence of alcohol... Most of the people described are not people I would want in my life but I learned something from this glimpse of their worlds....

[Lizzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sumbitch stole my heart

[Kate]

Recommended by Mary Carr in The Art of Memoir

[Patrick Strickland · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are perfect essays, dispatches, and thoughts.

[Jake Kasten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars for The Hawk is Flying alone. The Charles Bronson profile is incredible. What a perfect collection.

[Jerry Carnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every time I read Harry Crews, it's like the two of us are sitting together over a few beers. I get him and he gets me.

[Jake Mabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic, sometimes hilarious, sometimes thoughtful series of essays by the late, great Harry Crews.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

For some reason, I always begin reading short story collections as if they were a novel, and I usually end up pretty confused by about the third story. Well, it happened once again, and it was compounded by the fact that some of them have the same characters. I enjoyed this collection, especially "A Night at a Waterfall," the one about Valdez, the essays on Bronson, Robert Blake, carny life and trucker life. Crews brings his life experience into everything he writes - an interview isn't just an interview, but an attempt to relate to someone based on shared experience.

The most memorable part for me was in "Television's Junkyard Dog" when Crews describes his revelationa bout his writing - it is especially illuminating if you have read and enjoyed his best novels:

"For many and complicated reasons, circumstances had collaborated ot make me ashamed that I was a tenant farmer's son. As weak and warped as it is, and as difficult as it is even now to admit it, I was so humiliated by the fact that I was from the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp in the worst hookworm and rickets part of Georgia I could not bear to think of it, and worse to believe it. Everything I had written had been out of a fear and loathing for what I was and who I was. It was all out of an effort to pretend otherwise. I believe to this day, and will always believe, that in that moment I literally saved my life, because the next thought - and it was more than a thought, it was dead-solid conviction - was that all I had going for me in the world or would ever have was that swamp, all those goddamn mules, all those screwworms that I'd dug out of pigs and all the other beautiful and dreadful and sorry circumstances that had made me the Grit that I am and always will be. Once I realized that the way I saw the world and man's condition in it would always be exactly and inevitably shaped by everything which up to that moment had only shamed me, once I realized that, I was home free. Since that time I have found myself perpetually fascinating. It wasn't many weeks before I loved myself endlessly and profoundly. I have found no other such love anywhere in the world, nor do I expect to." 145

Another reminder of how hard it can be to just be yourself.

[Stella Fouts · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had never heard of Harry Crews. However, Crews’ non-fiction book, Blood and Grits, seemed a logical choice for me because I’m a non-fiction reader for the most part, I’m from the South and I already know what grits are. Plus, the juxtaposition of those two words is pretty stark, so I was hooked from the start. That image of red blood and white grits flew out the window, though, once I started reading.

In Southern vernacular, a Grit is usually a fellow Southerner. He can be a tough and uncompromising realist, possess an abrasive personality, be a sumbitch or even a shit. But we usually love him anyway because he’s a real son-of-a-bitch.

If there’s one thing a Southerner can’t tolerate, it’s puttin’ on airs and trust me, you won’t find any of that here. If you want a pretty little story all wrapped up in a bow, don’t read Blood and Grits. And if you want to read about people who treat each other with respect, you’ll want to skip this book.

Each chapter of Blood and Grits is a stand-alone story, originally published in Playboy or Esquire, with Crews as the narrator as well as participant. The settings are mostly in the South although one of the stories takes place in Valdez, Alaska, and the time frame is the 70s. If you’re thinkin’ trippin’ on acid, ridin’ a big rig while yakkin’ on a CB radio, or watchin’ Big Oil install their big oil pipeline in Alaska, you’re ready for this particular chapter. (Just remember, though, that things aren’t always what we think they are.)

I’ve never laughed so hard in my life. I even had to read many of these stories aloud to my husband because I just couldn’t believe what I was reading. I would say that Crews, at least with Blood and Grits, is a man writing for men. But you don’t have to be a man to enjoy these stories or to recognize talent when you see it. Crews knows how to tell a story, and he's now at the top of my list of authors too good to pass up.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blood and Grits by Harry Crews (Harper & Row Publishers 1990) (818.0). This book consists of collected magazine essays from the 1970's written by Harry Crews. Harry Crews' photo appears on the dust jacket; he looks like the 1970's and 1980's era boxing tomato can named Tex Cobb (picture a severely ruined face). Each essay features a riff on a different (usually southern) subculture or a strange but true southern tale: hanging an elephant in Erwin, Tennessee; falconry; carnies; and pipeline workers. I was particularly drawn to the essay called "Carnies," which is the colloquial name for travelling carnival workers. Crews teaches the reader carny lingo in this short excerpt from "Carnies": "'Slum' is what carnies call the cheap merchandise they give out at the little booths that line the midway. For that reason, hanky-panks and alibis are also called slum joints. hanky-panks are simple games of skill such as throwing darts at balloons. Alibis are games in which the agent is continually making alibis about why you did not win. Also, alibis - unlike hanky-panks - are liable to be gaffed, or rigged, and they are liable to have a stick who is said to work the gaff. A stick is a guy who [pretends to be a mark and by his presence induces the townspeople to play." (p. 190). If I were to read this again, I would limit myself to "Carnies." My rating: 7/10, finished 7/19/16.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harry Crews is a great storyteller. This collection of short stories are essentially true stories from Crews' own life. The subject matter ranges from getting a vasectomy to interviewing Charles Bronson. Like Crews' novels, many of the characters are from the South; hicks, rednecks, white trash, etc. are all lumped under the label "grits." While some of the stories or people are pretty crazy, the insanity and grittiness never reaches the same level as the novels (which is probably reassuring that Crews' real life is slightly tamer than the worlds portrayed in his fiction). If you are interested in the lives of people raised in Georgia's backwoods (Harry Crews himself), truckers, dive bar regulars, campers, jockeys, small town drunks, or falconers...you can probably find a good deal of these stories to be quite entertaining.

[Telly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not great, but not bad either. What appealed to me most about this is that it is a collection of short nonfiction stories that cover everything from falconry and the Alaskan pipeline to hiking on the Appalachian trail and meeting Charles Bronson. If you're interested in knowing a little bit about the various things that make up the American experience, then you might enjoy this book, too.

Keep in mind that it is a little dated. I think it was written in the 1970s, so as I was reading about Valdez, AK, for example, I kept wondering: When is he going to mention the shipwrecked tanker and billions of gallons of leaked oil that polluted the coastline (environmentalism is a theme of this story, after all)? For obvious reasons, he never does. Little things like that can throw of the modern day reader.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blood and Grits is a collection of ancedents and short non-fiction pieces by a twisted Southern gentleman with the name of Harry Crews. Crews can defintely craft a good sentence, and these excerpts from magezines reflect an unusual talent. He also manages to cover a very eclectic range of topics including cars, vaisectomies, and Charles Bronson; although considering when Blood and Grits was written, certain bits and pieces of this book may seem somewhat aged. (such as not mentioning the Valdez oil spill) Nonetheless, this book is still pretty good. Although espically innovative and brilliantly typed up, and Crews has certainly has churned out better books. I'd still recomend reading it though.

[Tom Graves · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered Harry Crews in the early seventies when he began writing for Esquire and Playboy. I was a journalism student at the time trying to find my own style and was heavily influenced by the New Journalism and writers like Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson...and then of course Harry Crews. Being a Southerner and having parents who went through the same hell as Harry when he was young, I identified with Harry, his stance as it were, and his take on life. And Lord did I love how he put words together. Well, I got to know Harry, interviewed him, and even turned into a writer and author myself. But you will not find a better collection of articles than Blood & Grits. Period.

[Kilean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crews is as raucous as they come. This is a collection of essays that covers everything from visiting an LL Bean Outlet (drinking sherry wine in the parking lot) to hiking the Appalachian Trail to making a trip to Alaska to write about the men working on the pipelines. All of it through the eyes of a wildman. I don't think I've ever laughed out loud as hard and truthfully while reading a book. There's a description of a turd on a sidewalk that nearly did me in...

[Rennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're choosing between this collection of essays and Florida Frenzy, choose this one. Fantastic, gritty writing. Plus it contains Climbing the Tower (which was recollected in Classic Crews). Possibly the best essay I've ever read.