Description

“HE CAME OUT OF THE SWAMP AND HE SANG OF GOD”: THE GOSPEL SINGER, FIRST EDITION, SIGNED BY HARRY CREWS

CREWS, Harry. The Gospel Singer. New York: William Morrow, 1968. Octavo, original green cloth, original dust jacket.

First edition of the author’s first book, signed by him on the title page.

Harry Crews is a prolific novelist whose often freakish characters populate a strange, violent and darkly humorous South? After years of rejection his first novel, The Gospel Singer, was published in 1968 and garnered good reviews. Its publication earned Crews a new teaching job at the University of Florida and paved the way for the publication of seven more novels over the next eight years? His writing is rooted in the Southern Gothic tradition, but Crews has claimed other influences, notably the British novelist Graham Greene? Crews, like Flannery O’Connor, has an affinity for the grotesque in his characters. He explains this fascination as being rooted in a specific childhood experience—waking up in a carnival trailer one morning, Crews witnessed a bearded lady and a man with a cleft face talking about their dinner plans and kissing. Crews claims, ‘And I, lying at the back of the trailer, was never the same again” (New Georgia Encyclopedia).

Book about-fine with mild discoloration to endpapers as usual and slightest sunning to boards, bright dust jacket very nearly fine. Scarce signed.