READING IS FUCKINMENTAL / Jason Matthew Smith

BOOZE CREWS

Harry Crews: one-stop shoppin’ for no-bullshit, hard-drinkin’ prose.

How on God’s green earth could I have missed this: Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, along with Lydia Lunch and Sadie Mae, teamed up in the late 1980s to form a band called Harry Crews. They released one album, Naked in Garden Hills (1989). Considering the fact that I’ve been on gorging myself on Sonic Youth for the past two months, how in the name of all things holy did I miss that one?

Now, I’m also a big fan of Harry Crews the writer, ever since I read Car way back in high school—which was far more bizarre than my half-congealed, teenage-reptilian brain could handle. Whereupon I promptly scurried back to the safety of Penthouse Forum as my primary source of literary sustenance. But I couldn’t shake Crews’ no-nonsense, hard drinkin’ prose, and went on to consume about a half dozen of his other novels over the course of a year. Crews navigates the same psychological back roads as Larry Brown (another writer often cited as a musician’s favorite), but often steers into darker territory, usually when you least expect—or want—it. For starters, try Classic Crews: A Harry Crews Reader to sample from the buffet of one of America’s most distinctive writers.  

Jason Matthew Smith is a Texan who never developed an accent, thanks to a steady diet of television reruns during his formative years. He now lives in Utah, where everyone thinks he sounds just like John Astin, the original Gomez Addams.