Newspaper Page Text
November, /V7V
Ampersand
ii
a series of stories carefully woven around a
central narrative line. Thfc stories are told
in an authentic southern voice w ith a com
passionate yet never condescending tone.
Crews evokes sympathy and understand
ing lor his chat alters through incisive use
of dialogue, and a painstaking attention to
detail and mood.
“The night was dark as only the swamp
can he dark and they could not see each
other there in the hunkhouse. I he
rhythmic stroke of the dredge's engine
came counterpoint to my daddy's shaky
voice as he told Cecil what was wrong.
“When Otil finally did speak, he said:
‘I hope it was good. Inn. I sho do'...
“He had not wanted her, hut they had
been in the swamp for three years.. .So
since he could not have what he wanted,
he tried to want what he could have, hut it
had been miserable, all of it because ot the
way she sounded and the way she smelled
and the mosquitoes clotted alniut their
laces thick as a veil and the heavy black
Hies < rawled over their legs. ‘"It weren't
that good,' daddy said.”
—A C.hildhooti
Crews is a story teller in the* oral tradition
of'the deep South. His tak*nt grew from
hours of sitting on a floor with a sugar-tit in
his mouth, listening to talk at cpiilting par-
lies. from listening to men converse as they
dipped their feet into the washtub around
the fire at night.
“I started out to lx* and only want to lx* a
storyteller," Crews said. He spooned a
small amount of licpiid off the greens and
poik concoction and tasted it with satis-
faction.Outside, Crews’ teenage son and a
f riend romped through the woods sur
rounding the house. Crews’ wife, Sally, a
thin, energetic woman whom he’s mar
ried three times, watched f rom the porch.
‘If you’re a storyteller in the traditional
sense," he continued, "then your strong
suit has got to he the narrative line. It's
called, after all, the narrative art. That's
not much to want to lx* I reckon, hut that’s
all I want to lx*. I want to tell stories. Stories
which hopefully inform the human situa
tion. After all. the- kee pers of the legends
and myths in primitive societies were
always the shaman, the priest, the throwers
of the chicken bones, the lookers of the
goat entrails... And I think that's what tel
ling stories is all alxuit.
“When I started out, I thought it was
enough to learn to write well, which (icxl
knows is hard enough Hut unfortunately
that's not enough. Ultimately you have to
have something to say. And that includes
everybody," Crews said. He pressed his
head kick and expanded his neek. His hair
rimmed his head like a shaggy halo and his
eat ling glinted in the late afternoon light
filtering in through the kitchen window. “I
don't know what my assexiates at the uni
versity think of my work: they see me
being sent to Alaska to do a story and I
write about a whore having her ass tattex'd
while blowing eexaine up her nose. What
the hell is that?"
Clews' unorthodox style of journalism
has made him one of the most sought
after, highly-paid free lancers in the busi
ness. Hlnotl and his most recent book,
is comprised of non-fiction works which
first appeared in Esquire and Playboy. Be
fore you have settled into the bcxrk — the
ice in your drink has not yet melted —
Crews' has told tales of a fellow named
“Dog" plighting his troth with a 300-pc Rind
frost y-Crcme waitress and ol an elephant
being hanged to death for stomping a little
girl. I he collection has been generally well
received, hut one reviewer, Christopher
l.ahmann- llaup: of the New Yuri Times,
raised Crews' hackles.
“He said he didn’t believe an elephant
was hanged f rom a winch in Krwin, Ten
nessee,** Crews growled. "All he had to do
was pick up the phone and call krwin and
see if there was one hanged there. Hell,
there was a period of time during the
T hirties in which there was this gencx ide
of elephants throughout the Scxith.
"You can never trust a man who has
three initials in front of his name or a
hyphenated last name. And the next time I
see Christopher I.ahmann-Haupt, I'm
gonna take the hyphen right out of his
name."
K.i nest Hemingway once said no one has
the right to dig up an author's journalistic
work —writing done against deadlines,
w riting done exit of necessity — and com
pare it to work he has w ritten to write the
lx-st he can. Crews feels no such cpialms.
"The technique and craf t of fic tion is
there in all of my non-fiction. Dialogue is
there, character is there, place is there,
transitions are there. T here are all kinds of
transitions: spiritual transitions, emo
tional transitions — it's all there. But. as
Kolx*rt Frost said. ‘It's had when it gets too
bookish.' You can't allow yourself to get
isolated and cut of! from the street.”
While Crews often justifies — or at least
explains— acts of violence in his w riting,
he is not a particularly violent man. His
athlete's body has sagged with age and
abuse, and when he is drawn into brawls he
rarely hits more than the ground. He sees
his fascination wtih blood sports —cock
and dog fighting — as a natural, ingrained
result of his southern rural upbringing.
“I've always been addicted to blocxl sports
of all kinds," Crews, also a falconing en
thusiast, wrote of the illegal games. “And I
make no apology for it. Where I come
from, we don't conf use animals w ith
people. We don’t sleep with poodles or
whisper baby talk to horses."
He was in south Florida recently work
ing on a pit bull fighting story for Esquire:
I wasn't bully ing up to anylxxly, I was just
trying to see the end of the fight. I thought
this one clog was going to quit because the
>ther clog had been at his throat twenty
ninutes. But the dog got to his feet and
shook the other dog out and kicked his tail.
1 wanted to see the end, so I asked this fel
low to move. I was so excited, I didn't
notice how really big he was. Jack, when he
hit me I went down like a sack of Hour,
t hings happen, you know. You’re subject
to get hurt at a dog fight.
“I gel into things sometimes, you can't
deny that. The world is a very, very
langerous thing for anything mortal. But
what the hell are you going to do because
it's dangerous? (hi hide in a closet?"
Of all the dangerous situations Crews
has put himself in while working on a
major magazine piece, his latest assign
ment may lx* the most hazardous to date.
He's just finished an installment of
I* I tty Kir Is "His Turn" column, which fea
tures a different male contributor each
month. Crews’ opening line should have
feminists nationwide calling for his head:
'I'm sick and tired of women Ixdng in my
face and on my case."
“I mean, I don’t even know what to call
them anymore.” Crews explained, tugging
on his earring. '"Lady’ will do in some
parts of the country, 'woman' w ill do in
others. But the word that stands up lx*st is
'person,' which is the most faceless, blood
less, anonymous word — one of the worst
in the language."
Will Crews make the ultimate commit
ment to his art? Will he pose in the nude?
“No," he said with a wide grin. "But hell,
if'they had asked a few years ago. I would
have gladly shucked down." £4
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