Celebration: A Novel [Hardcover]

Harry Crews (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 1998

Once again displaying what "The Village Voice Literary Supplement" calls "the voluminous, hurdy-gurdy sweep of his comic and moral vision", Harry Crews offers a black comedy that is both darker and funnier than anything he has ever written before. Set in a trailer park in Florida--a place where the aged wait to die--"Celebration" tells the story of a beautiful, wildly sensual bombshell who awakens appetites that most were sure had died decades ago Print ads. 4-city author tour.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

At Forever and Forever, a Florida trailer park, the old folks wait passively for the ambulance to take them to the morgue. And that's the way its one-armed owner, Stump, likes it. For him, "Forever and Forever equals quiet and solitude and stillness and death." But Too Much, the voluptuous young woman who shares Stump's bed (and bathtub), has other plans. Proud of her power to "bring life where there had only been death, to bring joy and celebration where there had only been resignation and despair," she grimly sets out to do just that. From the author of The Mulching of America (LJ 11/15/95) comes another savage satire with the usual Crewsian elements: grotesque characters, bizarre situations, and black humor. Unfortunately, it lacks another element found in Crews's best novel, The Gypsy's Curse (LJ 4/1/74): humanity. The characters here are so repulsive and nasty that the reader doesn't care what happens to them. Even Too Much is too much. And for all the talk about joy and celebration, there is really very little. For larger fiction collections.
- ?Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Crews is a Rabelaisian satirist who toys with the more gothic aspects of southern literature, particularly in this kinky tale. Readers will know that they've entered the realm of the absurd as soon as they meet Too Much, a flexible and lusty beauty right out of Lil' Abner, tight cutoffs, big boobs, and all. Too Much descends on a Florida trailer park called Forever and Forever like a hurricane, riling everyone at this purgatory for old folks who are too raggedy to enjoy retirement but not quite broken down enough for a rest home. Too Much easily seduces Stump, the bitter, one-handed vet who owns this depressing settlement, then unceremoniously deposes him while stirring up long-forgotten appetites in the Old Ones, with her five-alarm body and nihilistic faith in what she calls the "chance of ultimate possibility." Crews is funny, his plot is nearly surreal, and his playing with our notions of good and evil is clever and entertaining, but this is, at base, a very silly novel. Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 270 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Printing edition (January 7, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684837587
• ISBN-13: 978-0684837581
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,161,650 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Atypical Crews, July 23, 2002

By 

high_cotton (Glastonbury, CT USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Celebration: A Novel (Hardcover)

I've been a fan of Harry Crews since first reading "The Gypsy's Curse" about 25 years ago. His novels are populated by grotesques; and his story lines are often comic, sometimes bizarre. However, he writes with gritty realism. His characters are intensely credible, human and sympathetic. Some are even appealing. This is what I've come to appreciate about his writing.
"Celebration" is different. I don't mean that it's bad. It's just not what I'm looking for when I pick up a Harry Crews book. A beautiful young woman moves into a trailer park full of old people who have little else to do but wait to die. She works, rather obscurely and mystically, to open up these people to what she calls "the chance of ultimate possibility". (I must say, however, that some of her methods are entertaining.) Many of the characters and their conduct are rather surreal. I had a hard time understanding them, let alone relating to them. This novel, particulary its "surprise" ending, owes more to the horror-fantasy writing of Clive Barker than to the hardcore southern grit tradition that Crews usually represents so well.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars more twisted stuff from harry, November 26, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Celebration: A Novel (Hardcover)

While not the best Crews book i have read, and not the book i would recommend to a first time Crews reader, this still is a winner. You can just tell that Crews is feeling his age getting to him, which makes this seem more heart-felt. Yes, it is slightly more ridiculous than usual, but it is more of the same pained bizarre cruelty that stabs at the heart of human nature. So far, Crews is the person who has been able to capture that better than anyone else.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not for the faint of heart, September 27, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Rodentville Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Celebration: A Novel (Hardcover)

As someone else noted, this probably isn't the best introduction to Crews' work for the uninitiated and the faint of heart. But for hardcore Crews readers and others who can look the human beast in the face without flinching, this is some of his best work, and indeed some of the best work being done in contemporary fiction.

If you need the status quo definition of Justice and Beauty to get to sleep at night, don't read this book. But if you can't turn away from the dark spectacle of the raw human heart, this is for you.