Harry Crews is probably the best author who I’d never want to meet.
The Knockout Artist and Scar Lover are, basically, traditional moral redemption stories. Not unlike what you’d find from the Grimm Brothers if you replaced the talking animals with animalistic humans and replaced the forests with Southern slums and replaced the kings and queens with low-life slobs.
The Knockout Artist is the better of the two. It won’t give away too much if I say it’s the story of a would-be boxing trainer who makes his living knocking himself out for kinky shows. It could serve as Exhibit A for those making a case that Hurricane Katrina was divine judgment against the perversions of New Orleans.
What he does, he does well. If that doesn’t sound like your kind of book, then consider yourself warned.
