“Of course, I’m surprised Harry Crews lived as long as he did, all things considered. I remember when Geoffrey Norman signed him up to write columns for ESQUIRE back in the mid-1970s. I would get impatient waiting for the next issue to arrive, probably the only time I felt that way about a magazine: I never read columns like Crews’, before or since. He really did change my life back there in the 1970s. I might well have become a successful lawyer or something if I hadn’t read a novel called A FEAST OF SNAKES. I can’t think of any novel I’ve read that slugged me in the gut quite the way that one did. Then came that amazing memoir, A CHILDHOOD. Again, a slug to the gut. Man, what a writer. And what a mess of a human being. I highly recommend Sean Penn’s film THE INDIAN RUNNER for the brief scene with Harry Crews, if nothing else.”