- Paperback: 270 pages
- Publisher: Scribner; First THUS edition (Jan 28 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0684848104
- ISBN-13: 978-0684848105
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.4 x 1.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #608,733 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
- ?Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
When Johnson Meechum came up the three steps of his purple double-wide trailer and opened the front door, his wife, Mabel, was waiting for him, her thin hands clenched on her hips, her tinted hair standing from her scalp in a tiny blue could. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
When Johnson Meechum came up the three steps of his purple double-wide trailer and opened the front door, his wife, Mabel, was waiting for him, her thin hands clenched on her hips, her tinted hair standing from her scalp in a tiny blue could. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterpiece,
By Dan Allison "Dan" (Tampa Bay) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Celebration: A novel (Paperback)
Don't pay any attention to the other reviewers, this is a Gawd-Almighty masterpiece, the book Crews was born to write. Besides that, Too Much is real, I know a woman just like her, and I do live in Florida.If you like your Florida literature serious and literary, yet hilarious, or if you'd ever wondered what would happen if Flannery O'Connor dropped acid, read Celebration!
3.0 out of 5 stars
Atypical Crews,
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.
3.0 out of 5 stars
CREWS LIGHT,
By Tim Peeler "tpeeler" (Hickory, NC United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Celebration: A novel (Paperback)
This tortured soul has been one of my favorite writers since I first read him twenty-five years ago. And I must admit that CELEBRATION contains some of the fascinating elements that drew me to his other works. The biggest problem here is that the story is too far over the top. Furthermore, the characters tend to be fantastic rather than fiercely real, as we've come to expect from this writer. Nevertheless, the book is filled with shimmering passages of prose that are reminiscent of earlier work and is a far cry better than the disastrous MULCHING OF AMERICA.
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