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Review by Charles Wyrick
Few writers today accomplish what Harry Crews so adroitly achieves. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Crews masterfully combines profundity with humor in order to create sagacious novels that are as probing as they are gut-wrenchingly hilarious. "Celebration," like the rest of this Florida writer's books, is as recondite as it is ticklish. Yet before continuing with praise, warning flags need to appear. Reading Crews requires a strong tolerance for and appreciation of the finer things in life: weird sex, filthy language and scatological humor.
"Celebration" is set in the last place anyone would hope to find a party, a rundown trailer park/retirement community aptly called Forever and Forever. For the most part it is the last stop for its residents, and Stump, the proprietor, likes things to run smoothly for his guests as well as for himself. Since life barely moves at all within Forever and Forever's boundaries, Stump really doesn't have much to do until a willful, energetic young woman shows up. Her name is Too Much, and the appellation is definitely not all there is to this buxom beauty's story. Too Much quickly proves to have much more to her than great curves, and suddenly Stump finds himself pitted against Too Much and a cast of geriatric degenerates in a power struggle for the spiritual control of this seemingly spiritless retreat. With Too Much leading the elderly in a search for what she calls "the chance of ultimate possibility," Forever and Forever is turned upside down in order to make way for a May Day celebration in this uncelebrated, downright pitiful locale.
"Celebration" tells the hilarious story of this backwoods retreat's spiritual awakening. In preparing for May Day, Too Much teaches this elderly community how to celebrate life, and in their cheerless surroundings the community somehow learns to achieve joy. Yet before finding themselves and their rapture the community must experience the hilarious if not at times debasing misadventure that makes "Celebration" a novel to ponder as much as to enjoy.
Charles Wyrick plays with the band Stella.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.