Though best known for his often-bizarre Southern fiction populated by an array of deformed, grotesque characters, Harry Crews has, between novels, turned to journalism, producing essays filled with an equally unusual cast of true-to-life eccentrics: alligator poachers, cockfight promoters, skirt-chasing college professors, obnoxious drunks, carnival hustlers, and down-and-out race-car drivers. Like his novels Crews's nonfiction reflects both his varied interests--ranging from blood sports to hawk training--and his own strongly held opinions, both forged from years of hard drinking and hard living.

"People that read me," Crews said in an unpublished interview on 18 July 1996, "either like me or really hate me or think I'm a sham." In forcing readers to confront violence and the bizarre, Crews's journalism parallels his work as a novelist, which, as he told interviewer Susan Ketchin, "means you spend most of your time thinking about, meditating upon, trying to dissect and understand just those aspects...