SOURCE: “Disgusted,” in American Book Review, Vol. 9, Issue 1, January, 1987, p. 18.

In the following essay, Olson offers a brief biographical overview and considers Crevel's writings to be the work of a frustrated Utopian.

I am hitting 30 this year. When I was 19, and depressed, my uncle told me to wait until I was 25, because after a quarter of a century everything gets better. He was right. I am almost 30 and quite happy.

Gerry Reith, however, shot himself at the age of 25. René Crevel hung himself at the age of 34. They are the subjects of today's essay.

First, a few facts about each. Gerry Reith was born in 1959. He was born on a farm in the Midwest, was put in a mental institution in his teens by his parents, eventually went west and settled in Sheridan, Wyoming. I went through Sheridan once on an Amtrak. There were cows, a sparse and...