{"product_id":"a-childhood-the-biography-of-a-place-9780143135333","title":"A Childhood: The Biography of a Place","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"One of the Finest Memoirs Ever Written\" -\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe highly acclaimed memoir of one of the most original American storytellers of the rural South \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eA Penguin Classic\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHarry Crews grew up as the son of a sharecropper in Georgia at a time when \"the rest of the country was just beginning to feel the real hurt of the Great Depression but it had been living in Bacon County for years.\" Yet what he conveys in this moving, brutal autobiography of his first six years of life is an elegiac sense of community and roots from a rural South that had rarely been represented in this way. Interweaving his own memories including his bout with polio and a fascination with the Sears, Roebuck catalog, with the tales of relatives and friends, he re-creates a childhood of tenderness and violence, comedy and tragedy. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eHarry Crews\u003c\/b\u003e was born in 1935 at the end of a dirt road in Alma, Bacon County, Georgia, a rural community near the Okefenokee Swamp. His father, a tenant farmer, died before Harry was two years old. A mysterious childhood paralysis; a horrible scalding accident; his mother's second, turbulent marriage and divorce from a drunken uncle whom Crews had been led to believe was his natural father; and a move to Jacksonville, Florida, for his mother to find factory work were experiences that would feed his desire to imagine and, ultimately, to write. As a teen, Crews served a tour in the Marine Corps. On the GI Bill, Crews attended the University of Florida, where he earned a bachelor's degree in literature followed by a master's in education, with which he taught high-school and junior-college English. A protégé of Southern novelist Andrew Lytle, Crews published his first short story in the \u003ci\u003eSewanee Review \u003c\/i\u003ein 1962. He published his first novel, \u003ci\u003eThe Gospel Singer\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003ein 1968. Its publication earned Crews a new teaching job at the University of Florida and paved the way for the publication of seven more novels over the next eight years, including \u003ci\u003eNaked in Garden Hills \u003c\/i\u003e(1969); \u003ci\u003eCar \u003c\/i\u003e(1972); \u003ci\u003eThe Hawk Is Dying \u003c\/i\u003e(1973), which was adapted into a film released in 2006; \u003ci\u003eThe Gypsy's Curse \u003c\/i\u003e(1974); and the widely acclaimed \u003ci\u003eA Feast of Snakes \u003c\/i\u003e(1976). Crews's reputation as a bold and daring new voice in Southern writing grew during this time. In the 1970s, he wrote for popular magazines, including a monthly column for \u003ci\u003eEsquire \u003c\/i\u003eand essays for \u003ci\u003ePlayboy\u003c\/i\u003e, and screenplays. In 1978, Crews's memoir of his youth, \u003ci\u003eA Childhood: The Biography of a Place\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003ewas published to enduring acclaim. Two compilations of his nonfiction works, \u003ci\u003eBlood and Grits \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eFlorida Frenzy\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003ewere issued in 1979 and 1982, respectively. A decade of drug and alcohol abuse and creative lapses ended in 1987 with the publication of his ninth novel, \u003ci\u003eAll We Need of Hell\u003c\/i\u003e. Crews retired from the classroom after teaching for thirty years at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Crews, who died in 2012 at age seventy-six, was a prominent writer in the literary genre known as Dirty South or Grit Lit, notable for its bizarre characters, grotesque violence, and satirical surrealism. His artistic forebears include William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Erskine Caldwell, but Crews remade Southern gothic in his own rough-hewn image in eighteen memorable novels, including \u003ci\u003eKarate Is a Thing of the Spirit \u003c\/i\u003e(1971), \u003ci\u003eThe Knockout Artist \u003c\/i\u003e(1988), and \u003ci\u003eBody \u003c\/i\u003e(1990), dozens of riveting nonfiction pieces, and one of the finest memoirs in American literature. In 2002, the University of Georgia Libraries inducted Harry Crews into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eTobias Wolff\u003c\/b\u003e (foreword) is the author of the novels \u003ci\u003eThe Barracks Thief\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eOld School\u003c\/i\u003e, the memoirs \u003ci\u003eThis Boy's Life\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eIn Pharaoh's Army\u003c\/i\u003e, and the short story collections \u003ci\u003eIn the Garden of the North American Martyrs\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBack in the World\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Night in Question\u003c\/i\u003e. Wolff has received the PEN\/Malamud Award, the Rea Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN\/Faulkner Award, and in 2015, the National Medal of Arts.\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Penguin Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50615009607954,"sku":"9780143135333","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_1f16555f-4e2c-4085-ab10-193850412ca0.jpg?v=1732471949","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/a-childhood-the-biography-of-a-place-9780143135333","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}