The Gospel Singer

By: Harry Crews, Kevin Wilson - introduction

Narrated by: Matt Godfrey

“Harry Crews is magnificently twisted and brutally funny.” - Carl Hiaasen

A Penguin Classic


Golden-haired, with the voice of an angel and a reputation as a healer, the Gospel Singer appeared on the cover of LIFE and brought thousands to their knees in Carnegie Hall. But for all his fame, he is a man in mortal torment that drives him back to his obscure and wretched hometown of Enigma, Georgia. But by the time his Cadillac pulls into Enigma, he discovers an old friend is being held at tenuous bay from a lynch mob. As Harry Crews’s first novel unfolds, the Gospel Singer is forced to give way to his torment, and in doing so he reveals to the believers who have gathered at his feet just how little he is God’s man, and how much he has contributed to the corruption of each of them.

Critic reviews

“The Gospel Singer was an assertion of Crews’s Southernness, of his claim both to the lofty inheritance of Faulkner and O’Connor and to the clipped, enchorial rhythms of Bacon County.”
—Charlie Lee, Harper's

“Flannery O’Connor on steroids.”
—John Williams, GQ

“I don’t know where [Harry Crews’s] narrative magic comes from, but it is firmly there.”
—Joseph Heller

“…a bona fide Southern writer in the vein of Flannery O’Connor, whose unvarnished language and absurdist take on life among the lower rungs of the region’s social ladder [is] shot through with a rough-and-tumble kind of empathy….it was with great pleasure that I spent last weekend reading The Gospel Singer,… a darkly funny tragedy…. The world he writes about is violent and ruthless….But there’s a point to Crews’ madness, and always present is a throughline of empathy…”
—Atlanta Journal Constitution

“Critics and awards anoint some authors as legends. Others depend on word-of-mouth and prose that stands the test of time….There is nothing folksy, never mind pastoral or genteel, about Crews. With caustic and fabulist writing, he exhumed the ghosts of America’s original sin…..Crews captured the raw essence of humanity in both fiction and nonfiction. Side by side, these reissues form the complete picture of an imperfect man who charged hard into extremes to escape his cultural inheritance.”
—Lauren Leblanc, Los Angeles Times

Superb

Harry Crews is next level. Donald Ray Pollock mentioned him as one of his favorite authors. I can’t wait to read everything he’s done.

honest southern gothic

and the narrator nailed the main characters southern dialect.
hard too listen to in public or with friends but a damn brutal use of storytelling should be that way

Elvis was supposed to star in the movie

Harry crews knew how to write a novel! If you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to come from a small town to become a national or international musician this is most likely what it feels like. The anxiety, the perception and the hope that an audience can put on a performer can weight heavily.

Character studies like no other southern writer

How did I miss out on Harry Crews?
Not included in any of my southern tomes but he is a worthy story teller.
Crews included every freak and abhorrent character to be found in one story.
Seems predictable at the outset, but the plot twists and turns so many times that the ending is a shock!
I will be reading more of his books now.

Dark, gritty Southern Lit

What starts out hilariously over-the-top turns into something fascinating and possibly deep (I'm still figuring out what it all means).