Poetic Obituaries: Harry Crews, who died Wednesday

at the age of 76 after a battle with neuropathy, was the unofficial poet laureate of bare-knuckled, white-trash culture. Crews, who taught Creative Writing at the University of Florida from 1968 until 1997, wasn't your typical tenured academic writer, but a larger-than-life figure whose own rowdy, emotionally messy, kinetically charged fiction rewrote the book on Southern Gothic lit. As both an artist and a cult icon, he merged the images of the self-destructive, hard-drinking bruiser and the self-made man of letters.

from A.V. Club: R.I.P. Harry Crews, rough-and-tumble man of letters

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