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Harry Crews

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A Feast of Snakes: A Novel Kindle Edition

by Harry Crews (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.3 233 ratings

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From the acclaimed author of such novels as "Blood and Grits" and "Childhood" comes a wildly weird and breathtakingly original visit to the rural South that reveals the exotic subculture that erupts in all its glory at the Rattlesnake Roundup in Mystic, Georgia. "No number of adjectives in the thesaurus can do full justice to the dazzlingly bizarre nature of Crews' creations"-- "Washington Post Book World"

Print length

489 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publication date

December 15, 2022
File size

43310 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Welcome to Mystic, Georgia. This going-nowhere town hosts the annual Rattlesnake Roundup, which attracts thousands of visitors for a rough 'n' rowdy weekend of your basic primate behavior--hard drinking, ogling bikini-clad contestants in the Miss Mystic Rattle beauty contest, betting on dog fights, snake catching, and snake eating. Meet Joe Lon Mackey. He lives in a trailer in Mystic with his lumpy, devoted wife and two hollerin' young'uns. His days of glory as the Boss Snake of the Mystic Rattlers football team are over, and he didn't have the grades to go to college. He's just now realizing that his dreary business selling beer, bonded whiskey, and moonshine is all he's gonna get in the way of a destiny.

As the crowds for the Roundup start to overfill the camping area, Joe Lon feels on the inside like a barrel of snakes: "a writhing of the darkness, an incessant boiling of something thick and slow-moving." As he and his good ol' buddy get ready to wander around and check out the scene, Joe Lon says, "Just a bunch of crazy people cranking up to git crazier. But that's all right. Feel on the edge of doing something outstanding myself."

A Feast of Snakes is probably the most skillfully crafted and entertaining novel ever written in which a fed up person goes violently berserk. But Harry Crews belongs to the tradition of great Southern weird writers such as Flannery O'Connor, so A Feast of Snakes is richer than that: Crews serves up the reality of people's savage and unrelenting cruelty toward animals and toward each other, stark truths about human despair, male-female face-offs at their sexiest and most ruthless, and (here's his real genius) humor so powerful you can't help but laugh--even though it hurts when you do.

A Feast of Snakes, first published in 1976, is a dazzling and flawless horror novel. --Fiona Webster

--This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Harry Crews is the author of twenty books and numerous articles and columns. He lives and works in Florida. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0BQCQGG8Q
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Touchstone; Reissue edition (December 15, 2022)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 15, 2022
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 43310 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 489 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #2,027,284 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #125,489 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #734,783 in Literature & Fiction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
4.3 233 ratings

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4.3 out of 5

233 global ratings

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M. JEFFREY MCMAHON

Rises to the Mythical

Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2005

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Combing components of Faulkner (southern despair and alcoholism) and Dante's Inferno (a demonic obsession with snakes), Crews has taken a common premise and raised it to the mythical. The premise, a twenty-something Joe Lon Mackey is stuck in a trailer home with a woman he loathes and several hungry children while he escapes with recent memories of his glory football days, drinking moonshine, and helping the town with its annual snake festival. Vipers are a prominent image in this novel, which is, among other things, a refutation of unchecked masculinity. The men in this novel thrive on violence and primal expressions of masculinity to fill their void. It is this need to fill the void with a demonic energy that informs the novel's viper metaphor.

The plot is easy to follow enough. We watch Joe Lon Mackey and others go down a descent of debauchery as they seethe with rage and resentment, partly because they sense there is a better life out there and partly because they have no real vision of what that better life could be.

With a parallel to The Great Gatsby, we see Joe Lon Mackey long for his high school sweetheart, Berenice, a stuckup cipher who thinks she's superior to all the locals after she leaves to town to go to an elitist college in the north east. Her world becomes the chimera in the way that Daisey's became a chimera or a mirage to Gatsby.

For all its nihilitic despair and Dantean violence, there is enough humor in this novel to keep it bouyant. It is also a short, terse 175 pages, crammed with themes about the chimera, the lost American Dream, male violence, tribalistic bonding rituals, racism, and the need for some kind of "religion," even a venomous one, in order to fill the abyss.

20 people found this helpful

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JESSAMIN KEANE

Tough Read

Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2022

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Like others have said, it’s not for everyone. I found it so off-putting at first. I have a rescue pitbull and had to skip over one 4-page part. There’s some stuff that’s going to stick with you in an uncomfy way but I think it’s worth it. Crews is brilliant. I do think some folks would understandably want to avoid.

4 people found this helpful

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Dustin M Cord

A review of idle life's violent interruptions

Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2022

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I'll start by saying, despite it's violent and unnerving plot, it was a breeze to read.

Far be it from me to criticize a man raised in the rural south, but this feels a lot like porn for the coastal elite to scoff at the backwards ways of the mysterious and brutish culture of Dixie.

That being said, what an entertaining story! I'm not sure if I'm supposed to scoff and sneer at the multitude of unlikable characters, but I enjoyed every single one of them. You can follow each character easily without forgetting who is who, despite going back between 2 or 3 points-of-view in the narration. You can probably see the conclusion coming from the first 20 pages, but it still hits hard and is very enjoyable.

This is the only Crews book I've read, and might be the only I ever do, because I'm somehow convinced it's his best. It is quite good.

7 people found this helpful

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Brandon

Dirty, raw, Grit-Lit at its base--but amazing

Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2015

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This novel/novella will not be for everyone. It is gritty, raw, dirty, and the characters have very little redeeming qualities. It is Southern Grit Lit turned up. However, it is a memorable book that will stick with you likely forever. The material explored has been discussed--rape, animal cruelty, murder, domestic abuse, adultery, castration, bullying--and will assault the senses. The characters are desperate, lost, and depraved. But again, it will leave the reader with lasting impressions, not just with the material explored but the writing as well.

Again, I'm sure there is probably going to be a fifty/fifty split with this book, largely based on how the reader handles the onslaught of savagery, but if you looking to immerse yourself in the filth and come out the other side perhaps a little better for it, go for it.

6 people found this helpful

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Nan Bovingdon

This is an example of southern 'grit lit'....wonderfully written, sounds as natural as talking

Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2022

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This is so well written I am going to find a bookstore source and order a few more to give as gifts.

One person found this helpful

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Boom Shakalaka

Not funny

Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2023

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As others have said in their comments, this is an unpleasant book about unpleasant people, to put it mildly. So it's an unpleasant read. That doesn't mean it isn't a good work of literature. Literature doesn't have to be uplifting to be good.

Mostly, people should know that the book isn't funny, as some fool of a reviewer on the cover seems to suggest. You would have to have a pretty sick sense of humor to find anything in this book amusing. I suppose if you find it funny that one character considers Nazi death camps sexually stimulating, then maybe this is a laugh riot. But it sure didn't do it for me.

3 people found this helpful

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Herman L.Parsons

A GREATLY UNDER APPRECIATED SOUTHERN WRITER

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2021

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A BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN BRUTALLY FUNNY NOVEL ON THE DEGENERATE CULTURE OF SOME SOUTHERN REGIONS....IT IS AS IF CHARLES BUKOWSKI MARRIED FLANNERY O'CONNOR..AND CREWS WAS MIDWIFED INTO NORTH FLORIDA AND SOUTHERN GEORGIA BY WILLIAM FAULKNER

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Ellen Williams

Let’s put the most horrible things that can happen in a book

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2023

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I am not literature critic so I can’t say if the author is a great writer or not. I will say that he wrote about sone of the most horrible things and put them all in a 48 hr period. It got tiresome…

One person found this helpful

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F

Recommended

Reviewed in Italy on April 24, 2023

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My first book by Crews, but I'm definitely going to read more by this author.

Mr. N. D. White

a deep south whicker man? highly recommended.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2015

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This book came as recommended for me. If i'd known it was only 177 pages i may not have bothered. It was more than i would normally pay for a paperbqck too. I am so glad i bought it! A great read, and quite horrific. Yes you guess the worst charqcter will get his comeuppance, and it makes you want to cheer when it happens. I didn't realise how long ago it was written, why have i never heard of it before i can't fathom. It should be made into a film, it reminded me of an southern american whicker man in some ways. Buy it, read it, recommend it!

2 people found this helpful

Dr. Jens P. Becker

The Great American Novel

Reviewed in Germany on October 16, 2009

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Harry Crews ist ein amerikanischer Südstaatenautor dessen Kultstatus sich noch nicht bis nach Deutschland herumgesprochen hat. Während Cormac McCarthy weltweit gelesen wird, kennt Crews hierzulande kaum jemand. Und das ist schade, denn "A Feast of Snakes" ist wahrscheinlich einer der besten Romane der amerikanischen Nachkriegsliteratur. Dieser Roman enthält alles, was die Südstaatenliteratur ausmacht: "Southern Gothic", "violence" , präzise Wiedergabe der gesprochenen Sprache und poetische Beschreibung der Atmosphäre. Und das in einem Stil, der lakonisch und "tough" ist. Joseph Heller, der Autor von "Catch 22" hat dies als "fine, extraordinary novel...weird and powerful" bezeichnet. Man kann kaum mehr sagen. Wenn man glaubt, dass Hemingway "tough" schreibt, dann sollte man dieses Portrait der gesellschaftlichen Unterschicht in Georgia lesen. Gewalttätig, von einem Ton der Verzweiflung getragen und doch hochpoetisch. Dieser Roman gehört einwandfrei zu den Top Ten der amerikanischen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts.

4 people found this helpful

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Colbag

Harry Crews is the man!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 25, 2013

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I really like Harry Crews stuff. I got this one after reading 'Car' and 'The Gypsies Curse' and loved it just as much. It's dark and violent and very enjoyable.

One person found this helpful

Annabel Gaskell

Brutes and brutality lead to murder and mayhem

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 30, 2008

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"The annual rattlesnake round-up in Mystic, Georgia bears no relation to 'Whacking Day' in The Simpsons at all! As the thousands turn-up to take part and watch, by the day of the actual hunt, you know it'll have all gone horribly wrong. Throw a handful of good 'ol boys and their women, moonshine and whisky, fighting dogs, diamondbacks and the return of the prodigal cheer-leader queen into the mix and you have a heady brew that will burst from its bottle in a flash. At the centre of this is Joe Lon Mackey, a former footballer who didn't get the grades to go to further, stuck in a trailer with his fading wife, two babies, and with nothing to do except mind his father's liquor store, misses his former girl Berenice the cheerleader, and finds himself taking it out on everyone ...

It's tragedy in the making, and the writing is brutal, visceral, yet not without a wicked sense of humour in the caricature of the characters. No words are wasted in this cinematic novel of murder and mayhem, and the tension builds and builds until it finally explodes in an stunning ending that will shake you to the core."

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A Feast of Snakes: A Novel Kindle Edition

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