In a world of glut - a world in which an avalanche of books, movies and “new season” TV shows, CDs and albums pour into our lives each day most of us desperately need some guidance. What is good? What is junk? Why? A few years ago, it was still easy to determine what appealed to our taste, but the acceleration of technology into the new millennium has left many of us dog-paddling in a rising tide of choices, and we don’t know if the pool is filled with champagne or sugar water. With 400 channels, 500 new novels each month (yeah, a stalwart few still read!), thousands of magazines and a cultural blitz of theatres, concerts and athletic events, some of us are....uncertain.

“What do you suggest?” we ask our friends as we consider the bookshelves and marquees. We seem to be equally ambivalent about politics, religion and culture. Is there something here I need to know? Can somebody make sense of this? What is “meaningful” and what is brightly packaged junk? (Rest assured, 90 percent of everything is junk ... but which 90 percent?)

Well, that is what critics are for.

We don’t need critics to tell us what to think. Generally, critics do not dictate taste, opinions and beliefs (although the world is full of people who are perfectly willing to allocate that responsibility to others). To me, the critic’s gift is the ability to state clearly and concisely what you and I already know, but only in a dim and ambivalent way. To me, a great critic causes me to smile and say, “Yeah! I knew/sensed/believed that, but I couldn’t say it that well!” (“What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.”)

It is comforting to have our opinions validated. If you agree with him/her about the movie “Traffic,” Johnny Cash’s new album, or Margaret Atwood’s latest novel, you will be prone to trust him/her about things you haven’t read/heard/seen ... or thought about.

Unfortunately, critics tend to specialize. There are movie/drama/music/ dance/politics/current affairs critics (“pundit” is the operative word). Even within their speciality, they tend to be exclusive. New Age music critics don’t do country and western, and New York book critics won’t do Southern writers. What we need is a “generalist” - a critic that will evaluate anything from Elvis to Camus - a critic who practices his art according to the true meaning of the word, “criticize.” He praises and condemns, blasts the puerile and praises the “art that exalts,” whether it be banjo picking, word crafting or grand opera. Is there such a person? Hey, dear reader, meet Hal Crowther.

I think of Hal Crowther as a literary sportsman. When reading one of his essays in the bi-monthly Oxford American (arguably the best magazine in America at the present), I tend to see him wading through the kudzu thickets and broom sage fields of Southern culture with a figurative shotgun loaded with pepper shot. Hal doesn’t want to kill anybody. He just wants to see what he can flush out of the undergrowth. With practiced ease, he flushes a diversity of creatures which either fly, skitter, squeal, whimper or rise boldly and turn to face the hunter with cool surmise.

Well, I do like my analogy! I think I’ll push my luck and expand it. Sometimes Hal merely wishes to observe the cultural wildlife — perhaps even admire its musical trills and brilliant plumage. However, if the critter is irksome, Hal may administer a painful but non-fatal volley of metaphorical buckshot. Sometimes, he captures a specimen, notes its positive and negative characteristics, and releases it. He has ruffled its feathers or fur perhaps, but it returns to the wild virtually unscathed. Occasionally, he finds the remains of an ancient literary skunk or buzzard, performs an autopsy of sorts, wrinkling his nose at the noisome smell and buries the remains in the dark, fertile soil of the South.

Forgive me for my modest little metaphorical flight. I need to stop now before I get myself in serious trouble. However, I want to make an attempt to justify the analogy. Among the motley parliament of fowls and critters in Hal’s most recent collection, Cathedrals of Kudzu (reviewed by Jeff Minick in The Smoky Mountain News), the reader will find a beautiful “warts and all” eulogy to the late James Dickey (“The Last Wolverine”) who was an offensive, sensual, alcoholic and gifted man. Then, there is Cormac McCarthy (“The Tennessee Stud”), a writer who Crowther both lauds and chastises - “... still the closest thing to heroin that you can buy in a bookstore ...” but sometimes guilty of “perishable profundities.” (Crowther also feels that McCarthy needs to “come home” - back to Tennessee.) There is a lucid essay that re-evaluates Faulkner (“A Knight in White Flannel”) in the “new South.” (Are the descendants of the Snopes clan running Wal-Mart?)

Each essay is honed and polished - concise and sensible as a scalpel and sometimes as potentially deadly. The most devastating autopsy is performed on Erskine Caldwell, a writer who biographers have revealed to be “cruel, hypocritical, conniving, greedy ... a man of few friends who betrayed the few he had.” In addition, his repugnant gallery of leering hillbillies and lecherous, inbred hussies has done extensive and near-irreparable damage to the image of the South since it fostered an embarrassing array of stereotypes that abide to this day (Do you remember Ty Ty and “Darlin’ Jill?”). Hal brands Caldwell’s popular novels as “literary Frankensteins” written by a man whose preoccupation with perpetual tumescence “diverted a critical supply of blood from Caldwell’s brain.” God help anyone who attracts (and deserves) Crowther’s ire!

The range of topics in Crowther’s collection touches on an awesome catalogue of “things Southern.” Crowther discusses issues as diverse as New York publisher’s persistent dismissal of Southern writers to the strange phenomenon of “dying in the middle of the road” in North Carolina.

In Cathedrals of Kudzu he ponders father and son relationships, gives a half-grudging eulogy to George Wallace and honors Annie Dillard’s For the Time Being; considers spirituality and Walker Percy; the myth of southern women a la Scarlett O’Hara; and makes a near-sentimental celebration on the devotion of dogs to humans (frequently undeserved). There are some surprises - such as Hal’s reaction to the Confederate flag controversy, and his admiration for the forgotten poet Donald Davidson (as well as the status of poets in America). Especially incisive are his blistering essays on bigotry, rednecks, gun enthusiasts and the misguided legal protection granted to irredeemable sex offenders. I especially enjoyed his ruminations on southern religion (snakes in church), radio evangelism and the senseless orgy of tree-cutting in Southern cities that once were considered tree sanctuaries - from Oxford, Miss., to Chapel Hill. Invariably, as Fred Hobson notes in the preface of one book, Hal “makes the language dance and sing” in conjunction with generous (and apt) allusions to classical literature - Dante, Eliot, Camus, Celine and Shakespeare - not ordinary journalistic fare!

When Crowther admires someone, he opens the floodgates of praise. One of his most memorable tributes is to Doc Watson, North Carolina’s near-legendary blind guitarist who has become “a national treasure.” People who loves Doc’s music will find themselves nodding in agreement with Hal’s unabashed praise for the man whose music (and voice) is “as pure as spring water.” The reader may be a bit surprised by Crowther’s admission that he has also, somewhat belatedly “discovered” (and appreciates) Elvis! I’m pleased. If anything, this admission merely increases my respect for the author.
Some 20 years ago, in my perennial search for gainful employment, I found myself in Raleigh. I was miserable, as I always am out of the mountains. The cloying stink of magnolia hung in the air on Edenton Street, and I found little to my liking in our “capital city.” (Well, there are a handful of decent bookstores.) Before the year was out, I was looking for an honorable discharge. Yet, I looked forward each Wednesday to my lunch in a little vegetarian cafe that sported a stack of “The Independent” by the door.

That is where I first encountered Hal Crowther. Each week, he skewered the stupid and vile and hoisted them into the air while he methodically dissected them. The Klan, Jesse Helms, misguided pundits, the media and bad literature wiggled and squealed on Hal’s petard. Oh, he wrote beautiful eulogies too, about the South and the literary works that depicted our culture with integrity - but being the miserable, homesick wretch that I was at the time, Hal’s vitriol suited me best. When his collection, Unarmed But Dangerous (great title!) came out, I carried it about and read it aloud to my friends until they began to object.

Several years ago, I met Hal at a writers’ retreat in Hindman, Ken. Well, actually I couldn’t speak to him. He had sprained his ankle and spent the week limping about and looking disgruntled. I guess I thought that if I irritated him, he might impale me with one of those metaphoric harpoons ,and I would have to suffer the indignity of dragging it about for the remainder of the week like a rump-shot turkey.

Yes, I confess that when I read one of Hal’s barbed quips, sharp and effective as an Eagle Claw fish-hook, I laugh ... and flinch. Hal is profoundly opinionated, but hell, I think he is usually correct. He can be devastating in condemnation or lyrical in praise. The thing is, that if by some wondrous chance someone should say to me they could get Crowther to “review” my own modest work, I think I would be all profuse gratitude, but I would probably mutter an apologetic demur and duck and roll back down my prairie-dog tunnel. I’m not sure I could survive his disapproval. The sweep of his lighthouse laser and the accuracy with which he spikes the inept and shallow scares the hell out of me. I think I would rather be judged by a “less perceptive” critic.

 

Back to Top

The Smoky Mountain News