Customer Reviews
more twisted stuff from harry - By: , 27 Nov 1998 
While not the best Crews book i have read, & not the book i would recommend to a first time Crews reader, this still is a winner. You can just tell that Crews is feeling his age getting to him, which makes this seem more heart-felt. Yes, it is slightly more ridiculous than usual, but it is more of the same pained bizarre cruelty that stabs at the heart of human nature. So far, Crews is the person who has been able to capture that better than anyone else.
Not for the faint of heart - By: , 27 Sep 1998 
As someone else noted, this probably isn't the best introduction to Crews' work for the uninitiated & the faint of heart. But for hardcore Crews readers & others who can look the human beastin the face without flinching, this is some of his best work, & indeed some of the best work being donein contemporary fiction.
If you need the status quo definition of Justice & Beauty to get to sleep at night, don't read this book. But if you can't turn away from the dark spectacle of the raw human heart, this is for you.
This is my first and last time to read this author's work. - By: , 24 Jun 1998 
I was so disappointedin the story because I expected more humor & less cruelty. If Stump is the symbol of the younger, materialistic generation & "The Old Ones" of our aging population, I shudder to think what Crews is predicting for the future. With a catalyst such as Too Much, whose intelligence I found hardly believable from her own background, we won't have to worry about society's demise by the atomic bomb because we'll surely destroy ourselves morally. Although I think Crews made some accurate social commentary, I don't think he had to use so much sexual imagery to do it. Personally, I had to discipline myself to push through some of the "bathtub scenes" with Stump & with the "mop" just to complete the book. By the time I got to the conclusion, I really only read it because I had already invested so much time & energyin it. Maybe my expectations were just erroneous; after all, this was the first of his works that I've read.
Not one of his best, but a page-turner. - By: , 04 Feb 1998 I just finished Harry Crews's _Celebration_. It's a Crews Cruise (TM) freak show, complete with stump-humpin', granny-drownin', Turkey suckin' good ole bad ole boys & girls, which incidentally answers the zen koan "What should you do if you meet the Buddha on the road & she offers to have outrageous sex with you?"
An unbelievably lame tale from my favorite author. Bummer. - By: , 05 Jan 1998 I've savored & passed around every Crews novelin print, but I had to force myself to finish this one. If you've never read a Harry Crews novel, don't start with Celebration. Skip it & pick up Scar Lover, Feast of Snakes or Knockout Artist & see the strange genius of Crews at its finest. His brilliance isin the way he touches deeply into the lives of disturbed outcasts & makes you laugh out loud & fallin love with all of them.
Celebration has the cast of outrageous characters that I love about Crews's novels, but here they just seem ridiculous & silly with none of Crews's previous characters' charm & wit.
The jacket art, depicting the gorgeous 18 year old Too Much, is the best thing about this book. Too bad Crews can't convince us that such a creature exists, evenin Forever & Forever, a Florida trailer park for eccentrics at the end of their miserable lives.
Too Much shares a trailer & a giant bath tub with Stump, the elderly owner of the park whose missing hand & resulting nub is the main reason she's with him. "Had it been possible, she would have taken him inside her all the way to the shoulder." If you think the names of these characters are hard to swallow, you have an idea of how much disbelief you will have to suspend to get this one down. It's as if Crews had his students write this one as a class project.
