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The MULCHING OF AMERICA A Novel Harry Crews 9780684825410 Books

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The MULCHING OF AMERICA A Novel Harry Crews 9780684825410 Books

I LOVE some of Harry Crews' work so this came as a real disappointment. It seems designed to work as a sort of anti-establishment fable, and some of the characters are typical of Crews' better work. But this book lacks the heart and the careful plotting of the better books. It's almost as if this is self-parody, a kind of Harry Crews-meets-Soylent Green. I don't suggest this unless you are a committed fan!


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The MULCHING OF AMERICA A Novel Harry Crews 9780684825410 Books Reviews

For many years Crews has been one of my favorite novelists; his personal life is an astonishing example of how endurance can conquer tragedy. Futhermore, the early '90s books, BODY and THE KNOCKOUT ARTIST had him back on the track he had cut with the early novels. Unfortunately, the same can not be said for this near travesty. MULCHING, as an idea, has great promise, but the work reads like a rough draft. The author wants so badly for the audience to embrace the bizarre protagonists of this book, that he sacrifices plot and often sense to accomodate them. Rather than a scathing sendup on American business, MULCHING becomes a parody of its own ideas, a product without substance.
If you're new to Harry Crews, don't start here. This book is rather uninspired and nowhere close to the high quality of Crews' other, earlier works. If you're curious about this unique writer's work, start with A Feast of Snakes. It's unarguably his finest work of fiction. His memoir, A Childhood A Biography of a Place, is among the best works of creative nonfiction written in and about the South. A must read.
The Mulching of America is almost a lot of things- almost a great allegory for blind allegiance (religious, political or otherwise), almost a brilliant satire on corporate America and almost an engrossing page turner... but because it is only almost all of those things it falls far short of being anything great- especially for Harry Crews. Initially the strong premise and requisite eccentric characters draw you in but the plot of the novel never comes into complete fruition and the reader is left unfulfilled and sorely disappointed to the point of frustration.
Worth the read? Yes (I give it 2.5 stars actually), just prepare yourself for abject disappointment in the end.
Obviously, "The Mulching of America," doesn't quite measure up as one of Harry Crews' best works -- I would put "The Knockout Artist," "Feast of Snakes," "Body," and the two novellas "Car" and "Gypsy's Curse" well ahead of it. Warts and all though, and some very stilted dialogue (which would continue in Crews' subsequent and last novel, "Celebration"), "Mulching" is a hell of a ride, with twists and turns so unpredictable, it's almost dizzying. In his satire of corporate America, I wouldn't say that Crews is the next Jonathan Swift, but I truly doubt this was his intention. Instead, we are given the typical Crews mix of eccentric characters in hyper-realistic surroundings, with, of course, a shocking ending.

Here, Hickum Looney, a relatively successful door-to-door Miami salesman of soap products, who has no other life, learns the hard way that he should never outsell his demented, hare-lipped boss, known as "The Boss" a/k/a "The Lip," and later known as Elmo Jeroveh (which isn't his name either). The Boss, who gets a perverse pleasure of beating the crap out of his chauffeur, Pierre Lafarge, and masseur, Russell Muscle (a recurring Crews character), is perhaps the strangest, most grotesque Crews character in any of his novels, which, if you've read some of his books, you would understand is really saying something.

"The Mulching of America," doesn't quite work as satire, or even as a cohesive novel. However, it's well worth the wild ride, and lends additional proof to the fact that the unique Harry Crews is one the best post-Faulkner Southern writers.
"Mulching" is a fairy tale turned upside-down. Hickum Looney is a lonely salesman who seems to know of nothing but work. He sells soap and other soap-like products for a big company that is micromanaged (absolutely) by a completely deranged, cleft-lipped midget with a nasty violent streak. This is a hallucinogenic parody about corporate life and soaring corporate greed. The plot itself makes very little sense and the book suffers from a surplus of dialogue that is sometimes as painful as it is unnecessary.
Too cynical, too boring, too predictable, too repetitive, too cliched, too long and too many references to defecation.
Below the usual Crews high standard; not even Mariano Rivera wins every game.
I don't see how others can put this book down so much, it's definetly one of his better books. Although, yes, I have to admit it does slow down a bit and the characters aren't as defined, almost as if Harry got lazy around the middle. But I would definetely recommend this book to people who like the ethical kind of graphic expose' books.
I LOVE some of Harry Crews' work so this came as a real disappointment. It seems designed to work as a sort of anti-establishment fable, and some of the characters are typical of Crews' better work. But this book lacks the heart and the careful plotting of the better books. It's almost as if this is self-parody, a kind of Harry Crews-meets-Soylent Green. I don't suggest this unless you are a committed fan!