The Mulching of America - Softcover

Harry Crews is the author of twenty books and numerous articles and columns. He lives and works in Florida.

Traveling salesman Hickum Looney has been toiling 25 years with the Soaps for Life Company to be the best salesman in the outfit. After one especially good day of door-to-door sales, Hickum figures he can easily win the annual Soaps for Life sales contest. But the Boss, a manic, hare-lipped figure who is part Norman Vincent Peale, part Jim Bakker, and part Adolf Hitler, has always won the contest, and he has other plans for Hickum Looney and Soaps for Life. Along the way to fame and misfortune, Hickum meets up with the typical cast of Crews's misfits: Gaye Nell Odell, a prostitute and karate expert whose ability to shoot a pistol renders one of Hickum's enemies toeless; Crews's perennial character, former bodybuilder Russell Muscle (e.g., Body, 8/90), now the Boss's masseur; and the Boss's chauffeur, Pierre LaFarge, a former convict with unconventional sexual appetites. For a brief moment after he and Gaye Nell become lovers, Hickum's flame of success flickers steadily only to be extinguished by the strong winds of the Boss's company plan. At its best, Crews's writing is a two-edged sword that slashes with its razor-thin hilarity while slicing open the underside of the New South to expose its depravity and hollowness. This novel is indeed one of his best.
--Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.