Harry Crews: Survival Is Triumph Enough

This potent documentary chronicles the ordeals, tragedy, and loss that shaped the renowned Southern writer and novelist Harry Crews. In conversation with artist and filmmaker Tyler Turkle, Crews’ psyche unfolds through a brisk, stark narration that traverses emotional and physical anguish. From his Gainesville, Florida residence, he reveals near-fatal childhood experiences alongside stark accounts of his adult alcoholism and drug abuse, and the tragic, accidental drowning of his firstborn son. Throughout, Crews remains uncompromisingly forthright in recounting his life, a stance he encapsulates with Mark Twain’s quip: 'I have reached the age of seventy by strictly following a regimen that would have killed anybody else.'