“One of the great passions of my life is horse tracks and everything connected with them. I’ve been known to spend an entire day at a track in a fever of pleasure without betting a dime.” Harry Crews wrote … [Read more...]

It seems like every moment of the life of Ernest Hemingway has been disected and examined and fictionalized in print and on screen, and there doesn’t seem to be any end to the flow of material. Today, the film “Papa: … [Read more...]

The movie “Elvis & Nixon,” starring Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey, opens today (at least it does here in Gainesville. The film is about a bizarre 1970 incident in which Elvis Presley arranged a meeting and went to … [Read more...]

Last weekend, while I was in Los Angeles for the Santa Anita Derby, I got a chance to take a tour of the Paramount Studios lot. Our tour guide shared a story about Charles Bronson, who also happens to be the subject of … [Read more...]

Yes, that’s Chevy Chase on the cover of Esquire 39 years ago – he’d just left “Saturday Night Live” to star in “Foul Play” with Goldie Hawn. On page 54 of that very same issue, Esquire’s “Grits” columnist Harry Crews … [Read more...]

The legendary author and poet Jim Harrison died last week at the age of 78. Harrison was another member of the “next Hemingway” club, a hard-living, up-by-the-boot straps author who had gargantuan appetites for wine, … [Read more...]

Harry Crews died four years ago today. As you might expect, Harry was still writing until the very end. His health was deteriorating greatly, but he was in the middle of a novel that he said would be the best thing he … [Read more...]