The Florida trail After devouring virtually everything Harry Crews ever wrote, French writer Camille Bordas plunged into the realm of this author of southern gothic thrillers—the lush and learned city of Gainesville, Florida. Letting literature literally be her guide. I have been living in Gainesville, Florida, for two months now and Crews speaks the same way he writes, without any fancy flour- so far, I’ve learned a lot about hurricanes, termite reproduction ishes, direct and to the point. In the interview at the beginning and how fast a turkey vulture can clean a raccoon carcass. I of the PBS documentary about him, he talks about people who named and have grown very fond of two small lizards that sleep think that just about anyone can write a novel. He uses the on my porch every night, always in the same place, always in the example of a surgeon who told him that one day he also would same position. Every night I check that Rick and Lucy are still write a novel—“when he had the time.” All writers have one day there and haven’t been scarfed down by some hawk. Their life or another met this surgeon, someone who basically tells you expectancy is ten years, but I have no idea how old they are. I (in very polite terms) that they could do your job. Whenever this found a gecko in my kitchen, and kindly ushered it out. I was told occurs, I nod and try to change the subject. This wasn’t Crews’s that according to Floridian folklore, finding a gecko in the kitchen style. Crews asked the surgeon what he’d think if he saw him brings good luck. When I had a water leak, I called a plumber, a (Harry) in his operating room because he (Harry) had time to gentle, incredibly friendly man who has never traveled outside the operate on one of his patients. “After all, I have a rough idea of United States yet turned out to know more than I did about the where the brain is. I could try.” According to Crews, the out- history of France. I saw (a safe distance away) an alligator sun- come of the operation would be the same as the surgeon’s out- ning itself, a flock of bats hunting at nightfall. I found a frog the come with his novel: “The patient would die on the table, and size of my hand in the toilet bowl (and called the plumber back— your novel would also be dead.” The novel is a living being, like “These things happen,” he told me). Someone else told me that a something you can kill while trying to write it. It seemed a tad frog in the toilet was, again, a good omen. I nodded politely, but dramatic, a little extreme, something I could have thought but frankly, I think that if the gecko in the kitchen had really been never have dared say out loud. When Crews said it, it became a auspicious, there wouldn’t have been any frog in the toilet a week hard fact. He wasn’t encumbered by any kind of literary theory, later. I am still, for the time being, a city girl. I’d it was all about hard work. Despite his health love for this to change, and pretty quickly. problems, he wrote every day. Writing for him Nature lords over everything here, and lets The university was a question of life or death. everyone know it, so there’s no point trying to is part of the city. prove otherwise. There is an abandoned house Four years ago, I had never heard of Gaines- near my home. Some trees have already taken It has its own ville, the place where Crews spent 50 years over the place, their branches jutting through lake, palm trees or so of his life, first as a student (enrolled the windows. It looks like the house hasn’t been under the GI Bill), then as a creative writing lived in for years, but I wouldn’t be surprised if and ancient live professor at the University of Florida, where it were actually only a few weeks. Everything oaks with he had been a grad student. Today, I find grows here, and really fast. The jungle only branches draped myself not only working at the University makes room for us because we’re so persistent. of Florida, but in the same department, The frogs were here long before us. in Spanish moss. in the same position, in the same classrooms, in the same office as him. My office is tiny, a Whenever I’m feeling a bit daunted by any- bronze-colored armchair taking up over a thing, I think of Harry Crews. Four years ago, quarter of the space. They said it was Harry’s I had never even heard of him. I was hunting around for a good and that I could get rid of it if I wished. No way. novel to read, and my husband [author Adam Levin], after asking The sprawling campus is enormous, the size of an entire Paris me what I felt like reading (“A novel that’s bizarre yet intimate,” arrondissement. Anyone can wander about it, as the university I think I said), came up with the answer: I had to read The is part of the city. It has its own lake, palm trees, ancient live Gypsy’s Curse. Two weeks later, I had not only read The Gypsy’s oaks with branches draped in Spanish moss, a chapel and an Curse, but also the whole 600-page tome of Crews’s selected auditorium that houses one of the largest organs in the US, works, his autobiography and every essay I managed to get my with 6,500 pipes. When I first came here, for my job interview, hands on. I don’t usually read several books by the same author everyone was raving about the cultural merits of Gainesville— in a row, but with Crews, it’s as if there were some kind of the Harn Museum’s fine contemporary art collection, urgency to it, a fundamental lacuna. I had lived without him for the music scene, the free concerts on Friday, Wednesday’s farmers too long. I even did something I’d never done before: I surfed market, the fine caliber of the university (ranked among the Internet for Crews videos. I don’t really like hearing authors the top 10 public universities in the US), the multicultural feel speak—I know only too well that we seldom have anythingof it, the research conducted there. I was told that if I wanted better to say than what has already been said in our books, yet to, I could leave Gainesville early in the morning to watch after spending two weeks in Crews’s mind and in the cadence the sunrise on the Atlantic, then get back in my car around of his prose, I had to hear his voice. I wasn’t disappointed. 5pm and watch the sunset on the Gulf of Mexico. They showed Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, forteresse de la célèbre équipe de football américain Florida Gators. Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, fortress of the famous Florida Gators football team. 109