Celebration [Paperback]

Now from the author theWashington Post Book Worldcalls the dark chronicler of human vanity and folly comesCelebration.The newest black comedy from Harry Crews is a biting, brilliant commentary set in a Florida rest-home gulag where the over-sixty-five set checks its dignity, self-esteem, and social security numbers at the door.
Forever and Forever is the aptly named retreat, populated by a motley crew of forgotten wives and ruined men who are waiting for death while working on their tans. The leader of this group is Stump, whose lost arm paid for Forever and Forever, and who believes the silent desperation that infuses the trailer park masks the fact that Forever and Forever is truly a small piece of hell on earth.
This ironic silence is shattered by the entrance of a beautiful young bombshell. Too Much is her name, and that is exactly what she is. This walking bonfire awakens long dead appetites in the inhabitants of Forever and Forever, reminding them of what they once were and can be again—alive.CHAPTER ONE
When Johnson Meechum came up the three steps of his purple double-wide trailer and opened the front door, his wife, Mabel, was waiting for him, her thin hands clenched on her hips, her tinted hair standing from her scalp in a tiny blue cloud. He could look right through the hair to her freckled skull.
He made a small adjustment of the .22-caliber target pistol stuck in the small of his back, behind his belt. He didn't even know why he wore it there. It was not as though she wasn't aware he took it with him when he went out in the morning. She knew everything about him. He knew everything about her. Everything. It was very nearly unbearable at times. He often wondered where all the surprises and lovely secrets had gone. He sometimes felt like he'd be willing to open a vein for one tiny surprise, for one inconsequential secret.
It was terrible to know the most excruciatingly intimate details about her person. Hel£,