Alex Trimble Young Remembers a Writer of “Unbrandable” Books

When I met Stanley Crawford in 2005, he was, by the estimation of my twenty-three-year-old self, already old. I was working at the reception desk of the chaotic Soho offices of the Overlook Press when Stan, a gray-bearded giant (at 6’3″) with wiry frame and impossibly weathered skin, strode into my life. I can’t, and probably don’t want to, recall what I said to him in that meeting. But I vividly remember his facial expression, which I would come to learn was sort of his default: a judgmental cocked eyebrow perched on a weary forehead, framing eyes that simultaneously looked right through me and welcomed me into a private joke.

Little did I know then that my curiosity about this striking character would open up a relationship that would extend over the next nineteen years, a period that would become some of the most productive years of Crawford’s nearly six-decade career as a writer. When Stan died at the age of 86, shortly after a cancer diagnosis in late January of this year, he had authored nine novels and four works of nonfiction; four of those novels and his final work of nonfiction were published in the last decade of his life.

Read the rest of Alex Trimble Young’s article at Lit Hub.com