Body Signed First Edition Reference

Body is Harry Crews’s novel about women’s bodybuilding — a subject that seems tailor-made for a writer whose entire career explored the transformation, punishment, and display of the human body. Published by Poseidon Press in 1990, it follows Shereel Dupont, a competitive bodybuilder preparing for the Ms. Cosmos contest, and the chaotic collision between the bodybuilding world and the dysfunctional family of her fiancé, Russell “Nail” Head.

The Novel

Crews immersed himself in the bodybuilding subculture to write this novel, and his portrait of the competitive circuit — the grueling training, the dangerous dieting, the ritual of posing and flexing before judges — has the observational precision of a reporter combined with the moral imagination of a novelist. The bodybuilders are not mocked or sensationalized; Crews respects their discipline and their dedication while recognizing the obsessive, sometimes destructive nature of their pursuit.

The Nail Head family — a collection of Southern eccentrics whose dysfunction escalates toward violence — provides the comic and dramatic counterpoint. The collision between Shereel’s controlled, disciplined world and the Heads’ chaotic, destructive one generates the novel’s energy.

First Edition Details

Publisher: Poseidon Press, New York Publication date: 1990

Signed Copy Market Values

• Signed first edition, fine/fine: $50–$150
• Inscribed copies: $75–$200
• Unsigned first edition: $10–$30

Body is an affordable Crews title that represents his interests and his voice at their most characteristic. For collectors building a Crews shelf, it is a natural companion to The Knockout Artist and the earlier novels of physical extremity.