Harry Crews' Cars

I had trouble relating to Harry Crews’ essay “The Car.” In this essay, Crews meticulously details the first few cars that he drove as a young adult. He personifies the cars, remembering them “like people—like long-ago lovers” (403). He describes the distinct personalities of each car, and the distinct personalities that each car brings out in him. For example, he informs us that his 1953 Mercury compelled him to stare “into the bathroom mirror for long periods of time” (402) so that he could practice different facial expressions to wear while driving it. The tone that he employs when describing his cars is one of overwhelming pride and unabashed, masculine conceit.

I have only had one car so far in my life; I did not get my license until senior year of high school, and now that I am in college, I spend about 9 out of 12 months away from my car. Needless to say, I have never had the kind of connection with cars as Crews did. For most of my life, I have been a very experienced passenger in the car, not a driver; thus, I could not relate to the act of appropriating a car’s personality that Crews describes in his piece. This phenomenon, I think, is reserved solely for the drivers of cars.

While I did not personally connect to Crews’ experiences, I found the essay to be extremely culturally significant; it was an interesting comment on American society and our obsession with not only cars specifically but also consumerism in general. At the end of the piece, Crews reflects on the strange way that he confused himself with his car. To me, this was the most relatable part of the essay. In our society, we are judged by what we own. Often, we come to believe that we actually are what we own, and we begin to redefine ourselves according to the characteristics of our favorite objects and, to use Crews’ word, merge with what we buy.

Stylistically, I loved the tension between Crews’ various recollections. In the paragraph about his 1938 Ford coupe, Crews uses very cryptic language in order to describe a time that a woman pushed off the wing vent and broke the rearview mirror of his car. He never reveals outright that he and the woman were having sex when this happened, but it is implied. This short, mysterious glimpse into the Ford’s history contrasts so sharply with Crews’ later, more elaborate memories. For example, in one of his memories surrounding the 1953 Mercury, I could practically smell the greasy burned food of the A&W that he writes about. In this paragraph, Crews’ language is so specific and recalls such vivid images; this contrasts with the earlier paragraph, where we get much more of a fuzzy idea of what happened that night in the Ford coupe. This tension between elaboration and the intentional omission of specific details mirrors the human process of recalling memories, and makes the piece seem more real and raw. If Crew utilized as much detail as he does when describing his A&W nights in the whole piece, we would be suspicious and think that he exaggerated or fabricated some of his memories in order to pad the writing.