[In A Feast of Snakes] Mr. Crews takes us down to the backwoods hamlet of Mystic, Georgia, for the annual nightmare festival that begins with the crowning of the high-school Rattlesnake Queen, continues with a pit-bull championship fight, and ends with a Rattlesnake Roundup…. Mr. Crews is a writer of extraordinary power. Joe Lon is a monster, but we are forced to accept him as human, and even as sympathetic. Mr. Crews' story makes us gag, but he holds us, in awe and admiration, to the sickening end.

"Briefly Noted: 'A Feast of Snakes'," in The New Yorker (© 1976 by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.), Vol. LII, No. 23, July 26, 1976, p. 83.