["The Gospel Singer"] cultivates God's Little Acre once again, and reaps a predictably rich harvest of Southern sinfulness. The protagonist in this visit to the Erskine Caldwell country is a silver-larynxed evangelist who is symbolically shadowed by an itinerant sideshow which exhibits geeks in action before the selfsame audiences…. A superstitious man but not a godly one, the Gospel Singer keeps his franchise on the "right to sin" by corrupting a girl from his hometown of Enigma, Georgia, to which he returns once too often for his transfusion of evil. Metaphysics aside, Mr. Crews's novel has a nice wild flavor and a dash of Grand Guignol strong enough to meet the severe standards of Southern decadence. (pp. 46-7)
Martin Levin, "Reader's Report: 'The Gospel Singer'," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1968 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), February 18, 1968, pp. 46-7.
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