Crump Happens

Crump happens: He's slow, he drawls, he's from Mississippi — and his name is Homer Crump. That's Crump, not Gump. He's also a character in Better Times Than These, the 1978 Vietnam novel by Winston Groom — and predecessor to the author's 1986 book Forrest Gump — that Pocket Books just reissued on the heels of the $291 million (and counting) movie adaptation. "Writer's hell is being out of print," says Groom, who's at work on a Gump sequel "about big Forrest and little Forrest, who's a genius," due out next fall. As for Crump, Groom ( admits he's an embryonic Forrest. "I'm glad I didn't name him that," he says. "I don't know how Forrest Crump would've sounded."