AuntiePam: adore Edna O’Brien. Got turned onto her last year and read nothing but for a month. It was that way with Harry Crews too, though he started making me feel a little dirty.
Joe Lansdale is often compared to Harry Crews. Have you tried Lansdale? The Bottoms, or the short story collection High Cotton. His Hap and Leonard buddy adventure stories are good too. He also writes straight horror, and weird fantasy.
I haven’t checked out Lansdale, no. I’m just gonna print out this list by the end of the day, take it to the library, put 'em in my backpack and turn my posture into that of a jumbo prawn.
You might try Walker Percy. He wrote Love in the Ruins, The Moviegoer and The Last Gentleman.
EZ
Yep - definitely try WP, tho I prefer his work before LitR.
You might enjoy a couple of my favorite books by Madison Smartt Bell - Soldier’s Joy and Save Me Joe Louis.
Harry Crews is my favorite author - Gypsy’s Curse my favorite book.
I’m here to second William Gay. I like the collection of shorts called “I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down” - I am partial to Bone Daddy. 
Peter Matthiessen is one of my favorite authors of non-fiction. (I also like Harry Crews memoir better than his fiction) This fiction by him looks of interest though:
SHADOW COUNTRY: A New Rendering of the Watson Legend, by Peter Matthiessen. (Modern Library, $16.) Between 1990 and 1999, Matthiessen wrote three Faulkneresque novels about Edgar J. Watson, a Florida cane farmer, said to be a serial killer, who was murdered by his neighbors. Now Matthiessen has revised and rewritten, combining the three novels into one, 400 pages shorter than the originals. In the Book Review, Tom LeClair said that the new book “offers a quicker and easier passage through the swamp, but fewer shades and shadows”; the National Book Award judges disagreed, giving “Shadow Country” the 2008 fiction prize. - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/books/review/PaperRow-t.html
Also - has anyone ever read Wendell Berry’s fiction, set in Kentucky? I like his poems; haven’t tried the novels.
Shelby Foote’s Love in a Dry Season is a classic.