Synopses & Reviews
The first collection of the beloved humorist's sly, dry, hilarious essays in more than a decade focuses on a perennially popular topic: the South vs. the North.
“"When [Northerners] ask me to explain grits, I look at them like an Irishman who's been asked to explain potatoes."
"When I was a boy in Georgia, college sports was Bobby Dodd versus Bear Bryant immemorial. Compared to that the Harvard-Yale game is a panel discussion."
"Anybody who claims…not to have 'a racist bone' in his or her body is at best preracist and has a longer way to go than the rest of us."
Hard-working humorist Roy Blount Jr. lives in the North but he's from the South, a delicious tension that has always informed and shaped his work. In this new collection, he directs his acerbic wit and finely-tuned insight toward the persistent and colorful differences between the two.
His essays treat every conceivable topic on which North and South misunderstand each other, from music to sports, eating, education, politics, child-rearing, religion, race, and language ("remember when there was lots of discussion of 'ebonics'?"). In this eminently quotable collection, Blount does justice to the charming, funny, infuriating facets of Southern tradition and their equally odd Northern counterpoints.
Review
"A high-cholesterol, richly rewarding collection of his essays on all things Southern."
—the New York Times
Synopsis
A sly, dry, hilarious collection of writings from Roy Blount Jr., who, according to
The New York Times Book Review, is "in serious contention for the title of America's most cherished humorist."
This time Blount focuses on his own dueling loyalties across the great American divide, North vs. South. Scholarly, raunchy, biting and affable, ol' Roy takes on topics ranging from chicken fingers to Elvis's toes. And he shares experiences: chatting with Ray Charles, rounding up rattlesnakes, and imagining Faulkner's tennis game. His yarns, analyses, and flights of fancy transcend all standard shades of Red, Blue, and in between.
Long Time Leaving is a comic ode to American variety and also a droll assault on complacency North and South—a glorious union of diverse pieces reshaped and expanded into an American classic.
About the Author
ROY BLOUNT JR. is the author of 19 previous books, most recently Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans. He is a panelist on NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me, a columnist for Oxford American, a contributing editor to The Atlantic Monthly, and president of the Authors Guild. TIME puts him squarely "in the tradition of the great curmudgeons like H.L. Mencken and W.C. Fields." He lives in western Massachusetts.