Be Sweet: A Conditional Love Story - Hardcover

Blount Jr., Roy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679400540 ISBN 13: 9780679400547

Publisher: Knopf, 1998

Synopsis

In the book his laughing and loving readers have been waiting for, our generation's master of full-hearted humor lays open the soul of his life story.

Roy Blount Jr.--Georgia boy turned New York wit, lover of baseball and interesting women, bumbling adventurer, literary lion, salty-limerick virtuoso and impassioned father--journeys into the past and his psyche (also all the way to China, sixty feet underwater and to various Manhattan hot spots) in search of the answers to three riddles that have haunted him intimately:

One: the riddle of "the family curse." Two: the riddle of what drives him (or anyone) to be funny. Three: the riddle of what so cruelly tangled his unseverable bond with the beguiling, beaten orphan girl who became the impossible mother who raised him to Be Sweet.

Roy Blount's memoir is sardonic and sentimental, hilarious and grieving, brazen and bashful, tough and tender--sometimes by turns and sometimes all at once. Almost harshly honest, yet sportively wayward, Be Sweet resonates with the complex but bouncy chords of a whole man singing, clinkers and all.

About this title

Review:

Roy Blount doesn't like being 55. But then, does anyone? Hindsight being 20/20, we're sure to notice the mammoth pile of quirks, foibles, and just plain oddball behavior--not to mention downright nastiness--each of us has accumulated at the midlife point. If there's an observer you'd want to have there with you to sort out the good you've done (or at least the funny bits) and make all those bittersweet memories melt on your tongue, Blount may be the one.

In Be Sweet, his hilarious yet deeply moving personal memoir, Blount holds up the recollections of his life for all to see, like an archaeologist uncovering something precious and rare, exposing his soul to the air. "There are various ways of being shameless in the world," he says. "One is to write a memoir." And this life's story, told in a subtle and self-effacing style, is shamelessly funny.

While exploring the maddening subtext of his relationship with his mother, Blount has written "a conditional love story," and shaped a wonderfully entertaining memoir filled with poignant truths and brilliant reflections. Be Sweet may leave you laughing, but you'll likely feel a little something welling in the corner of your eye, and find yourself looking at your own life with a smile on your face. --George Laney

From the Back Cover:

"It's time for Roy Blount to stop worrying about humorists petering out (to use an expression I don't like much) at fifty-five. He's still checking the room with fresh eyes, and now the boy's writing literature at the same time. The truth is, by the way, that the word humorist never covered it anyway."
--Pete Dexter

"Roy Blount, who is the funniest person I know, journeys deep into the dark heart of humor and brings back a wonderfully insightful, superbly crafted song of the soul that had me laughing and crying too."
--Dave Barry

"Not just a boy's book . . . Wanna know what men are really thinking? Here's the most finely drawn portrait of the American male at the end of the twentieth century that you're likely to see. Haunted, hysterical, illuminating and (yes!) sweet. Roy lets it all hang out, in exuberant prose that will knock your socks off."
--Lee Smith

"Be Sweet, by Roy Blount Jr., is worth reading if only for the description of his mama's butter beans. Also the phrase 'owl wrangler.' But it's so much more--an intimate family story that's brilliant, funny and ultimately very kind and loving."
--Bobbie Ann Mason

"Bless this book and the horse it rode in on."
--Ann Richards

"Be Sweet is smart, funny, sad, bittersweet and semi-brilliant, but I would expect nothing less from Roy Blount, one of America's true originals."
--Dan Jenkins

"Roy Blount's memoir is sweet, but with the occasional sour ball thrown in. I read it over three enjoyable nights, laughing all the way. Roy Blount is one of America's premier humorists, but he's also got nine yards of heart. He may never be in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, but this book has a special place in my heart."
--Stephen King

"Roy Blount has turned the world of memoir writing on its ear. Be Sweet is the real thing: the brilliant disarray of midlife reflection, the quirky detours of mapping a personal cosmos. Reading it, I often found myself laughing out loud, to the consternation of people in waiting rooms, but I also was moved to breathlessness by the book's palpable emotions, sweetness and slap-on-the-knee poignant self-truths."
--Amy Tan

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0679400540
• ISBN 13: 9780679400547
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 289