Roy Blount's Book of Southern Humor - Hardcover

Blount Jr., Roy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393036952 ISBN 13: 9780393036954

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994

Synopsis

There may be no funnier species in the literary universe than a Southern writer on a roll.

The richest vein of American humor―the broadest, the earthiest, the most outrageously inventive―can be found below the Mason-Dixon line, where the comic impulse just naturally seems allied to the native storytelling genius, and the sacred and the profane are on the closest of terms.

Roy Blount, Jr., himself a native Southerner and on paper and in person one of the funniest men in America, has dug deep and foraged far and wide to produce the definitive treasury of Southern humor for our time. It comprises more than 150 selections, including stories, sketches, essays, poems, memoirs, and blues and C&W lyrics, arranged under such headings as "My People, My People (How's Your Mama 'n Them?)," "Here Be Dragons, or, How Come These Butterbeans Have an Alligator Taste?" and "Lying and Other Forms of Communication." The wildly heterogeneous roster of contributors range from such classics as William Faulkner, Mark Twain, Flannery O'Connor, Zora Neale Hurston, and Eudora Welty to such brilliantly funny contemporaries as Molly Ivins, Dave Barry, Harry Crews, Ishmael Reed, Barry Hannah, Bailey White, and Roy Blount, Jr., his very own self.

If you could stop laughing long enough you'd probably call Roy Blount's Book of Southern Humor a classic. And you'd be right.

About this title

About the Author:

Roy Blount Jr.'s recent books include the memoir Be Sweet and Roy Blount's Book of Southern Humor.

From Publishers Weekly:

With contributions from 114 authors-including three pieces by editor Blount (First Hubby) himself-this notable anthology offers a cornucopia of humor that, however loosely, can be associated with things "'Southern." Old masters represented here include Mark Twain, William Faulkner, O. Henry, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Joel Chandler Harris, Tennessee Williams and Edgar Allen Poe (whose contribution, the short story "X-ing a Paragrab," may surprise many). Luminaries among their heirs apparent are Tom Wolfe, Dave Barry, Harry Crews, Molly Ivins, Russell Baker and many more, while numbering among the less well-known contributors are Ferrol Sams, Bailey White, William Price Fox and Sarah Gilbert. The special treat here is the unexpected material collected from some rather offbeat sources: Julian Bond, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Brother Dave Gardner. Inexplicably, however, Blount passes over Lewis Grizzard, while giving six slots to Jerry Clower, and dismisses Carl Hiaasen by claiming that his novels "resist excerpting." Also snubbed are the likes of T.R. Pearson, Fanny Flagg and Olive Ann Burns. Even with these glaring lapses, though, this generous volume deserves serious consideration as a holiday gift for the eclectic-or Dixie-minded-reader.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0393036952
• ISBN 13: 9780393036954
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 670