Disclaimer: I did not finish this book. I won't rate it because that wouldn't be fair....Truthfully, I smile when I hear Roy Blount Jr is a guest on NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. However, as Roy even says himself, this is not a book to be read cover to cover. It is a book to be picked up and dab...
Ah...well, this kind of reads like a "G" rated version of some of Caldwell's more popular works, namely God's Little Acre, Tobacco Road, and my personal favorite so far, Estherville.A collection of tales featuring the poor Southern Stroup family: Morris Stroup the patriarch - a philandering, unem...
“One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere, like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time....
The temptation in writing about someone as witty as Roy Blount Jr. is just to rear back and quote. So let’s put temptation before us, with a sample of what’s to be found in his latest book, “Long Time Leaving”: •tOn Truman Capote: “his writing did over time tend to break up in the opposite but c...
Written in a quaint time when the federal deficit was only $200 billion, this collection of short stories is good for a chuckle at some unintentional prophecies (What if Nixon had stuck with this program and expanded it to the point where he was tape recording everybody in the nation except himse...
. . the low city . . . the labyrinthine mass of oleander and jasmine, lantana and mimosa . . . —WILLIAM FAULKNER, Absalom, Absalom! They say anything will grow here, and everything eats it. —A LONG-TIME RESIDENT THIS DOESN’T LOOK LIKE AN AMERICAN STREET. It’s lined with architecture, some of it r...
I don't know whether the trials have gotten less crazy since then. I sure hope not. All I know about top-notch bird dogs is, you're not supposed to pet them much; they're more serious than that. All I can say about myself as a horseman is, I guess I am just not gaited. Yet in February I risked—fo...