Long Time Leaving

Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South
Roy Blount, Jr. (2006, Alfred A. Knopf)

"Eating is like reading and writing. A book ought to be something that a person can read the way a porson is meant to eat chicken: something with plenty of unabashed and also intimate flavor, ruddy and deep-dyed flavor, flavor hard to sepatate from the structure, flavor that is never really exhaustaible." Well, here I was looking for words that would characterize Roy Blount's writing--and he'd gone and written them for me. I hope you know Roy Blount already, an expatriate Southerner now living in Western Massachusetts.
"...I have sought to turn my regional ambivalence into a philosophical position (or dance). Trying to get Aunt Dixie and Uncle Sam on speaking terms." I can't think of anybody more qualified, or more fun to read while he's doing it. Blount also weighs in on politics, books, music and movies, as well as food, all with plenty of unabashed and also intimate flavor. Yum.

June 2007 by email