Roy Blount Jr. is the author of twenty-four books, about everything from the first woman president of the United States (back in 1992), to what barnyard animals are thinking. Latest is Save Room for Pie, from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Before that was Alphabetter Juice: The Joy of Text, a followup to Alphabet Juice.
He comes from Decatur, Georgia (see his 1980 book Crackers) and currently lives in New Orleans (see his Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans, which the New York Times called “a wild, unpredictable ramble through a wild, unpredictable townâ€) and western Massachusetts (see Long Time Leaving: Dispatches From Up South, which won the 2007 nonfiction award from the New England Independent Booksellers Association). . .
photo by Joan Griswold
In poems and songs, limericks and fake (or sometimes true) news stories, Blount talks about food in surprising and innovative ways, with all the wit and verve that prompted Garrison Keillor, in The Paris Review, to say: "Blount is the best. He can be literate, uncouth and soulful all in one sentence."
No man of letters savors the ABC’s, or serves them up, like language-loving humorist Roy Blount Jr. His glossary, from ad hominy to zizz, is hearty, full bodied, and out to please discriminating palates coarse and fine. In 2008, he celebrated the gists, tangs, and energies of letters and their combinations in Alphabet Juice, to wide acclaim. Now, Alphabetter Juice. Which is better.
Bestselling author Roy Blount Jr. tells the story of the classic Marx Brothers wartime satire Duck Soup. As always, Blount isinformed yet informal, tongue-in-cheek yet tempered, providing the perfect voice to recount the irreverent antics of Harpo, Chico, Groucho, and Zeppo.
A sly, dry, hilarious collection of essays—his first in more than ten years—from the writer who, according to The New York Times Book Review, is “in serious contention for the title of America’s most cherished humorist.â€
"If everybody's first English teacher were Roy Blount Jr., we might still be trillions in debt, but we would be so deeply in love with words and their magic . . . that we'd hardly notice." ―Chris Tucker, The Dallas Morning News