Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South
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In this acerbic, eminently quotable book, humorist Roy Blount Jr. focuses on his own dueling loyalties across the great American divide. Scholarly, raunchy, biting, and affable, Blount takes on topics ranging from chicken fingers and yellow dog Democrats to Elvis’s toes while sharing some experiences of his own: chatting with Ray Charles, meeting an Okefenokee alligator, imagining Faulkner’s tennis game, and being swept up, sort of, in the filming of Nashville. His yarns, analyses, and flights of fancy transcend all standard shades of Red, Blue, and in between. Blount’s sidesplitting, irreverent musings may not end our tacit Civil War at long last, but they do clarify, or aptly complicate, divisive delusions on both sides of the long-standing national rift. Long Time Leaving is a comic ode to American variety and a droll assault on complacency both North and South from one of the most definitive and esteemed humorists of our time.The New York Times Sunday Book Review - Christopher DickeyI had to stop reading this book in public. I laughed out loud too often and too uproariously for the company in a bus or plane or cafe. What was worse, if I tried to explain myself my Southern accent, usually kept in check when I m traveling in the North or abroad (where I live), came back like kudzu after a summer rain.
I IntroductionBringing in the Sheaves 3II Setting the TableWhy I'm Not an Outsider Artist 17The Right Shade of Blue? 20First, Tell Me What Kind of Reader You Are 24Out-of-Pants Experience 28Do You Know the Nothin' Man? 33You Hate Me Because I'm Southern 37The Rapture: Lighten Up 42Total Immersion, Up to a Point 45Don't Force It: An Introduction to Up from Methodism 49Can't I Be the Most Sophisticated Something Else? 53Why Communism Didn't Originate in South Carolina 58How about This Peculiar Institution? 62The Worm Bubble 65Gothic Baseball 69III EatingGiving Good Gravy 77The Way Folks Were Meant to Eat 80Meat, Three, Wallace Stevens, and Me 83Mammy's Little Baby Loves What, Exactly? 86Food-Song Maven 91Chicken 97What Undid Uncle Bud 101The Terrys Do It Right 104A Grapefruit Moment 109IV ReadingThe Plurality of Y'all 115The Peer Group That I Hesitate to Speak Its Name 121Listen Up, Youth 126Southern Humor: Love It or Leave It 129So Many Writers. Why? 134The Thwock and the Fury: Faulkner's Tennis 138In Elysium 142Confronting My Whiteness 143Little Truman, Happy at Last 147The Best of Gaynelle 151Oh, Come on, Smiley 157Fresh Mark 163Bits of Twain for Brits 165True Portis 175Those Shakespeherian Blues 178V Watching, ListeningBrother Ray: What He Said 185Violinist and Panther: Brother Dave 189The Clampetts Never Got to Whack Anybody 195Not to Nashville, Yes to O Brother 199When the Lights Go Down South 204A Wang Dang Doodle Dandy? 215Cruelty to Elvis 220The King Was in the Countinghouse, Counting Out His Toes 224LoveThose Bozzies 229He's Crossed Over to Classic 233Deja Ahooey 235Country Song Entitlement 240Memphis Minnie's Blues: A Dirty Mother for You 245VI TravelingMe and Bobby E. Lee 257See the World But Don't Get Carried Away 262Right out There with the Dogs 269Dogs Whose Parents Got Out 275Snakes Alive 277Babel to Byzantium 282Augusta Un-Mastered 287Atlanta Explained 294The Olympics: "Atlanta Will Be Done Away" 304The Varsity Is Local 308The Guy-Crowded Gulf (1993) 312The Bottom Line (2005) 318There Be Alligators 321Hanging with the Klan 330VII PolitickingDouble-Bubba Bubble (1992) 341Briefly (1992) 342Bill, You're Due 344A Makeover for Uncle Sam? (1995) 350The New Southern Manhood (1995) 354He May Be a Dog, But He's Our Dog 359Sometimes Higbe's That Way (1998) 362Slick Willie and the Marble Model (2000) 366Yellow-dogma 369Looking Back on Bill (2000) 373How Bad Could It Be? (2000) 376The Story So Far (2006) 379
