Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from up South
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The first collection of the beloved humorist's sly, dry, hilarious essays in more than a decade focuses on a perennially popular topic: the South vs. the North.“"When [Northerners] ask me to explain grits, I look at them like an Irishman who's been asked to explain potatoes.""When I was a boy in Georgia, college sports was Bobby Dodd versus Bear Bryant immemorial. Compared to that the Harvard-Yale game is a panel discussion.""Anybody who claims…not to have 'a racist bone' in his or her body is at best preracist and has a longer way to go than the rest of us."Hard-working humorist Roy Blount Jr. lives in the North but he's from the South, a delicious tension that has always informed and shaped his work. In this new collection, he directs his acerbic wit and finely-tuned insight toward the persistent and colorful differences between the two.His essays treat every conceivable topic on which North and South misunderstand each other, from music to sports, eating, education, politics, child-rearing, religion, race, and language ("remember when there was lots of discussion of 'ebonics'?"). In this eminently quotable collection, Blount does justice to the charming, funny, infuriating facets of Southern tradition and their equally odd Northern counterpoints. The New York Times - William Grimes … a high-cholesterol, richly rewarding collection of his essays on all things Southern … Southerners take a carnal pleasure in chewing the English language. Mr. Blount, who has a pitch-perfect ear, scatters bits and pieces of Southern talk throughout the essays, but he really dives into the subject in a review of the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English, a treasure trove of expressions like a slick go-down (a morsel that can be eaten easily), fotched-on (store-bought or imported), the all-overs (the shivers) and squoz as the past tense of squeeze. I am privileged, as a white Southern writer, he says in another essay, to be a direct inheritor of the orality, earthiness, emotional juice, metaphorical fluency, rhythmic relish and improvisatory looseness of Southern American English, whose black and white ingredients vary as to proportions but are inseparable. Amen.
IntroductionBringing in the Sheaves 3Setting 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 69EatingGiving 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 109ReadingThe 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 178Watching, ListeningBrother Ray: What He Said 185Violinist and Panther: Brother Dave 189The Clampetts Never Got to Whack Anybody 195No 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 224Love Those Bozzies 229He's Crossed Over to Classic 233Deja Ahooey 235Country Song Entitlement 240Memphis Minnie's Blues: A Dirty Mother for You 245TravelingMe and Bobby E. Lee 257See the World But Don't Get Carried Away 262Bight 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 330PolitickingDouble-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
