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Alphabet Juice For all reviews click here
from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (and Macmillan Audio):
advance reviews:
"Roy Blount is one of the most clever (see sly, witty, cunning, nimble) wordsmiths cavorting in the English language, or what remains of it. Alphabet Juice proves once again that he's incapable of writing a flat or unfunny sentence." — Carl Hiassen, author of Nature Girl
"Alphabet Juice is the book Roy Blount was born to write, which considering his prodigious talent, is saying a lot. Did you know that the word LAUGH is linguistically related to chickens and pie? This is the book that any of us who urgently, passionately love words—to read them, roll them over the tongue and learn their life stories while laughing and eating chicken and pie—were lucky enough to be born to read." — Cathleen Schine, author of The New Yorkers
Publishers Weekly:
Booklist:
Ever since Lynn Truss' Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation took the 2004 best-seller lists by storm, publishers have been casting about for their next dark-horse language book. Farrar may have found it in Blount's latest title. Much more garrulous than Truss, a shameless namedropper, and a purveyor of endless anecdotes always casting himself in the starring role, Blount is supremely entertaining here and more than matches Truss' spirited tone. Laid out in A–Z dictionary format, the book ranges from the pointed critique of conjunction dysfunction to the hilarious diatribe under tump, which finds Blount spending weeks looking for his own name in the new edition of American Heritage Dictionary. Feeling that he is long overdue to be cited for word usage, Blount envies "Hunter Thompson for booger, Jimmy Breslin for boozehound, and William Safire for hoohah." He is, however willing to concede snob to Tom Wolfe. Although some entries are only tangentially connected to his ostensible subject (see TV, on being on), many others provide Blount with ample opportunity to wax eloquent on the joys of language; his perfect parsing of the allure of the phrase "wonky exegeses" will elicit smiles from fellow language lovers. A knowledgeable handbook that is also chock-full of funny, colorful opinions on marriage, movies, and Monet.
Long Time Leaving:
"Roy
Blount is so funny, and he sounds like he's just talking, and the next
thing you know he has tossed off
an essay as elegant and intricately structured as a birdsong. His ear
for American speech is better than anybody's." -- Ian Frazier
"Roy
Blount is so foot-tappingly good that the North and the South will fight
to claim him." -- Jacqueline Carey.
On
Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans:
"Those
looking for a nontraditional portrait of this unconventional city will
be delighted by Blount's colorful, almost tender account."
-- Publishers Weekly
"Blount writes a superb simple declarative sentence. But he'll follow that with a sentence that even a Hall of Fame English teacher, equipped with fresh chalk and a full blackboard, would struggle to diagram. And it won't just hold together, this sentence. It'll be a standing ovation-worthy performance, full of music, irony and felicitous juxtaposition, yet not short shrifting in ideas and information. It'll sound like the Deep South and the Upper West Side, but in good, not illegitimate child or pretentious, ways... America's most diverting writer takes on America's most diverting city." -- The Charlotte Observer.
Robert E. Lee:
"Robert
E. Lee's hard to deal with'...but in this little gem of a book Blount
has done it about as imaginatively, about as memorably, and about as
well as anyone has done -- southerner or not, and historian or not --
in years."
-- J. Tracy Power, historian at the South Carolina Department of
Archives and History.
"This
vibrant introduction goes a long way toward softening the image of that
stony icon of the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee. Blount bravely
reckons with the Marble Man, consulting works that draw out Lee's 'feminine
side' to humanize his portrait....Blount's handling of Lee's lonely
childhood is surprisingly moving.... Blount's is the only writing on
Lee this reviewer has encountered that makes one feel real sympathy
for the general--a feeling the author smartly keeps from bleeding over
into affection for any Lost Cause ideology." --Library Journal
"This
outstanding volume is the latest entry in the Penguin Lives series,
which allows distinguished authors to select a person about whom they
are curious and then write a short, synthetic account that will inform
the general reader and specialist alike. Blount's graceful narrative
reflects the author's wide reading of and mature reflection on the standard
biographies of Lee. The result is a miniature masterpiece." --Bookpage.
"Witty, lively and wholly fascinating." --New York Times Book Review
The Main Stream
Philadelphia International Film Festival Award, 2001
Empire State Film Festival, First Prize Feature Documentary, 2001
"The Weisberg-Blount sojourn provides equal time for the serious, the odd, the crass and the sentimental" --The New York Times
"It's
a delight - funny, observant and downright anthropological in its
details of how its characters live." --The Star-Ledger
"Blount's great talent, apart from writing, is that he's comfortable chewing the fat with just about anybody - especially folks who might actually call conversing chewing the fat." --Newsday
"The two-hour film celebrates American eccentricity and features people and towns whose beliefs and lifestyles fall outside mainstream culture." --The Washington Post
"Blount has empathy for everyone, which makes this a joyous journey. Accompanied by picturesque photography and a nice variety of river-related songs he takes us on a delightful trip for all of the 2,552 miles." --The Indianapolis Star
"While Blount's journey includes some compelling portraits of middle America, it is his natural attraction to the pockets of weirdness along the way (the backwaters, as he puts it) that become the most bracing moments in the documentary." --The Oregonian
"Roy Blount's stuff makes me laugh so hard, sometimes I have to go sit in a room and shut the door"--Garrison Keillor
"Right up there with Bob and Ray"--Boston Globe
"Unleashes a startling expertise in economic theory"--Newsweek
"The war between the sexes hasn't had such an able correspondent since James Thurber."--Boston Globe
"You'd be pulling off a major stunt/ To hold your laughter while reading Roy Blount."--Washington Post Book World
"A writer of easy grace and great generosity, always delivering more than he promises, always up to more than he lets on." --Jon Carroll, The Village Voice
"Unlike most of the other first-rate humorists of this century--Thurber, Perelman, Woody Allen--Blount is neither a political nor a cultural reactionary. He is comfortable with--even enthusiastic about--the variety of human experience. He likes women and isn't afraid of them."--Berkshire Eagle
"One really understands testicles after reading 'The Family Jewels,' and one is gratified."--Cathleen Schine, The Nation
"...has become America's foremost humorist."--Chicago Tribune
"In serious contention for the title of America's most cherished humorist.... Mr. Blount's most congenial literary crony in the area of foxy yokelism is, to his reader's good fortune, Mark Twain."--New York Times Book Review
"Blount's cleverness and ability to see into the central absurdity of things are just one half of his talent as a humorist. The second half is made up of his feel and love for the language.... He is as sure-footed on the slippery slopes of funniness as a mountain goat on an alp."--Milwaukee Journal
On Crackers: "A comic masterpiece."--New York Times Book Review
(Crackers was selected by the Duke University Comprehensive Cancer Center as one of the books that might do cancer patients some good.)On About Three Bricks Shy of a Load: "A work of art."--N.Y. Times Book Review
On Now, Where Were We?: "Reading a collection of articles by Roy Blount Jr. is like panning for gold at Tiffany's - you knw the nuggets will be there, the only question is their brilliance. Well, prepare to strike the mother lode." - Chicago Tribune "Blount is that rare writer who can be funny and serious at the same time... Once he starts running he's on a course of his own." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer.
On First Hubby: "...offers an emphatic and romantic 'yes' to the question 'Can true love survive the Oval Office?'"--New Yorker
On Roy Blount's Book of Southern Humor: "A book to read till it falls apart"--Newsweek.
"Gut-busting"--Book of the Month Club NewsOn Be Sweet: "Roy Blount, who is the funniest person I know, journeys deep into the dark heart of humor and brings back a wonderfully insightful, superbly crafted song of the soul that had me laughing and crying too"--Dave Barry. "An intimate family story that's brilliant, funny and ultimately very kind and loving"--Bobbie Ann Mason.
"Few writers create narrative threads so closely following the process of memory as Roy Blount, Jr. All the more apt that his memoir, Be Sweet: A Conditional Love Story, manages to collect a swarming beehive of memories, incidents, stories, and mild exaggerations, bundle them together with a humorist's half-knot of narrative, and make it read like a revelation."
-- BookPage