“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
Blount…displays his pleasure in words with his subtitle—”The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; with Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory”—as he dishes up an alphabetical array of “verbal reverberations,” weasel words and linguistic acrobatics from “aardvark” to “zoology” (“Pronounced zo-ology. Not zoo-ology. Look at the letters. Count the o’s”). Along the way, he compares dictionaries, slings slang, digs for roots, posts ripostes and dotes on anecdotes. The format is nearly identical to Roy Copperud’s still valuable but out-of-print A Dictionary of Usage and Style (1964). Blount’s book is equally instructive and scholarly, but is also injected with a full dose of word play on steroids. Quotes, quips, euphemisms, rhymes and rhythms, literary references (“Lo-lee-ta”) and puns: “The lowest form of wit, it used to be said, but that was before Ann Coulter.” Throughout, the usage advice is sage and also fun, since the writer’s own wild wit, while bent and Blount, is razor sharp.
Publishers Weekly
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.
Booklist