Roy Blount Jr. – författare

Seventy-seven years ago a slim, agile, quick-witted, self-assured young man, identifying with but transcending his ethnic minority, was summoned to save a nation from financial ruin. As the nation's new president he brought together a team of rivals, a band of brothers. And those brothers' names: Pinky, Chicolini, and Lt. Bob Roland. And that leader's name: Rufus T. Firefly. It was a movie, and what a movie: "Duck Soup", the Marx Brothers at their most intense, in their finest hour. In "Hail, Hail, Euphoria!" Roy Blount, Jr. takes us through the history and making of "Duck Soup", examining the comedic genius of the Marx Brothers with the insight and appreciation of a true fan. Though first released in theaters nearly eighty years ago, "Duck Soup" continues to impress audiences and serve as an important cultural reference.In "Hannah and Her Sisters", Woody Allen's character, Mickey Sachs, is considering suicide when he happens to see a bit of Duck Soup and has an epiphany: How can anyone even think of killing himself when this world affords such high-low comedy as the Brothers' spectacular musical number, "The Country's Going to War", in which the call to arms involves, among many other rousing elements, takeoffs on gospel ("All God's Chillun Got Guns") and the Virginia reel. There is nothing anywhere else in the history of American culture quite like Harpo's contribution to the do-si-do. You can't write a whole book about how funny a movie is. But this is a movie that can be discussed and probed in many directions. The parallels to current politics are obvious, and then there are links to be made involving Woody Allen and mirrors ("the Duck Soup" scene in which Harpo pretends to be Groucho's reflection is famous, but there's a little-noted Allen mirror scene whose autobiographical resonance is startling), George W. Bush and projectiles, Margaret Dumont and moms, Groucho and Karl, Jews and Irishmen.

No man of letters savers 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. This book is for anyone - novice wordsmith, sensuous reader, or career grammarian - who loves to get physical with words. What is the universal sign of disgust, ew, doing in beautiful and cutie? Why is toadless, but not frogless, in the Oxford English Dictionary? How can the U. S. Supreme Court find relevance in gollywoddles? Might there be scientific evidence for the sonicky value of hunch? And why would someone not bother to spell correctly the very word he is trying to define on Urbandictionary.com? Digging into how locutions evolve, and work, or fail, Blount draws upon everything from "The Tempest" to "The Wire". He takes us to Iceland, for salmon-watching with a "girl gillie," and to Georgian England, where a distinguished etymologist bites off more of a "giantess" than he can chew.Jimmy Stewart appears, in connection with kludge and the bombing of Switzerland. Litigation over supercalifragilisticexpialidocious leads to a vintage werewolf movie; news of possumtossing, to metanarrative. As Michael Dirda wrote in "The Washington Post Book World", "The immensely likeable Blount clearly possesses what was called in the Italian Renaissance 'sprezzatura,' that rare and enviable ability to do even the most difficult things without breaking a sweat." "Alphabetter Juice" is brimming with sprezzatura. Have a taste.

Have you ever asked yourself, Am I southern? If not geographically, then deep down, at heart? Or, if I am not southern myself, do I know people who are southern, whom I misunderstand? Is there some authority I should consult?Crackers. Without this book, you will just flail around in the shallows of Southernity, with nothing solid to hold onto. Roy Blount Jr. puts you in touch with possums, heterosexist dancing, people named Junior, a two-headed four-armed three-legged gospel-singing man, your feelings about the Carter administration. These specifics take you out into the depths.As a character in Crackers puts it, "I don't read books about the South, but I read southern books. Hoooo, people stealing one another's wooden legs, setting fires, making tarbabies out of one another. . . ."Crackers is a southern book.