Long Time Leaving

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.

Roy Blount Jr. is the author of nineteen other books. He is a panelist on NPR's "Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!" a columnist for Oxford American, a contributing editor to The Atlantic, and president of the Authors Guild. He lives in western Massachusetts.

"Blount's work is unflaggingly passionate and provocative over a range of subjects, including food, politics and all things Southern ... [His] energetic, unpredictable essays are sure-fire fan-pleasers, and fine discoveries for newcomers."