Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 29, 1994 TAG: 9411300002
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"The Confederacy plus Kentucky.
"Funny on paper without pictures.
"And various. I wanted the world to know Southern humor in many different forms."
So starts the introduction to "Roy Blount's Book of Southern Humor," an anthology of songs, stories, essays and poems that include writers from Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty to Lyle Lovett, Louis Armstrong, Dave Barry and Lee Smith.
All told, he gathered more than 150 entries covering many of the typical concerns of the South: "dirt, chickens, defeat, family, religion, prejudice, collard greens, politics and diddie wa diddie."
"People in Singapore learn Southern accents so they can sing country; it's fundamental to American culture," Blount said in a recent telephone interview. "When people talk about American humor, they think about the New Yorker writers like Thurber and Benchley and E.B. White, whereas Southern humor tends to be not as easily acceptable or packageable.
"It's also a lot more ambitious and wilder and more interesting."
Like Blount's friend's description of a bald man: "I've seen more hair on a bar of soap down at the Holiday Inn."
Like the old boy who was asked if he believed in infant baptism: "Believe in it? Hell, I've seen it done!"
Like dialogue containing such phrases as "high-falutin'," "might could" and "I don't know about y'all, but what I hate most about moving is finding a new hair colorist."
Southern humor is not just redneck - that is, Junior Samples sitting on a bale of hay - though it can be, Blount believes. It also tends to cover these five areas, represented in Clyde Edgerton's great "Raney" scene, wherein a kid named Norris gets a fish hook hung in his nose - with the worm still on the hook.
"Characters bringing themselves to life through their fascination with other characters' deplorability.
"Careful attention to exactly how people talk ('would done' is nice).
"Close interaction with fish, bait, and other forms of animal life.
"People saying `I can't imagine,' meanwhile imagining like a house afire.
"Young boys named something like Norris. Or could be a young girl. ... If it's a young girl, it's destiny: She's just about going to have to go off away from home and do something her parents couldn't imagine."
Blount, whose other books include "About Three Bricks Shy of a Load" and "One Fell Soup," was born in Indianapolis - though he insists he lived there only 18 months before his parents moved back to their native South, where he was raised and educated. (He does claim having gone to Harvard - after Vanderbilt.)
It should be noted that he calls New York and Massachusetts home these days because "when I'm in the South, I wander around wondering where I can get The New York Times, and when I'm in the North I wander around wondering where I can get some okra, and I would rather think about some okra than The New York Times."
Asked to name his favorite place, Blount described a recent trip to Oxford, Miss. "I went to a juke joint and drank some moonshine, which seemed to be 4/5ths mineral spirits and 1/5th juice from a can of niblets.
"I'm still trying to metabolize that."
In addition to wandering around the country promoting his book, Blount is also a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, the authors' rock 'n' roll band that includes Dave Barry and Stephen King. "I'm the emcee and a back-up singer," Blount says.
"Which means I back way up from the microphone."
Blount counts among modern-day Southern institutions "Wal-Mart, CNN, the forthcoming Atlanta Olympics, mostly soulless country music and a feel-your-pain policy-wonk President."
Clinton "is made more fun of than he deserves, which puts me in an awkward position because I hate to be defending a president," Blount says. "I think it's easier to be Rush Limbaugh than it is to be president.
"To me, Rush sounds like Dom Deluise, and I've heard all that stuff in its original form."
Told that his buddy Clyde Edgerton was the library group's speaker last year, Blount said he was honored to follow him - though he conceded he doesn't sing as well. (Dave Barry says Blount has the "raw natural musical talent of a soldering iron.")
"I remember when W.C. Fields saw Charlie Chaplin for the first time and he said, `The sonofab---- is a ballet dancer!' ''
Roy Blount is the featured speaker at the second annual Friends of the Library reading, book-signing and reception Wednesday, 8 p.m., Radisson Patrick Henry Hotel. Tickets $8.50 in advance, $10 at door. 981-2473.
Blount will also sign copies of his book from noon to 2 p.m. Wednesday at Ram's Head Books, Roanoke. 344-1237.
by CNB