Long Time Leaving: Dispatches From Up South

Written by Roy Blount Jr

Narrated by Roy Blount

The first collection of the beloved humorist's sly, dry, hilarious essays in more than a decade focuses on a perennially popular topic: the South vs. the North.



"When [Northerners] ask me to explain grits, I look at them like an Irishman who's been asked to explain potatoes."



"When I was a boy in Georgia, college sports was Bobby Dodd versus Bear Bryant immemorial. Compared to that the Harvard-Yale game is a panel discussion."



"Anybody who claims . . . not to have 'a racist bone' in his or her body is at best preracist and has a longer way to go than the rest of us."



Hard-working humorist Roy Blount Jr. lives in the North but he's from the South, a delicious tension that has always informed and shaped his work. In this new collection, he directs his acerbic wit and finely-tuned insight toward the persistent and colorful differences between the two.



His essays treat every conceivable topic on which North and South misunderstand each other, from music to sports, eating, education, politics, child-rearing, religion, race, and language ("remember when there was lots of discussion of 'ebonics'?").



In this eminently quotable collection, Blount does justice to the charming, funny, infuriating facets of Southern tradition and their equally odd Northern counterpoints.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: May 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781598875003

Roy Blount Jr

Roy Blount Jr. is the author of Alphabet Juice and books covering subjects from the Pittsburgh Steelers to Robert E. Lee to what dogs are thinking. Born in Indianapolis and raised in Decatur, Georgia, Blount lives in western Massachusetts with his wife, the painter Joan Griswold.

Reviews for Long Time Leaving

[ritaer_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Blount is balanced between a natural love of his homeland and a self-conscious shame for the crimes of the South. While he resents the assumptions made by Northerners that all Southerners are ignorant racists, he must acknowledge historical realities. Given the miserable record of the US on race relations, genocide of Native peoples and imperialism, those of us born in the north should join Blount in ambivalence about our heritage.

[cat1ballou · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I would have liked this even more had I not been aware of the AMAZING content in Alphabet Juice!