Possum Fair

Crackers By Roy Blount Jr. Knopf, 291 pp., $10.95 If the U.S. bureaucratic hydra ever sprouts a Department to Suppress Laughter, Blount will be high on its squish list. The blurbs on the jacket are intimidating, with encomiums from Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and William F. Buckley Jr. The latter says, “Roy Blount Jr. establishes himself as a major humorist.” As a disestablished minor critic I hastily affix my imprimatur for all the correct reasons. Firstly, my fee; secondly, he’s really that good.

The contents are drawn from pieces previously published in The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, Texas Monthly, and Sports Illustrated; some of the pieces have been refurbished, and some fresh material seems to have been added. The 23 chapters have titles like “The Invocation,” “Pissing and Moaning,” “Drugs in the White House,” “Possumism,” and “The Curse of Georgians.” After a few sentences one is aware that here is someone a lot better than Kim Il-sung’s ghostwriter; after a few chapters Mark Twain and Richard Pryor are getting a run for their money; at book’s end Phyllis Diller and Rabelais are on the ropes. For the dour Menckens among us, a good dose of this will do you good. For the slightly comatose, a rereading is even better.

CC

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Charles Culhane

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Crackers By Roy Blount Jr. Knopf, 291 pp., $10.95 If the U.S. bureaucratic hydra ever sprouts a Department to Suppress Laughter, Blount will be high on its squish list. The blurbs on the jacket are intimidating, with encomiums from Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and William F. Buckley Jr. The latter says, “Roy Blount Jr. establishes himself as a major humorist.” As a disestablished minor critic I hastily affix my imprimatur for all the correct reasons. Firstly, my fee; secondly, he’s really that good.

The contents are drawn from pieces previously published in The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, Texas Monthly, and Sports Illustrated; some of the pieces have been refurbished, and some fresh material seems to have been added. The 23 chapters have titles like “The Invocation,” “Pissing and Moaning,” “Drugs in the White House,” “Possumism,” and “The Curse of Georgians.” After a few sentences one is aware that here is someone a lot better than Kim Il-sung’s ghostwriter; after a few chapters Mark Twain and Richard Pryor are getting a run for their money; at book’s end Phyllis Diller and Rabelais are on the ropes. For the dour Menckens among us, a good dose of this will do you good. For the slightly comatose, a rereading is even better.