One Fell Soup - Or, I'm Just A Bug On The Windshield Of Life

by Roy Blount Jr.

A collection of short pieces about everything from genius and God to socks and lentils, from one of America's most beloved humor writersOne Fell Soup brings together the reviews, diatribes, investigations, meditations, and poetry of Roy Blount Jr., a writer as insightful as he is funny. Culled from his many columns and magazine writings, this volume offers an unparalleled look at the varied interests of a writer the New York Times has compared to Mark Twain--albeit with a far greater demonstrated interest in love songs about gravy, ice cream, and mac and cheese."Chickens" celebrates the vast cultural importance--and criminal neglect--of the most abundant domesticated fowl. "So This Is Male Sexuality" examines the unsettling specter of sex researchers like Masters and Johnson looming over one's private thoughts. And "Merely Shot in the Head" ponders the absurd willpower of a man who finishes a full marathon after taking a bullet ten miles into the race.

Genres: Humor, Essays, Poetry

Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Roy Blount Jr. is the author of twenty-three books. The first, About Three Bricks Shy of a Load, was expanded into About Three Bricks Shy . . . and the Load Filled Up. It is often called one of the best sports books of all time. His subsequent works have taken on a range of subjects, from Duck Soup, to Robert E. Lee, to what cats are thinking, to how to savor New Orleans, to what it’s like being married to the first woman president of the United States.

Blount is a panelist on NPR’s Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me!, an ex-president of the Authors Guild, a usage consultant for the American Heritage Dictionary, a New York Public Library Literary Lion, and a member of both the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the band the Rock Bottom Remainders.

In 2009, Blount received the University of North Carolina’s Thomas Wolfe Prize. The university cited “his voracious appetite for the way words sound and for what they really mean.” Time places Blount “in the tradition of the great curmudgeons like H. L. Mencken and W. C. Fields.” Norman Mailer has said, “Page for page, Roy Blount is as funny as anyone I’ve read in a long time.” Garrison Keillor told the Paris Review, “Blount is the best. He can be literate, uncouth, and soulful all in one sentence.”

Blount’s essays, articles, stories, and verses have appeared in over one hundred and fifty publications, including the New Yorker, the New York Times, Esquire, the Atlantic, Sports Illustrated, the Oxford American, and Garden & Gun. He comes from Decatur, Georgia, and lives in western Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Treasure Island Books · Rating 2 out of 5]

What has changed? It can't be this book Roy Blount Jr. wrote sometime in the eighties. It used to be funny. Now, I find it barely readable with an amusing observation here and there. The poems are so silly or scatological that I don't want to read them. What has happened? I grow old...I grow old...I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

[Robert Felice · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

Not that funny. And not one of Mr. Booker's "songs" have a tune or any sense of rhythm. Call them what the are: poems. Or doggeral. There are a few funny bits in here, but it isn't worth your time to wade through the book to find them.

[Paul Belserene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roy Blount Jr. has some lines in here that made me laugh so hard I could barely breathe, and then remembering them I laughed almost as hard. Comedy's hard but every now and then Blount Jr. hits one out of the park, and he does it with that easy relaxed swing he has.

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard Blount read this essay and series of country song lyrics aloud at Clemson University in midsummer 1982 or 1983.
Highly recommended.

[Chris "Stu" · Rating 1 out of 5]

Manic, forced, and unfunny. Or at least very much not my cup of tea.