Be Sweet
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Overview
My mother loved me to pieces, as she often said, writes Roy Blount Jr., "and I'm still trying to pick up the pieces." In the book his readers have been waiting for, our generation's master of full-hearted humor lays open the soul of his life story. Blount—Georgia boy, New York wit, lover of baseball and interesting women, bumbling adventurer, salty-limerick virtuoso, and impassioned father—journeys into his past, and his psyche (and also to China, Manhattan, and sixty feet underwater) in search of the answers to three riddles that have haunted his life: one, the riddle of "the family curse"; two, the riddle of what drives him, or anyone, to be funny; and three, the riddle of what so cruelly tangled his bond to the beguiling orphan girl who became the impossible mother who raised him to Be Sweet. Sardonic and sentimental, hilarious and grieving, brazen and bashful, tough and tender, honest and wayward, Be Sweet resonates with the complex but bouncy chords of a whole man singing, clinkers and all.
Synopsis
My mother loved me to pieces, as she often said, writes Roy Blount Jr., "and I'm still trying to pick up the pieces." In the book his readers have been waiting for, our generation's master of full-hearted humor lays open the soul of his life story. Blount—Georgia boy, New York wit, lover of baseball and interesting women, bumbling adventurer, salty-limerick virtuoso, and impassioned father—journeys into his past, and his psyche (and also to China, Manhattan, and sixty feet underwater) in search of the answers to three riddles that have haunted his life: one, the riddle of "the family curse"; two, the riddle of what drives him, or anyone, to be funny; and three, the riddle of what so cruelly tangled his bond to the beguiling orphan girl who became the impossible mother who raised him to Be Sweet. Sardonic and sentimental, hilarious and grieving, brazen and bashful, tough and tender, honest and wayward, Be Sweet resonates with the complex but bouncy chords of a whole man singing, clinkers and all.
People Magazine
Achingly funny...we can only hope Blount will go on forever.
Editorials
People Magazine
Achingly funny...we can only hope Blount will go on forever.Publishers Weekly -
With bylines in 117 publications (e.g., Sports Illustrated, the New Yorker), 14 books (Crackers) and a Hollywood movie (Larger Than Life) to his credit, Blount has become a kind of ultimate freelance writer, maximizing his extraordinary ability to spin a funny phrase and tell a humorous story. Worried about turning 55 "roughly the age when humorists stop being funny" he has added more heft to his writing, peppering his sharp wit with introspection and self-analysis. But the mix proves uneven. Blount is frequently hilarious and poignant, even with cast-off lines, "They tell you to `stay within yourself' in sports,... but that was too depressing a prospect for me" and the roundup of his writing career and greenroom anecdotes from days as a regular guest on late-night talk shows are amusing. But Blount also lays bare a mother-complex that seems obsessive. It's tiresome to be continually reminded of a woman who is as exasperating in death as she was in life. But Blount soldiers on with grim memories of his upbringing at nearly every turn. He speaks with his usual clear and engaging voice, but this sometimes moving, occasionally tedious memoir shows a side of Blount that is surprisingly dark.Richard Bernstein
Throughout Mr. Blount's new book are examples of a mind that is always rambunctiously engaged in an astonishing array of activities, from playing in a writers' rock-and-roll band to interviewing Willie Mays. But Be Sweet does not have its author's usual effortlessness. It strains too hard for its effect, which prevents it from being one of the more brilliant products in Mr. Blount's otherwise impressive oeuvre.— The New York Times
Josephine Humphreys
...[B]oth literary and down-home, a thinking man's thigh slapper [and] a serious heartbreaker...— The New York Times Book Review