Save Room for Pie: Food Songs and Chewy Ruminations
Our best-laid plans will yield to fate.

And we will say, “We lived. We ate.”

Roy Blount Jr. is one of America’s most cherished comic writers. He’s been compared to Mark Twain and James Thurber, and his books have been called everything from “a work of art” (Robert W. Creamer, The New York Times Book Review) to “a book to read till it falls apart” (Newsweek). Now, in Save Room for Pie, he applies his much-praised wit and charm to a rich and fundamental topic: food.

As a lifelong eater, Blount always got along easy with food—he didn’t have to think, he just ate. But food doesn’t exist in a vacuum; there’s the global climate and the global economy to consider, not to mention Blount’s chronic sinusitis, which constricts his sense of smell, and consequently his taste buds. So while he’s always frowned on eating with an ulterior motive, times have changed. Save Room for Pie grapples with these and other food-related questions in Blount’s signature style. Here you’ll find lively meditations on everything from bacon froth to grapefruit, Kobe beef to biscuits. You’ll also find defenses of gizzards, mullet, okra, cane syrup, watermelon, and boiled peanuts; an imagined dialogue between Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; input from Louis Armstrong, Frederick Douglass, and Blaze Starr; and of course some shampooed possums and carjacking turkeys.

In poems and songs, limericks and fake (or sometimes true) news stories, Blount talks about food in surprising and innovative ways, with all the wit and verve that prompted Garrison Keillor, in The Paris Review, to say: “Blount is the best. He can be literate, uncouth, and soulful all in one sentence.”

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Save Room for Pie: Food Songs and Chewy Ruminations
Our best-laid plans will yield to fate.

And we will say, “We lived. We ate.”

Roy Blount Jr. is one of America’s most cherished comic writers. He’s been compared to Mark Twain and James Thurber, and his books have been called everything from “a work of art” (Robert W. Creamer, The New York Times Book Review) to “a book to read till it falls apart” (Newsweek). Now, in Save Room for Pie, he applies his much-praised wit and charm to a rich and fundamental topic: food.

As a lifelong eater, Blount always got along easy with food—he didn’t have to think, he just ate. But food doesn’t exist in a vacuum; there’s the global climate and the global economy to consider, not to mention Blount’s chronic sinusitis, which constricts his sense of smell, and consequently his taste buds. So while he’s always frowned on eating with an ulterior motive, times have changed. Save Room for Pie grapples with these and other food-related questions in Blount’s signature style. Here you’ll find lively meditations on everything from bacon froth to grapefruit, Kobe beef to biscuits. You’ll also find defenses of gizzards, mullet, okra, cane syrup, watermelon, and boiled peanuts; an imagined dialogue between Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; input from Louis Armstrong, Frederick Douglass, and Blaze Starr; and of course some shampooed possums and carjacking turkeys.

In poems and songs, limericks and fake (or sometimes true) news stories, Blount talks about food in surprising and innovative ways, with all the wit and verve that prompted Garrison Keillor, in The Paris Review, to say: “Blount is the best. He can be literate, uncouth, and soulful all in one sentence.”

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Save Room for Pie: Food Songs and Chewy Ruminations

Save Room for Pie: Food Songs and Chewy Ruminations

Save Room for Pie: Food Songs and Chewy Ruminations

Save Room for Pie: Food Songs and Chewy Ruminations

Paperback(Reprint)

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Overview

Our best-laid plans will yield to fate.

And we will say, “We lived. We ate.”

Roy Blount Jr. is one of America’s most cherished comic writers. He’s been compared to Mark Twain and James Thurber, and his books have been called everything from “a work of art” (Robert W. Creamer, The New York Times Book Review) to “a book to read till it falls apart” (Newsweek). Now, in Save Room for Pie, he applies his much-praised wit and charm to a rich and fundamental topic: food.

As a lifelong eater, Blount always got along easy with food—he didn’t have to think, he just ate. But food doesn’t exist in a vacuum; there’s the global climate and the global economy to consider, not to mention Blount’s chronic sinusitis, which constricts his sense of smell, and consequently his taste buds. So while he’s always frowned on eating with an ulterior motive, times have changed. Save Room for Pie grapples with these and other food-related questions in Blount’s signature style. Here you’ll find lively meditations on everything from bacon froth to grapefruit, Kobe beef to biscuits. You’ll also find defenses of gizzards, mullet, okra, cane syrup, watermelon, and boiled peanuts; an imagined dialogue between Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; input from Louis Armstrong, Frederick Douglass, and Blaze Starr; and of course some shampooed possums and carjacking turkeys.

In poems and songs, limericks and fake (or sometimes true) news stories, Blount talks about food in surprising and innovative ways, with all the wit and verve that prompted Garrison Keillor, in The Paris Review, to say: “Blount is the best. He can be literate, uncouth, and soulful all in one sentence.”


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780374536886
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date: 03/21/2017
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 304
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Table d'Contents

I: Why I Eat

It's Good to Eat

But Nothing is Simple

The Way Folks Are Meant to Eat

II: Essentials

Song to the Apple

Animals Eat

Bear Notes

How About Sheep?

Hold the Foam

Song to Decent Pizza

I Could See Just Overalls

The Fall: A One-Act

Song to Hot Dogs

But Ain't Nothing Wrong With a Varsity Dog

Song to Hamburgers

The Lowdown on Southern Hospitality

Song to Grease

Song to Eggs

Ironic Biscuits?

Song to Gumbo

Boiling the F-Thing Down

A Grapefruit Moment

Let the Last Word in Appetite Not Be Petite

Part III: Meat of the Land

Steak, Generally

Song to Beef

Steak, Environmentally

Chicken Medley

More to a Chicken

Song to Ribs

Song to Bacon

Hymn to Ham

Song to Pig Knuckles

Yes to Gizzards

Part IV: Meat of the Waters

Song to Oysters

Born for the Pan

Have a Little River

Song to Catfish

Just Put the Hairdo Out of Your Mind

Fishing Hard (as of 1976)

Sharing Oysters

Part V: Plants

Song to Onions

Song to Okra

Okraphobia

Song to Love Apples

A Paean to Southern Peas

Boiled Peanuts: Be Not Afraid

Song to Beans

Song to the Lentil

Song to Legumes in General

Carrot Whimsy

Song to a Nice Baked Potata

Song to Beets

The Fall of Corn

Song to Grits

Hold the Cheese

Part VI: Drink

Song on Drink

Whiskey

Drinking With Kate Smith

Part VII: Food in the Arts

Food Names for Bands, I

Louis, Louis, Louis, Fats and Slim

Food Names for Bands, II

Mississippi Music Notes

For Champion Crickets, No Wheaties

Food Names for Bands, III

Some Spicy Limericks

Pimento Easter Eggss

Food Names for Bands, IV

Part VIII: Incidentals

Ro*Tel It on the Mountain

Song to Catsup

Song to Barbecue Sauce

Brunswick Stew: Scalable?

I Don't Eat Dirt Personally

The W-word

A Dark Sweetness

Part IX: Process

Dream Song

Yellow Squash Crisps

Eating Out of House and Home

Song to Cooking Out Over an Open Fire in the Open Air With Crickets . . .

Compost Happens

Weed-dating May Work For Some

Between Meals Song

Green Pea Lover's Lament

Bees of the Anthropocene

Part X: Trips

What We Ate in Japan

Incident in the Times Square Nathan's

Buttered Kittens

Last Night

Man Here Tried to Be a Good Citizen of the D Train

June, Spoon . . .

Ticks du Pays

Hyenas Feel Good About Themselves

Wild Fish Ripped My Flesh

The Pirate Captain Addresses the Crew

You Can Tell a Good Possum

Thanksgiving Eve: What Happened in the Wood

New Orleans Coming Back, 2007

Part XI: Dessert

Pie: The Quest

Song to Homemade Ice Cream

Song to Peaches

No Sweetness in a Stone

Mark Twain's Pie Dream

Song to Pie

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