Roy Blount Jr. on Southern Humor

— Saturday, April 11th, 2009 —

Today’s Wall Street Journal includes Roy Blount Jr.’s “Five Best” recommendations for books on Southern humor. Blount rightly begins by torpedoing the notion that Southern humor is Jeff Foxworthy, etc., and he includes some choices few would find “humorous,” most especially his top pick.

Here’s Blount’s list:

1. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930)

2. Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1894)

3. Louis Armstrong, Satchmo (1954)

4. Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works (1988)

5. Charles Portis, Norwood (1966)

I love most of these volumes, but I can’t believe a list on Southern humor wouldn’t include John Kennedy O’Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces.

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2 Responses to “Roy Blount Jr. on Southern Humor”

  1. David L. April 13th, 2009 at 10:31 am

    Cormac McCarthy (often called the contemporary heir of Faulkner) can also be very funny. I’m halfway through “Suttree” right now, which is set in Knoxville, and I’ve laughed out loud several times so far. All of his novels have passages of great humor, but I wouldn’t recommend them to most (especially Christian) readers because of their violence and language.

  2. Tracy Irvin April 14th, 2009 at 1:41 pm

    What about Lewis Grizzard?