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.
