Save Room for Pie Food Songs and Chewy Ruminations [Paperback]

Our best-laid plans will yield to fate.
And we will say, We lived. We ate.

Roy Blount Jr. is one of Americas most cherished comic writers. Hes 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 TimesBook Review) to a book to read till it falls apart (Newsweek). Now, inSave 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 foodhe didnt have to think, he just ate. But food doesnt exist in a vacuum; theres the global climate and the global economy to consider, not to mention Blounts chronic sinusitis, which constricts his sense of smell, and consequently his taste buds. So while hes always frowned on eating with an ulterior motive, times have changed.Save Room for Piegrapples with these and other food-related questions in Blounts signature style. Here youll find lively meditations on everything from bacon froth to grapefruit, Kobe beef to biscuits. Youll 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, inThe Paris Review, to say: Blount is the best. He can be literate, uncouth, and soulful all in one sentence.