Be Sweet

May 4, 1998
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.

April 15, 1998
Blount figures that at age 57 he has lived long enough to hunt for life-defining moments among sundry episodes, including his stint as coeditor of his college paper with presidential wanna-be Lamar Alexander, his days smokin' dope with '70s slugger Richie Allen when Blount was a "Sports Illustrated "reporter, and a slew of childhood memories. Although this memoir accents sardonic humor, it adopts a tone of reluctantly acknowledged honesty about his upbringing and family background. The object of Blount's ambivalence is his late mother. "Be sweet" was apparently one of her stock admonitions to Roy as he grew up in Georgia, among other warnings, such as not to play with your "you-know," all set among complaints about how hard her life had been and how quickly her children would forget her. To the extent Blount's antic narrative exhibits steady development, it is building toward the statement, "I hated my mom." Its harshness is mitigated by an inherent self-loathing, for who is comfortable admitting dislike of Mom? Not Blount, who explains that self-loathing, or "sefflo," is essential to being humorous. Somewhere among the laughs and limericks reside his attempts to better understand his deceased parents, which creates a poignancy that Blount's fans might not have suspected roiled within their funnyman. Words more worthwhile than any how-to-reconcile-with-your-parents pulp. ((Reviewed April 15, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)