Kirjahaku

Seventy-seven years ago a slim, agile, quick-witted, self-assured young man, identifying with but transcending his ethnic minority, was summoned to save a nation from financial ruin. As the nation's new president he brought together a team of rivals, a band of brothers. And those brothers' names: Pinky, Chicolini, and Lt. Bob Roland. And that leader's name: Rufus T. Firefly. It was a movie, and what a movie: "Duck Soup", the Marx Brothers at their most intense, in their finest hour. In "Hail, Hail, Euphoria!" Roy Blount, Jr. takes us through the history and making of "Duck Soup", examining the comedic genius of the Marx Brothers with the insight and appreciation of a true fan. Though first released in theaters nearly eighty years ago, "Duck Soup" continues to impress audiences and serve as an important cultural reference. In "Hannah and Her Sisters", Woody Allen's character, Mickey Sachs, is considering suicide when he happens to see a bit of Duck Soup and has an epiphany: How can anyone even think of killing himself when this world affords such high-low comedy as the Brothers' spectacular musical number, "The Country's Going to War", in which the call to arms involves, among many other rousing elements, takeoffs on gospel ("All God's Chillun Got Guns") and the Virginia reel. There is nothing anywhere else in the history of American culture quite like Harpo's contribution to the do-si-do. You can't write a whole book about how funny a movie is. But this is a movie that can be discussed and probed in many directions. The parallels to current politics are obvious, and then there are links to be made involving Woody Allen and mirrors ("the Duck Soup" scene in which Harpo pretends to be Groucho's reflection is famous, but there's a little-noted Allen mirror scene whose autobiographical resonance is startling), George W. Bush and projectiles, Margaret Dumont and moms, Groucho and Karl, Jews and Irishmen.

A "witty, lively and wholly fascinating" (The New York Times) portrait of an iconic Southern hero With lively storytelling and full-hearted Southern directness, Roy Blount, Jr., presents a unique portrait of Robert E. Lee. Fascinated by the qualities that made Lee such a charismatic, though reluctant, leader, Blount vividly conveys Lee's audacity and uncanny successes in battle, as well as his humility, his quirky sense of humor, and the sorrowful sense of responsibility he felt for his outnumbered, half-starved army. The first concise biography of this American legend, Robert E. Lee will appeal to history and military buffs, students of Southern culture, and every reader curious about the makeup of a man who has become an American icon.

Have you ever asked yourself, Am I southern? If not geographically, then deep down, at heart? Or, if I am not southern myself, do I know people who are southern, whom I misunderstand? Is there some authority I should consult?Crackers. Without this book, you will just flail around in the shallows of Southernity, with nothing solid to hold onto. Roy Blount Jr. puts you in touch with possums, heterosexist dancing, people named Junior, a two-headed four-armed three-legged gospel-singing man, your feelings about the Carter administration. These specifics take you out into the depths.As a character in Crackers puts it, "I don't read books about the South, but I read southern books. Hoooo, people stealing one another's wooden legs, setting fires, making tarbabies out of one another. . . ."Crackers is a southern book.

A previously unpublished story, originally written in 1876, chronicles the efforts of John Gray, a humble farmer in the mythical small town of Deer Lick, to marry off his daughter, Mary, to the heir to the town's wealthiest family, but the sudden appearance of a mysterious stranger not only derails Gray's plans but also leads to murder. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

In this appealing collection of fourteen interrelated stories, twelve-year-old William Stroup recounts the ludicrous predicaments and often self-imposed hardships his family endures. Playing on the tension between Martha, his hardworking, sensible mother, and Morris, his disarmingly likable but shiftless and philandering father, William tells of Pa's flirtation with a widow, his swapping match with a band of gypsies, his battle of wits with a traveling silk-tie saleswoman, and his get-rich-quick schemes based on selling Ma's old love letters and collecting scrap iron.Often caught in the middle of the Stroups' bungles is Handsome Brown, their yard hand, as well as a number of animals with all-too-human qualities: Ida, the mule; Pretty Sooky, the runaway calf; College Boy, the fighting cock; a small flock of woodpeckers that favor Handsome's head over a tree; and goats who commandeer the roof of the Stroups' house.Georgia Boy was a special book to Caldwell, and its humor is less in the service of social criticism than in other works in which he dealt with poor white southerners. Beneath Georgia Boy's folksy lightheartedness, however, lie the problems of indigence, racism, and apathy that Caldwell confronted again and again in his fiction.