BLACKENED RED DIRT AND OTHER DELICACIES: Review

• Published in: The New York times 1989
• Main Authors: arts., DEBORAH MASON, Deborah Mason, a former editor at Vogue, writes about culture and the
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Blount, Roy Jr; MASON, DEBORAH
• ISSN: 0362-4331

Mr. [Roy Blount Jr.] doesn't have to go as far as Europe to ply his faux hayseed persona. He has only to head north. In ''I Don't Eat Dirt Personally'' (that title alone would make me buy the book), Mr. Blount is ''in someone's chic salon eating arugula'' when his dinner partner starts to press him on the alleged Southern habit of eating dirt, all her prejudices about the unspeakable practices down South yearning to be confirmed. Mr. Blount breezily complies: ''Hell, yes, we eat dirt. . . . And if you never ate any blackened red dirt, you don't know what's good. I understand you people up here eat raw fish.'' With this grievance aired, the gentler, finer first cousin of Mr. Blount's professional cracker emerges - genial Mason-Dixon line straddler and perennial fence mender, always willing to talk things over, to wish people well. Mr. Blount cheerfully sets about designing a flag ''that a Southerner with sense can salute'' - ''I'd probably just suggest a blue background (for the blues, which are the wellspring of Southern, hence American, culture) with a slogan on it: something like 'Just a Pretty Good Country Part of the Country.' '' Or, ''How about this? 'Just Fine, and You?' '' ''I'm doing what I've always wanted to do - writing short, funny pieces,'' said Mr. Blount, who is 47 years old and wrote his first short, funny pieces when he was in high school in Georgia. ''But now that I'm doing it, I realize it's not enough.'' His current goal is a bit loftier: ''Someday I'd like to write some sort of extraordinary comic novel, like 'Tristram Shandy' or 'Alice in Wonderland.' I'm not sure this one is going to be it, but then again that's not for me to say, is it?'' PETER KEEPNEWS