WHAT MEN DON'T TELL WOMEN

by ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 7, 1984

Slimmer, sharper, more consistently funny than One Fell Soup (1982), this new collection of Blount humor pieces--some of them originally published in magazines from Esquire to TWA Ambassador--inevitably settles, like the earlier book, on a few predictable, passing topics. Even at his least original, however, Blount manages to come up with moments and notions that rise into laconic whimsy or down-home lyricism: a humdrum musing on women reporters in the locker-room concludes with a hymn to Satchel Paige's remarkable legs and feet (""Let us have wide, nonprurient male and female eyes in the dressing room, because significant bodies ought to be witnessed""); a cat-book sendup folds in a wild touch of French semiotics; a traditional bit about how-to-stay-awake-at-the-opera is sneakily sophisticated. Elsewhere, Blount is at his easygoing best--reflecting on the underside of Southern hospitality, on the passing of cheerleaders, on being an ""author"" or living in Mill River, Mass. (""I am open to the accusation that i see compost as an end in itself."") There are okay satires on historical revisionism, the commercialization of sports, academia--plus a few flights of unfettered free association. (""The List of the Mohicans"" careens from operetta to disarmament to Nugrape.) And, interspersed throughout, Blount offers 27 ""blue yodels"": monologues and dialogues on male/female relationships in pre-feminist, feminist, and post-feminist milieux--some amusing, some stark, with an impressive array of well-heard voices. True, two pieces here outstay their welcome: a long meditation on salaries, money, and Marxism over-reaches, with lapses into glib journalese (re John Belushi and money, ""he blew as much of it as humanly possible on shit that Edenized, bloated, and killed him""); and a lament for the glorious, bohemian ""fuckups"" of yesteryear becomes oddly sanctimonious and more than a little juvenile, with a routine denunciation of the Reaganite 1980s culture (and Norman Mailer as a dubious hero of the alternative). Still: talented work from one of our most gifted (if not most disciplined) humorists.

Pub Date: May 7, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atlantic/Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1984

Categories: NONFICTION