Bestselling author Roy Blount Jr. tells the story of theclassic Marx Brothers wartime satire Duck Soup. As always, Blount isinformed yet informal, tongue-in-cheek yet tempered, providing the perfectvoice to recount the irreverent antics of Harpo, Chico, Groucho, and Zeppo. Readers of HarpoSpeaks, The Essential Groucho,and Monkey Business and fans of Animal Crackers, A Night at the Opera and the Marx Brothers' other timelesscomedies-as well as all fans of Blount's witty and insightful books like Alphabet Juice and Feet on the Street and listeners to NPR's weekly news quiz, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me-will becaptivated by the lyrical humorist's compelling, behind-the-scenes storytellingof the 1933 classic film.
Author Biography:
Roy Blount Jr. wears many hats: he is a humorist, sportswriter, poet, performer, lecturer, dramatist, and the author of twelve books. Raised in Decatur, Georgia, Blount received a bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt and a master’s degree from Harvard. After a brief stint in the Army he worked as a reporter, columnist, and part-time English instructor in Atlanta before becoming a writer and editor for Sports Illustrated, and later a contributing editor to The Atlantic. Blount’s writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Playboy, Vanity Fair, GQ, Rolling Stone, and National Geographic. His work has also been anthologized in such collections as The Best of Modern Humor, The Elvis Reader, The Ultimate Baseball Book, and The Sophisticated Cat. He is the author of seventeen books, including Crackers (1982), About Three Bricks Shy of a Load (1986), Soupsongs & Webster’s Ark (1988), Camels Are Easy, Comedy’s Hard (1991), First Hubby (1991), Roy Blount’s Book of Southern Humor (1994), which contains overs 150 short stories, sketches, essays, poems, memoirs, and lyrics, Be Sweet: A Memoir (1998), Robert E. Lee (2003), and several books cowritten with Valerie Shaff. Blount currently lives in western Massachusetts and New York City.
