{"id":578,"date":"2009-08-30T10:15:10","date_gmt":"2009-08-30T14:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/?p=578"},"modified":"2010-03-21T13:36:31","modified_gmt":"2010-03-21T17:36:31","slug":"82009-nonfiction-roy-blount-jr-not-exactly-what-i-had-in-mind-boston-the-atlantic-monthly-press-1985","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/82009-nonfiction-roy-blount-jr-not-exactly-what-i-had-in-mind-boston-the-atlantic-monthly-press-1985\/","title":{"rendered":"Roy Blount, Jr. Not Exactly What I Had in Mind (Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1985)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"Roy Blount Jr.\" src=\"http:\/\/www.audioeditions.com\/covers\/C68046s.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"110\" height=\"143\" \/><strong>Why I Will Never Again Trust Anything Garrison Keillor Says, <\/strong>by Kevin R. Kosar, August 30, 2009<\/p>\n<p>I cannot recall where I found this book, but I snatched it up because I had heard that Blount was a funny writer.\u00a0 The dust jacket includes effusive praise. Garrison Keillor exclaims, &#8220;Roy Bount&#8217;s stuff makes me laugh so hard, sometimes I have to go sit in a room and shut the door.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I read about three chapters of this collection of columns and could go no further.\u00a0 It was dated, corny, and just not funny.\u00a0 The pieces that I read had that cranked-out-in-a-rush feel.\u00a0 For example, in his &#8220;What You Personally Can Do About the Federal Deficit,&#8221; Blount suggests that folks buy postage stamps and throw them away.\u00a0 At the end of the bit, he tacks on a P.S. that belatedly admits that this idea &#8220;won&#8217;t work&#8221; since the U.S. Postal Service&#8217;s profits are not used to finance the rest of the government.\u00a0 Well, no kidding.\u00a0 A half hour of research done before he had started writing would have told him that the USPS is an independent governmental entity that is self-financing.\u00a0 So, what was the point of this piece then?\u00a0 There isn&#8217;t one.\u00a0 It was hack work done to earn a check.\u00a0 Pity the trusting fools who bought this hardback when it first appeared&#8212;it was $14.95 wasted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why I Will Never Again Trust Anything Garrison Keillor Says, by Kevin R. Kosar, August 30, 2009 I cannot recall where I found this book, but I snatched it up because I had heard that Blount was a funny writer.\u00a0 The dust jacket includes effusive praise. Garrison Keillor exclaims, &#8220;Roy Bount&#8217;s stuff makes me laugh [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[73],"tags":[75],"class_list":["post-578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews-nonfiction","tag-humor"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pBCzY-9k","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":941,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions\/941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}