Camels Are Easy, Comedy's Hard by Roy Blount Jr. is a collection of writing which includes; essays, poems, short stories, travel writing, reminiscence, sports writing, political discussion, interviews of famous people, and crossword puzzles. I hope I didn't leave anything out. There are 64 pieces in the book; 61 originally appeared in 28 different publications. They range wildly in length from the very short (23 words) to long (10,000 words). Many are recent but a few, as Blount says, "have been acquiring patina for ten to twenty-one years." This is a newly released eBook edition of Camels Are Easy, Comedy's Hard which was originally released in 1991.

As anyone who has ever read Roy Blount Jr. knows, this is a humourous book simply based on Blount's presentation and the way he looks at things. The stories run the gamet from exploring the Amazon to French painting to coon dogs to synchronized swimming meets. The travel writing includes some reflections on camels as well as visits to Dierks, Arkansas; Kampala, Uganda; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Esperanza, and Peru. Famous people written about include Gilda Radner and Jonathan Demme.

For example, Blount says about the Amazon "To tell the truth, when people ask me what the Amazon was like, it is not man-eating fish that spring to mind. It is the mud. Strange gray-green-blue-brown mud." in "Eating out of House and Home" Blount writes: "You know why Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe is so sexy, don’t you? Not just because one of the people in it is outdoors naked—I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that half the people in the entire history of French painting are outdoors naked. It’s because she is outdoors naked eating lunch."

Or in "I Model for GQ" he writes"On a scale of the ones to the nines, I am usually dressed to roughly the twos. In order to avoid giving offense at special occasions, I will go as far as the threes or fours. The only reason to move on up to snazzy, however, is to attract business or women. And the type of business or women you attract by dressing snazzy is the type that will expect you to dress snazzy all the time. I wouldn’t want to live like that. Another reason I am not natty is that I like to eat lying down sometimes. I also like to eat sitting up, standing and walking, but let’s face it, you can’t always be sitting up, standing or walking when you eat; sometimes you’re going to be eating lying down. Or at least leaning back. And you spill stuff on your lapels."

How can you not laugh at a man who is that honest?

I particularly enjoyed reading his piece on Gilda Radner, but I could easily list a dozen others (The Amazon (well, all the travel monologues), getting a tan, Jonathan Demme, all the crossword puzzles...

Highly Recommended

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Open Road Media via Netgalley for review purposes.
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