The Redneck Way of Knowledge [Paperback]

Blanche Mccrary Boyd (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 1995

This intoxicating book by the author of The Revolution of Little Girls combines autobiography, reporting, and the dressed-up lies we call fiction. An underground classic since its initial publication, it is the wildly funny personal testament of Blanche McCrary Boyd, sixties radical and born-againÀ Southerner, a lesbian with an un-P.C. passion for skydiving and stock-car racing, a graduate of Esalen and kundalini yoga who now takes her altered states "raw, like oysters."

The Redneck Way of Knowledge is about family reunions and kamikaze love affairs. It is about crashing an arts festival with two precociously decayed Charleston aristocrats and watching the Pope deliver Communion at Yankee Stadium. It is about the selves we try on and slough off on the way to becoming who we are. Throughout, Blanche Boyd travels the expressway between the realm of the senses and the state of grace, and reports on the journey in prose that combines riotous humor, diamond-hard intelligence, and savage lyricism.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In this collection of 11 essays-some humorous, some serious-Boyd offers her personal take on such varied events as drag races and amateur boxing nights, Pope John Paul II's mass at Yankee Stadium, and the Greensboro Nazi-Klan murders. Though LJ's reviewer found the pieces a bit self-absorbed at times, he also discovered "sharp insights into family and friends, race, and politics"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Wonderful ... a lot of hard drinking, vivid insights, and belly laughs." -- People

"Marvelous ... Boyd resembles a cross between Joan Didion and Hunter Thompson, [but] her original voice makes these tales her own." -- Philadelphia Inquirer

"Impressive ... superb ... Boyd writes brilliantly. [The Redneck Way of Knowledge is] the best kind of social criticism." -- The Nation

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (January 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679757678
• ISBN-13: 978-0679757672
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,109,788 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging collection of essays, not polemics., June 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Redneck Way of Knowledge (Paperback)

I was introduced to Blanche McCrary Boyd by my creative-writing professor, who only advised that she was a good essayist. If you knew him, you knew this meant she was not writing persuasive essays or stumping for a cause.

What I like best about this collection of essays is that they are neither feminist nor non-feminist, they are not about being a lesbian or even, necessarily, about being a woman. They are occasionally narrative, occasionally quite insightful, often funny. They're easy to read, enjoyable, and if you *want* to delve deeper (you don't have to in order to appreciate the book), the author is saying something about being human and being individual, or in Shakespearean coin, to thine own self true. Not as wild as her Revolution of Little Girls or Terminal Velocity, it is suitable for a wider sort of audience.

If you enjoy reading about other cultures (I'm a northerner) and other lifestyles (I'm a very traditional heterosexual girl), this book is a good place to start. Like reading Frederick Douglass's Classic Slave Narratives, it cannot truly teach us what it is like to truly live these people's lives, but it gives us a glimpse of their experiences and -- if only by analyzing our own reactions to their perspectives and opinions -- a deeper undertanding of our own experiences and subtle preconceptions.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blanche McCrary Boyd is a trip...., June 1, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Redneck Way of Knowledge (Paperback)

In the Redneck Way of Knowledge , Blanche McCrary Boyd comes off as brutally honest yet the book has an underlying attitude that seems to say, "Every word of this is the truth... but of course you should know better than to believe a word I say." As a northerner who is somewhat younger than Ms. Boyd, the Redneck Way of Knowledge was able took me to a place and times I have never been to and would have no other way of visiting. Blanche McCrary Boyd succeeds in the art of southern story telling in a way that is completely southern and uniquely her own. The girl is not afraid to go there. She's a trip and she warmly welcomes you along for the ride.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Provocative and also rather wry, July 1, 1998

By 

M. Dukas "Mark" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Redneck Way of Knowledge (Paperback)

I saw Ms. Boyd on a panel in San Francisco talking to Norman Mailer (expecting all out war) but she was charming, funny and very interesting. You don't have to be a lesbian, a Southerner or even a woman to enjoy her work. This series of essays will have you feeling the roar of the Nascar race cars and she then takes a critical, perceptive, yet affectionate look at her Southern family, friends and culture. Well written too.