Roy Blount Jr.: On Southernness, soybeans and Georgia Tech | ajc.com

Q&A / ROY BLOUNT JR., author: On Southernness, soybeans and Georgia Tech | ajc.com: "'I left the South in search of the Enlightenment,' writes Roy Blount Jr., who grew up in Decatur. 'I spent a little over a third of my life, including the presumably most formative years (toilet training through college) living in the South. Mathematically, that makes me about exactly as Southern as the American people, 34 percent of whom are Southern residents.'

'Long Time Leaving: Dispatches From Up South' (Knopf, $25) is Blount's 20th book, a collection of his best essays on everything from why communism didn't originate in South Carolina to why Mark Twain is really great to why Bill Clinton is preferable to Robert E. Lee."