Home Grown Stories & Home Fried Lies
by Mitch Jayne

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Book Reviews of Home Grown Stories & Home Fried Lies

Book Review: If you've worn out your Twain, try Jayne
Summary: 5 Stars

Jayne commences with his personal definition of the Ozarks in a brilliant passage that is as compact and elegantly pastoral as the lyrics he wrote for The Dillards' song catalog. It's the only serious prose in the book, after which Jayne whisks the reader to the funny stuff. The book's loose structure as a sort of reluctant autobiography allows Jayne to go off on as many storytelling detours as he is wont, and he is very, very wont. Just about EVERYTHING reminds Jayne of a funny story, and it's to his everlasting credit how seamlessly he works his bottomless pickle barrel of them into the narrative. Most of the stories are about real Ozarkians Jayne has known and, because they're an earthy people, he's occasionally obliged for authenticity's sake to use words never uttered in Floyd's Barber Shop. For the most part, though, Jayne keeps the ribaldry on a PG-13 level that won't do anyone any lasting harm.

Jayne describes Ozarkians as "...people who had little commerce with modern speech and liked their own better" and his love affair with Ozark English - surely an oxymoron - is writ large on every page. Ozarkians speak "Mother Tongue" (inherited language), which abounds in quaint, majestic words (countenance, blackguard) that have a distinctly Shakespearian ring to them and homemade sayings so rustic, they'd bewilder Snuffy Smith. Knowing how daunting the dialect is, Jayne has kindly included an Ozark dictionary to help readers decipher sentences like, "Some eats boughten vittles, but I always take a bait of dinner in a poke." Say what??

A raconteur as freewheeling as Jayne needs an illustrator of equal passion and versatility. In Diana Jayne, his wife and "other, wiser half," he has exactly that. Working in a variety of styles and mediums, Ms. Jayne's black and white drawings of everything from Andy Griffith and the Darling Boys to a killer ostrich (really!) and a hearing aid from hell (Jayne writes candidly about being "as deaf as a snake") are charming, funny and, sometimes, downright striking. Her portrait of Zeke Dooley, an uproariously colorful hillbilly character Jayne created for his wildly inventive "Hickory Holler Time" radio program (my favorite chapter), is a masterpiece truly worth a thousand words.

"Home Grown Stories..." is too dang much fun and contains too much plain-spoken wisdom to read just once "to beguile the time," as an Ozarker would put it. It's a book worthy of revisiting whenever you want to laugh or whenever you need to be reminded that, in this vale of dross and tears, "even a blind hog finds an acorn sometimes." Not to mention, it'd come in real handy if you ever got lost in the jillikins and benastied yourself.

Summary of Home Grown Stories & Home Fried Lies

From teaching in one-room schools to the Hollywood big time with the Dillards, from small-town radio DJ to TV star on The Andy Griffith Show, from hound man and hunter to lecturer and author, Mitch has done it this time with a book that will have you laughing, crying, muttering to yourself and running down the street to share stories with your best friend. And wait till you see the beautiful illustrations by his wife and partner Diana!

Home Grown Stories & Home Fried Lies contains stories and anecdotes of the quriky individuals that helped shape the life of one of America's best storytellers.

Humor Books

• Subjects > Humor & Entertainment > Humor