About this item
The riotous, tender story of a bookish Mississippi boy and his flawed, Bunyanesque father, told with the comic verve of David Sedaris and the deft satire of Mark Twain or Roy Blount, Jr.Harrison Scott Key was born in Memphis, but he grew up in Mississippi, among pious, Bible-reading women and men who either shot things or got women pregnant. At the center of his world was his larger-than-life father - a hunter, a fighter, a football coach, "a man better suited to living in a remote frontier wilderness of the nineteenth century than contemporary America, with all its progressive ideas, and paved roads, and lack of armed duels. He was a great man, and he taught me many things: How to fight, how to work, how to cheat, how to pray to Jesus about it, how to kill things with guns and knives and, if necessary, with hammers.
About the Author
Harrison Scott Key is the author of the memoir The World's Largest Man (HarperCollins) , a true story about what it's like to be related to insane people from Mississippi, including the surprise revelation, on the last page, that he is also insane and the book is a hallucination. Or is it? (SPOILER ALERT: It isn't! Or is it? Harrison is checking with his fact-checker to confirm what "truth" is and isn't.) Harrison's nonfiction has appeared in The Best American Travel Writing, Oxford American, Outside Magazine, Reader's Digest, Image, and Creative Nonfiction, as well as a number of magazines that don't pay you anything at all, not even a little. His work has been adapted for the stage and performed by Chicago's Neo-Futurists in their show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind and Stories on Stage in Denver, Colorado, one of which paid him and one of which didn't, but it was cool, because, like, they are probably poor anyway, and helping the poor is a priority for Harrison, should he come under scrutiny. Harrison has also performed comedy at venues around the U.S., if you include three or four different cities to be "around the U.S.," which may be a stretch. As well, his plays and monologues have been performed at theaters across the South and in New York. The one in New York was "Off-off Broadway" and was barely fifteen minutes long and at the time, Harrison was too poor even to go see it, but he heard it was great and appreciated the reviewer saying it was funny, even though she also said hurtful things about him personally. Harrison has read his humor and essays and spoken to audiences at the Savannah Book Festival, Ole Miss, Clemson University, Auburn University, and elsewhere, including at least one religious organization who were perfectly courteous up until the end. He holds an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction and a Ph. D. in playwriting and teaches writing at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Savannah, Georgia, where he lives with his wife and three children. Harrison served as chair of the SCAD liberal arts department from 2011 to 2014, and he currently teaches courses focused on literary humor, satire, and rhetoric.
