Dispatches from Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta by Richard Grant

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Book Title:Dispatches from Pluto

Dispatches from Pluto by Richard Grant Synopsis coming soon……. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description In Dispatches from Pluto, adventure writer Richard Grant takes on “the most American place on Earth”—the enigmatic, beautiful, often derided Mississippi Delta.Richard Grant and his girlfriend were living in a shoebox apartment in New York City when they decided on a whim to buy an old plantation house in the Mississippi Delta. Dispatches from Pluto—winner of the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize—is their journey of discovery into this strange and wonderful American place. Imagine A Year In Provence with alligators and assassins, or Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil with hunting scenes and swamp-to-table dining. On a remote, isolated strip of land, three miles beyond the tiny community of Pluto, Richard and his girlfriend, Mariah, embark on a new life. They learn to hunt, grow their own food, and fend off alligators, snakes, and varmints galore. They befriend an array of unforgettable local characters—blues legend T-Model Ford, cookbook maven Martha Foose, catfish farmers, eccentric millionaires, and the actor Morgan Freeman. Grant brings an adept, empathetic eye to the fascinating people he meets, capturing the rich, extraordinary culture of the Delta, while tracking its utterly bizarre and criminal extremes. Reporting from all angles as only an outsider can, Grant also delves deeply into the Deltas lingering racial tensions. He finds that de facto segregation continues. Yet even as he observes major structural problems, he encounters many close, loving, and interdependent relationships between black and white families—and good reasons for hope. Dispatches from Pluto is a book as unique as the Delta itself. Its lively, entertaining, and funny, containing a travel writers flair for in-depth reporting alongside insightful reflections on poverty, community, and race. Its also a love story, as the nomadic Grant learns to settle down. He falls not just for his girlfriend but for the beguiling place they now call home. Mississippi, Grant concludes, is the best-kept secret in America. Author Biography Richard Grant is an author of nonfiction books, a journalist, and a documentary film writer. His last two books, Dispatches from Pluto and The Deepest South of All, were New York Times bestsellers. His previous books include the adventure travel classic Gods Middle Finger: Into the Heart of the Sierra Madre and American Nomads, which was made into an acclaimed BBC documentary with Grant as the writer and star. Currently a contributor to Smithsonian magazine, Grant has published journalism in Esquire, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Originally from London, England, now a US citizen, he has traveled extensively and written books about Mexico and East Africa. After several years of living in a remote farmhouse in the Mississippi Delta, an experience chronicled in the multi-award-winning Dispatches from Pluto, Grant is living in Tucson, Arizona, with his wife and daughter. Review “The truest book about the Mississippi Delta since Rising Tide.” —Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic”[Grant] succeeds, and with flair. His empathic manner, reportorial talent and eye for the unexpected detail make this a chigger-bitten trip that entertains as much as it informs.” —The New York Times Book Review”Grant takes a fillet knife and lays us open to the bone, like you might a catfish. He exposes our idiosyncratic insanity and brilliance, both the failure and the promise that are driven by an intimate yet remote love/hate relationship along the racial divide. Its sad and beautiful at the same time.” —Mississippi State Senator John Horhn”Readers with an appetite for a deep-fried version of A Year in Provence will find much to sate them here. … [Grant is] like a deeper and way funkier version of Peter Mayle. … its the individual voices and anecdotes he records that give Dispatches from Pluto its dissonant lilt and outré charm.” —Jonathan Miles, Garden & Gun”One of the best books to have been written about this part of Mississippi. Richard Grant has done something completely different from previous forays into this fascinating and frequently vilified part of America. … Grants book strikes a good balance between being partly A Year in Provence, Mississippi-style, and partly a searching investigation of the local culture. This is a man who has done his homework, asked hard questions, and made a point of getting to know everybody, white and black alike.” —The New Criterion”This books great virtue…is how it sets aside assumptions to look with clear, questioning eyes. Mississippis landscape, with its crated little town(s) and primordial interruptions in the empire of modern agriculture, is refreshed by Grants lovely prose.” —Jackson Clarion-Ledger”Part travelogue, part sociological study, part memoir, and part nonfiction heir to the works of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, Dispatches from Pluto is provocative in the best kind of way. Grant approaches his subjects with empathy, yet pulls no punches. The result is an honest, engaging account of life in one of Americas most beguiling, bewildering cultural outposts. This book is a revelation.” —Alan Huffman, author of Mississippi in Africa”An appealing stew of fecklessness and curiosity, social psychology and social dysfunction, hope and despair.” —Kirkus Reviews”[A] delightful inside look at life on todays Mississippi Delta.” —Frans De Waal, one of his “6 favorite books” in The Week”Grant writes with an admiration and tenderness for his new home and neighbors. The books often riotously funny, particularly when describing real-life crime stories in Greenwood and elsewhere. But Grants also thoughtful and earnest in trying to understand race relations in modern-day Mississippi… Grants insights as an outsider trying to decipher a new world make this book compelling and also challenging. Hes confronting tough truths and asking hard questions, but from a place of genuine respect and love.” —Mississippi Business Journal”Whether hes writing about how to shoot a buck or how to heat a house, Grant is funny, funny, funny. Hes even funny at funerals, yet through all the escapades and hilarity, he never loses sight of the problem of Delta race relations. As much as anything else, this is a book about racism in America, and Grant confronts the issue with an outsiders honesty and aplomb.” —Amy Wilentz, author of Farewell, Fred Voodoo”A lovely, appreciative and entertaining tour of the strange and rich Mississippi Delta.” —Shelf Awareness”A fascinating blend of memoir and travelogue … a vivid and captivating portrait of the modern American South.” —Largehearted Boy”Think what Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil could have been like if the author had a sympathetic understanding of the people. Richard Grants Plutonic approach to the Delta turns up some marvelous surprises here.” —Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls Rising”In the best tradition of Mark Twains The Innocents Abroad, British travel writer Richard Grant explores the otherworldly Mississippi Delta by settling into an aging plantation home and letting himself be captured by an eccentric, racially-tortured and wondrously hospitable culture. Dispatches from Pluto is wise, wry, sympathetic and spot-on.” —Curtis Wilkie, author of The Fall of the House of Zeus”Ive never read anything like this before, so plain out revealing of humanitys true nature—how we have tangled ourselves up into the goofball messy life weve made on earth (let alone Pluto) while still having a moment or two where we are incredibly kind and sensible.” —Carolyn Chute, author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine and Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves”Richard Grant gets it. Many authors that write about the Delta may come and stay a few months, then go back to their comfortable hometowns to burn or scathe the Deltas mores, customs and culture. Richard bought an old plantation house here to become a part of the Delta and he writes about it in a way that brings laughter, astonishment, complexity and perplexity.” —Hank Burdine, Delta Magazine”Richard Grant is the ultimate cool customer, a fearless and skilled writer navigating the backwaters of rural Mississippi with his humanity on his sleeve, trying to get to the heart of what makes the Delta such a unique and soulful place while recounting a harrowing and funny, wise and heartwarming personal journey from nomad to proud homeowner. This is a great book.” —Mark Haskell Smith, author of Naked at Lunch Review Quote “Whether hes writing about how to shoot a buck or how to heat a house, Grant is funny, funny, funny. Hes even funny at funerals, yet through all the escapades and hilarity, he never loses sight of the problem of Delta race relations. As much as anything else, this is a book about racism in America, and Grant confronts the issue with an outsiders honesty and aplomb.” — Amy Wilentz, author of Farewell, Fred Voodoo Excerpt from Book Dispatches from Pluto Prologue I WAS LIVING in New York City when I decided to buy an old plantation house in the Mississippi Delta. It was out in the cotton fields and cypress swamps of Holmes County, the poorest county in Americas poorest state. “Theres No Place Like Holmes, Catch The Southern Spirit,” announced a weather-beaten sign on the county line. It was illustrated with magnolia blossoms and perforated by shotgun blasts. The nearest neighbors were three miles away across fields and woods. The nearest supermarket was twenty-five miles away. It was well stocked with pig knuckles, hog jowls, boiled peanuts, and hunting magazines, but it was another twenty-five miles to find organic eggs, strong cheese, or crusty bread. A few close friends understood why I wanted to live there, as a misfit Englishman with a US passport and a taste for remote places, but most people were genuinely mystified, or doubtful about my sanity. Why would anyone in his right mind choose to live in the backwoods of Mississippi? No state has a more beautiful name-Miss and Sis are sipping on something sippy, and its probably a sweet tea or an iced bourbon drink-but no state is more synonymous in the rest of the country with racism, ignorance, and cultural backwardness. When I told them about my plans, many friends and acquaintances felt compelled to sing me the chorus of a 1964 Nina Simone song, “Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam!” In bad imitation Southern drawls, they cracked wise about toothlessness, banjo music, men named Bubba, and the probability of getting myself raped in the woods one Saturday night. One white woman accused me of being racist for wanting to live in Mississippi, even though its the blackest state in America and Holmes County is more than 80 percent African-American. “All Southerners are racists, and Mississippi is the worst of all,” she opined. She had never set foot in the state, and never intended to, because she already knew everything she needed to know about Mississippi. One of my hopes in writing this book is to dissolve these clumsy old stereotypes, and illustrate my conviction that Mississippi is the best-kept secret in America. Nowhere else is so poorly understood by outsiders, so unfairly maligned, so surreal and peculiar, so charming and maddening. Individually, collectively, and above all politically, Mississippians have a kind of genius for charging after phantoms and lost causes. Nowhere else in the world have I met so many fine, generous, honorable people, but if you look at the statistics, and read the news stories coming out of Mississippi, the state gives every appearance of being a redneck disaster zone. As I was scrabbling around for a mortgage, and trying to persuade my liberal girlfriend to move there with me, Mississippi was found once again to be the poorest state in the Union, a position it has held consistently since the end of the Civil War. Once again, it was the fattest state, with more than a third of its adult population classified as obese. It was number one in the nation for teenage pregnancy, illiteracy, failure to graduate high school, religious devotion, political conservatism, and sexually transmitted diseases. The Republican-dominated legislature, caricatured by Saturday Night Live as “thirty hissing possums in a barn,” was trying to close down the states last abortion clinic, and a fifty-two-year-old Delta man had just been arrested in a police sting operation while having carnal relations with a show hog. “Do yall even know what a show hog looks like when they get through with all the shampooing and blow-drying and beauty treatments?” said my friend Martha Foose the cookbook writer. She was calling from her house in the Delta town of Greenwood, less than a mile from the unnatural crime scene. “Its a beauty pageant for swine, and they get those hogs dolled up. They shave their underparts, and curl their eyelashes, and buff their little trotters, and I guess its just more than some guys can stand. I call it dating down the food chain, and frankly, its a wonder it doesnt happen more often.” I first met Martha a few years ago in Oxford, Mississippi, the elegant, cultured, slightly dissolute university town in the northern hills of the state, where William Faulkner lived most of his life. I had stumbled across Oxford while interviewing elderly blues singers in the mid-1990s, fallen under its charms, and visited regularly ever since. Martha was there promoting her first cookbook, Screen Doors and Sweet Tea, a collection of recipes and stories drawn from her upbringing in the Mississippi Delta, and influenced by her training at a top cooking school in Paris. The book went on to win a James Beard Award for American Cooking. At the reading, she served high- Details ISBN1476709645 Short Title DISPATCHES FROM PLUTO Publisher Simon & Schuster Language English ISBN-10 1476709645 ISBN-13 9781476709642 Media Book Format Paperback Pages 320 Author Richard Grant Imprint Simon & Schuster Subtitle Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States Affiliation University of Miami Medical Research Council, UK The Medical Research Council, UK University of Miami Medical Research Council, UK The Medical Research Council, UK Medical Research Council, UK The Medical Research Council, UK University of Miami Qualifications Dr UK Release Date 2016-02-11 Year 2016 Publication Date 2016-02-11 NZ Release Date 2016-02-11 US Release Date 2016-02-11 DEWEY 976.24064092 Audience General AU Release Date 2015-11-30 We’ve got this At The Nile, if you’re looking for it, we’ve got it. 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