Flowers

Essayist Paul Ruffin blends poetry, Southern wit in 'Travels with George'

17.07.11

To be honest, I’m as guilty as the next reader when it comes to judging a book by its cover. That said, until a couple months ago I would not have looked twice at author Paul Ruffin’s latest book with its iStock cover photo of tall Johnson grass waving against a blue-sky background. But on a recent camping trip, I asked my husband, who spends his off days fighting invasive grasses in the Alabama woods, to point out the difference between the destructive weed Cogon grass and its slightly less vicious cousin Johnson grass (one has a fluffy seed head, the other is loosely branching and spreading). So when I saw Ruffin’s book “Travels with George in Search of Ben Hur and Other Meanderings,” I at least had to look. I’m glad I did.

Published in April, “Travels with George” is a collection of personal essays — classic Southern storytelling with a poet’s lyrical touch. The name, and presumably the cover photo, originates from the title essay, in which Ruffin reminisces about a reading tour through Texas with novelist and poet George Garrett (1929-2008). Hungry for lunch and in search of a Dairy Queen, the pair happens upon the hamlet of Ben Hur, described by Ruffin as little more than “a grid of streets through whose aged cracks the grass has sprung and an occasional squalid shack surrounded by abandoned vehicles and household garbage mounded to sufficient height to show above the waist-high Johnson grass that grows profusely everywhere.” While they fail to locate their fast-food restaurant of choice or, for that matter, any commercial building, Ruffin uses his relaxed, yarn-spinning style to recount the pair’s sidesplitting conversation with one of the town’s few occupants.

Source: Press-Register - al.com (blog)