{"id":17,"date":"2025-03-12T15:00:09","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T15:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gardnerlandry.com\/books\/?page_id=17"},"modified":"2025-04-03T19:41:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T19:41:00","slug":"songs-of-my-father","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/gardnerlandry.com\/books\/songs-of-my-father\/","title":{"rendered":"Songs of My Father"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nSongs of My Father\n<\/h1>
\nGardner Landry
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\nPurchase\n<\/h3>
\nGet your copy on Amazon.com\n<\/div>\n<\/div>
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\nAtmosphere Press\n<\/h2>
\nPublished by Atmosphere Press in 2024\n<\/div>\n<\/div>
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\nebook\n<\/h2>
\nAvailable in both print and ebook formats\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/section>
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\nSongs of my Father and other Essays
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\nWhat do mayonnaise, Tab, iced tea, Vicodin, and French banana (or is it French vanilla?) ice cream have in common? If you guessed addictive tendencies and over-the-top histrionic narcissism, you win!

Welcome to the world of Fred, who is certain an ever-adoring public awaits his next spellbinding performance. Imagine a combination of Willard Scott, Ron Burgundy, and Tolkien\u2019s Gollum, but from Louisiana. Just don\u2019t look too carefully for the person behind the performer \u2013 you might not find the laff-a-minute laff riot the often comic, sometimes melodramatic, and frequently 1950s-radio-announcer-intense masks conceal.

Songs of My Father and Other Essays by Gardner Landry assembles relics of his writing from an earlier era that hearken to even earlier times, stretching from childhood into his adult years. The Fred essays recount some of his father\u2019s choice exploits, while the second group includes anecdotes and observations from beyond the confines of his family. Additionally, Landry creates a triple-decker club sandwich of a book (with mayonnaise, of course) by including contemporarily written forewords to the first and second sections, along with a present-day afterword to wrap up the collection. It\u2019s not a big book, but it packs a punch and entertains from cover to cover.

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\n\"Landry shows us that wit is a more potent therapeutic agent than self-pity...He has such a talent for comic elaboration-- long, glittering, serpentine passages that recall S. J. Perelman.\"
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\n- Emily Fox Gordon
author of Mockingbird Years: A Life In and Out of Therapy, winner of two Pushcart Prizes and recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in the humanities\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/section>
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\nAbout the author\n<\/h2>
\nGardner Landry graduated from the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts in English, magna cum laude. He spent many years in branding and marketing communications before his novel, Merlin of the Magnolias, was published in 2021. Songs of My Father and Other Essays is his first nonfiction collection. Gardner is a native Houstonian.

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\nContact\n<\/h1>
\nsend along your questions and comments, and I\u2019ll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you!\n<\/div>
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