"Pickle's Progress"

Marcia Butler has had a number of creative careers: professional musician, interior designer, documentary filmmaker, and author. As an oboist, the New York Times has hailed her as a “first rate artist.” During her musical career, she performed as a principal oboist and soloist on the most renowned of New York and international stages, with many high-profile musicians and orchestras – including pianist Andre Watts, and composer/pianist Keith Jarrett. Her interior designs projects have been published in numerous shelter magazines and range up and down the East coast, from NYC to Boston, to Miami. The Creative Imperative, her documentary film exploring the essence of creativity, will release in Spring 2019.

Butler’s nationally acclaimed memoir, The Skin Above My Knee, was one of the Washington Post’s “top ten noteworthy moments in classical music in 2017.”

Butler applied the Page 69 Test to her debut novel, Pickle's Progress, and reported the following:

Pickle’s Progress centers around the unusual relationship between identical twins, Pickle and Stan McArdle. Page 69 lands in the middle of a chapter that begins to explore that complexity, as they converse outside of Stan’s Upper West Side brownstone in NYC. Pickle has arrived to have dinner with the family. Yet he is nervous because Junie, a bereaved woman who is staying with Stan and his wife Karen, has become the intense object of his desire. Pickle is a handsome schlub and has gone to great lengths to dress to the nines - not his usual way – in order to make a great impression on Junie. Stan is obsessive compulsive – a handsome anti-schlub – always color coordinated and natty. In spite of the fact that people literally cannot tell them apart, they are in many ways, direct opposites. Yet, their bonds go deep. They were raised by a crazy mother who favored Stan over Pickle in exceptionally damaging ways. Their upbringing has shaped their relationship and each twin’s capacity to love. The twins watch out for each other, and are also in competition with each other. Page 69 (and the chapter) begins to set up, illuminate and deepen the contradictions inherent in their relationship.

Visit Marcia Butler's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Skin Above My Knee.

My Book, The Movie: The Skin Above My Knee.

--Marshal Zeringue