from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Library Association’s Alex Award, and the Pushcart Prize. His books have been translated into fifteen languages, and his short fiction and nonfiction have received recognition in Best American anthologies. As a screenwriter he worked most recently on the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations and has developed projects with AMC Studios, Amblin Television, and ITV America. He lives in Portland, Maine and teaches in the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast MFA program.
Currie applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne, and reported the following:
Page 69 of The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne introduces readers to the character of The Man, a ghoul in the tradition of Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. The Man is on his way to Waterville, Maine, where he intends to confront the novel's heroine, Babs Dionne, and take away the drug business she's been running for the last thirty years:Learn more about the book and author at Ron Currie's website.Not, understand, that The Man was in any hurry. In point of fact, he never hurried, even when going extremely fast. He did not experience urgency the way normal people experienced urgency. His pulse rarely rose above sixty (forty if he was sitting still). He'd never had a need for antiperspirant. Not once in his life had he suffered the stress-induced cortisol hangover that characterized modern life for most people. Perhaps this was genetic. Whatever the reason, his autonomic nervous system remained dark and dormant in any situation when the average person's would be screaming five alarms, pulling every hormonal and cardiovascular lever to prepare the body for mortal threat real or imagined. It just didn't register for him, and never had. He could recognize stress or peril intellectually, but his body refused to respond. Not only did this explain the fact that he was capable of only one mood--namely, cheerful impassiveness--but it also made The Man 100 percent indifferent to the fear and pain and hopes of other people.This is an excellent representation of the whole of the novel: spooky, funny in a cockeyed kind of way, and also menacing and deadly serious all at once.
Unfortunately page 69 doesn't cover The Man's backstory, which follows immediately after and shows us how he came to understand his calling as a cartel enforcer. Oddly enough, he was in cosmetology school at the time, training to be a hairdresser, and he experienced something, while learning the fine art of straight-shaving, that clued him in to the fact that he was well-suited for the kind of work he does when we meet him.
The Page 69 Test: God Is Dead.
My Book, The Movie: God Is Dead.
The Page 69 Test: Everything Matters!.
--Marshal Zeringue
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