"Thirteen"

Richard K. Morgan is the acclaimed author of Woken Furies, Market Forces, Broken Angels, and Altered Carbon, a New York Times Notable Book that also won the Philip K. Dick Award.

His new book is Thirteen (or Black Man, in the U.K.), to which he applied the "page 69 test" and reported the following:

As far as I can see, the figure 69 has two cultural echoes to justify its use as a focal point here, and I doubt the fact that it's a number with a visual rotational symmetry is the one most of us are thinking about.

No, it's sex, isn't it - the deep, uncomfortable and unacknowledged wellspring of all we are, and are driven by. Appropriate, then, that p. 69 of Thirteen (or Black Man, take your pick but be prepared to pay the Amazon shipping difference), features a fair bit of sex, in conversation if not in actual act - oral sex, masturbation and, very loosely suggested, straightforward fucking. Perhaps those of you familiar with my stuff aren't going to be too surprised by this. Nor by the fact that the same page segues from there into personal rage, confrontational escalation towards violence, and a general sense of political and social alienation. In all these aspects, p. 69 is in fact very much representative of what you can expect to find in the novel as a whole - Black Man/Thirteen is a violent, sexually-charged and politically angry piece of work. The fact that this particular deployment of these factors features only fairly minor characters really just points up the essentially egalitarian nature of the sex and violence the story involves. There's plenty to go round, plenty for everyone.

Sex, violence and politics. Like it or not, these are the salients of human existence, and like it or not I find myself driven to write about them time and again.

Anything else would be cowardice.

Visit Richard Morgan's website, and read an excerpt from Thirteen.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Deadly Appraisal"

Jane K. Cleland is the author of two Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries: Consigned to Death, a finalist for the Agatha for Best First Novel, and Deadly Appraisal, which was published this spring.

She applied the "page 69 test" to Deadly Appraisal and reported the following:

My protagonist, Josie Prescott, is an antiques appraiser, and both antiques lore and the business of antiques play an important role in Deadly Appraisal, the second Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery. In fact, many reviewers have referred to the books as an Antiques Roadshow for mystery fans.

Thus, in order for a page to be representative of the book as a whole, it must include something about antiques — and sure enough, page 69 of Deadly Appraisal does indeed mention antiques.

It also showcases my use of dialog in characterization. Readers won’t know the people who are mentioned by name, of course, yet they’ll learn significant information about individuals and various relationships — information that comes into play regarding solving the murder mystery.

Further, readers will get a sense of the physical space — the cavernous warehouse that opens into an elegant auction hall.

What page 69 doesn’t do is show Josie interacting with her staff or using her knowledge of antiques to solve crimes. Still, I think it gives a flavor of my writing style and pacing.

Here’s page 69:

“Gretchen, when Britt arrives, bring him back, okay?”

“Okay. It was nice talking with you, Dora,” she said.

“Oh, you, too! We’ll catch up more another time.” Dora gave an airy wave as we passed into the bone-cold warehouse.

Our footsteps reverberated off the concrete walls. When we were about half way across the expanse, Dora asked, “Did you know them well? Maisy and Walter, I mean...”

I shook my head. “I never met Walter until the Gala. And Maisy, well, I got to know her a little since we’ve been working together. But nothing personal, you know? How about you?”

“I only met Walter once before the Gala. It was at a cocktail reception over the summer, one of those ‘we’re all working together on the Gala, so bring your significant others and let’s bond,’ things” she said, casting her eyes heavenwards, a non-verbal commentary about what she thought of that idea. “I took Hank. You met him, right?”

“The trombone player,” I said, remembering a tall guy with a blond ponytail. He’d been one of the brass quartet that had played soft music during the cocktail hour. He was maybe ten years younger than Dora, and cute as all get-out.

“Right. He’s my honey.”

“I didn’t know,” I said.

“He’s a sweetie.”

“That’s great,” I answered, unsure how to respond.

“Anyway,” she said, “Hank is the most patient creature on earth, but after two minutes talking to Walter, he’s tugging on my shawl whispering in my ear, ‘Get me away from this jerk before I pound him into the ground.’”

“Really? Wow, that’s amazing. I mean, I got the impression that Walter was upset about something, you know? But I had no idea he’d inspire a patient man to violence.” As I spoke, I opened the door that led into the auction hall and switched on the overhead lights. “Well,” I said, “here we are.”

Eddie was long gone, along with everything that wasn’t nailed down or on display. It was a little creepy. Whereas an hour earlier there had been tables and chairs, linens, dishes, and candles, now there was nothing except the antiques we were there to discuss.

Visit Jane Cleland's website and her blog, and read an excerpt from Deadly Appraisal.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Things Kept, Things Left Behind"

Jim Tomlinson's fiction and poetry have been published in The Pinch, Five Points, Bellevue Literary Review, Potomac Review, Arts Across Kentucky magazine, and Shenandoah.

He applied the "page 69 test" to his debut collection of stories, Things Kept, Things Left Behind, and reported the following:

Is page 69 of Things Kept, Things Left Behind representative of the rest of the short story collection? Yes, amazingly so. It happens to be the final page of “Things Kept,” one of two title stories.

Things Kept, Things Left Behind is about life’s accumulations and sheddings. These stories, set in working-class, small town America, are stories of human relationships — siblings, husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, even ex-spouses still somehow entangled. At their root, the stories are concerned with the yearning heart. Reading page 69 alone, some sense of this does come through.

That said, I do worry about browsing readers first meeting “poor Wesley Chalk,” a minor character, on that page. Will they understand that he’s simple, that his awkward, ungrammatical way of talking is unique to him, that it isn’t representative of other dialogue? But then I remember — readers are an intelligent lot, good with subtlety, quick to figure such things out. Right?

Okay, context: LeAnn and Cass, adult sisters, have schemed to convince their ailing mother, who lives alone outside town, to sell their dead father’s antique roll top desk. A locked drawer holds old secrets. The mother has resisted so far. In the early morning, LeAnn, confident that she’s finally gained the upper hand with her mother, climbs the hillside path to the house. She meets local laborer Wesley Chalk coming down. For days he’s been cutting and burning fallen trees on a nearby hillside.

From page 69:

“I slept by the fires. Your ma, she worries they’ll burn themselves loose. Me and Donnie, we’re careful. I stayed on anyways so she won’t worry.”

“Good to be careful.” LeAnn inched away up the path.

“Lucky I stayed,” Wesley said, following her now. “I come awake to see your ma hauling on this old-timey desk. She’s pushing and shoving. But mostly she’s just scuffing up rocks and dirt.”

LeAnn’s head went dizzy, her insides loose.

“She asks will I help lug it over to the side hill. Well, I do, and it is heavy, I should say. When we finally gets it there, she gives it a shove, and it tumbles down onto yesterday’s fire. Sends sparks flying everwhere.”

LeAnn turned unsteadily toward the crackling blaze. But it wasn’t the old desk her eyes sought just then. It was Lonnie she looked for, Lonnie she expected to see tumbling over rocks, through the bright blaze, coming to his feet all scuffed and smudged, coming up grinning on the other side.

“Your ma paid me, too,” Wesley said. “Paid better’n Donnie does.” He pulled a fistful of money from his pocket. “See? Twelve dollars,” he said, spreading the bills. “And two quarters, and a buffalo nickel. She give me this old pearly-handle jackknife, too.”

*

Sometimes she thinks of herself as a howl. The wail of a coyote, maybe, or a lone banshee, a shriek dying away in the night without reaching ears. Piercing, like something wrenched raw from an orphaned soul. A hollow thing, haunted, a sound that lives on, still shrill in memory long after its echo dies.

As she raced north toward Dayton that morning, LeAnn felt that way.

* * *

Read more about Things Kept, Things Left Behind at Jim Tomlinson's website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Kindness Goes Unpunished"

Craig Johnson is the author of three Walt Longmire mysteries: The Cold Dish, Death Without Company, and Kindness Goes Unpunished.

He applied the "page 69 test" to Kindness Goes Unpunished and reported the following, beginning with the text from page 69:

As Henry and I walked toward the escalators, he put a hand out and pulled the towel away from my nose. He tilted my head back and looked up my nostrils. “So, what does the other guy look like?”

“I punched him in the fist with my nose, but I think he’ll live.” I pinched the towel over my face and leaned against the escalator’s moving, rubber railing, glad that something else was providing the locomotion. I looked back up at Henry. “I didn’t kill him.”

The wide face nodded, inscrutable to the end. “Good.”

As we were riding down, two men were riding up. The one in the front was silver-haired and was sharply dressed in a charcoal suit with a maroon tie and a black trench coat; behind him was a man with a tightly cropped haircut and a suit, tie and overcoat all the same shade of dark tan. It was difficult to see where the clothes began and the man stopped. They stared at us as we rode closer; by the time we passed each other, I could see that the first man’s designer glasses had small, red dots on the frames that emphasized his large brown eyes. The second man smiled a very becoming smile, and I noticed the bulge of a shoulder holster at his left armpit. “Foul ball?”

I rolled my eyes and nodded. “Yep.”

We quickly made our way from the ballpark and walked toward Broad and the subway. Henry didn’t say anything, which gave me plenty of time to think, mostly about whether I believed Devon Conliffe.

At some level, just about everybody lies to you when you’re a cop, whether they have a reason to or not; some little portion of the truth that they feel would be best omitted in their dealings with you. The only good thing about it is that you start being able to tell when people are doing it, and I was sure that Devon was. The kid obviously had a lot of emotional and mental issues to deal with, but I was having a hard time working up any empathy;

As a whole, I’d say that page 69 in Kindness Goes Unpunished is representative of the rest of the book The series is about Walt Longmire, who is the sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming, and is written in first-person, so it’s Walt’s perspective on things. He has tagged along to Philadelphia with his closest friend, Henry Standing Bear, who is there for an exhibition of Indian photographs. He uses Henry’s trip as an excuse to visit his daughter, Cady, and meet her soon-to-be fiancé, Devon Conliffe. But things go wrong. Page 69 is indicative of that.

Walt has been described as tough but tender and I think that’s a fair description and is shown on this page in his actions and thoughts. If I’m going to be inside somebody’s head for three-hundred pages, then there better be something compelling to his nature. I think Walt has a breadth of voice that’s refreshing — a concern for society and a sense of humor that keeps him going and is an integral part of the men’s friendship — actually, is an integral part of Walt’s relationship with everyone. The books are character driven. Not to say that there aren’t strong plots, but it’s the people who keep readers wanting more. The descriptions of the two men who are coming up the escalator are an indication of this strength.

As far as skimming the page and reading on? Sure, I’d want to read more. Why is Walt’s nose broken? Are the two guys on the escalator cops or bad guys? How do they compare with Walt in demeanor? Why does Walt lie about the foul ball? How does he feel about lying, especially concerning this investigation? What’s happened that causes Walt to fight with Devon? Lots of questions, and I’d want the answers.

Kindness Goes Unpunished is mostly about community and family, an homage to father/daughter love played out in the troubling landscape of crime fiction, and even though Walt’s daughter Cady isn’t mentioned on this page, her presence is there. I’m actually surprised at how much page 69 is representative of the novel…

Read more about Kindness Goes Unpunished at Johnson's website, including an excerpt.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Evolution for Everyone"

David Sloan Wilson is Distinguished Professor, Departments of Biology and Anthropology, and Director of EvoS, Binghamton University. His first book for a general audience is Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives.

He applied the "page 69 test" to Evolution for Everyone and reported the following:

Evolution for Everyone describes the basic principles of evolution in a way that anyone can understand, and then relates evolution to the human condition in addition to the natural world. Page 69 is from a chapter titled "Welcome Home, Prodigal Son," which explores what it means to regard ourselves as 100% a product of evolution, abandoning the hubris that we have special properties breathed into us by a higher power. There is also a secular version of this hubris, in which our special properties are supposedly based on culture and learning. "Hubris, all hubris!" is how page 69 ends, but you'll have to read the book to discover how I deliver on my extravagant claim.

One of the joys of writing a book is the emergence of themes that were not necessarily planned at the beginning. In my case, Evolution for Everyone became a reflection on science as an everyday "roll up your sleeves" activity, like gardening and construction work, and scientists as just like other folks who come from all walks of life, rather than an elite caste. It is possible for anyone to understand and even contribute to the profound discoveries that are taking place right now, as evolutionary theory expands beyond the biological sciences to provide a unifying framework for understanding the human condition.

Page 69:

To be precise, the statement “Believing that we have god given abilities is good for us” could be factually correct while the statement “We have god-given abilities” is in all likelihood incorrect. I make this statement with confidence, not because I am hostile to religion, but because supernatural explanations of ourselves have proven their inadequacy many times over, along with supernatural explanations of the physical world and the rest of nature. The next time that you visit a doctor, you should hope that she is enlightened enough to appreciate the importance of belief for physical and mental health, but you should also be glad that she doesn’t resort to supernatural explanations any more than your car mechanic.

Abandoning supernatural explanations is only the first step in our multi-step road to recovery. The world is full of people who have already abandoned supernatural explanations, who fully accept the fact of evolution and human origins, and yet haven’t a clue about what evolution can tell us about our bodies, minds, and societies in any detail. Your aforementioned doctor is probably among them, as I will show in the very next chapter. The secular belief that we stand apart from the rest of nature takes a variety of forms, but most emphasize open-ended abilities such as learning, language, culture, and rational thought. These capacities supposedly enable us to play by different rules than other species and do not require a detailed knowledge of evolution to understand, even though they presumably arose by a process of genetic evolution. A common claim is that “biology” sets broad limits to our behavior, such as eating and procreation, but that “culture” determines what we do within the broad limits, such as making art rather than babies. It is true but boring to point out that we like to eat and have sex; far more interesting is our rich cultural diversity, about which evolution has nothing to say. Above all, we can choose our own destiny because our behavior is not genetically determined, unlike all other species. Add the appropriate mood music, and humanity becomes like Captain Kirk and the Starship Enterprise, confidently going where no one has gone before.

Hubris, all hubris! In the first place, it places too much emphasis on our uniquely human attributes. In the second place, it fails to appreciate how much evolution is required to understand our uniquely human attributes.

Learn more about Evolution for Everyone at the publisher's website and read an excerpt.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Darkness Inside"

John Rickards is the author of the acclaimed psychological thrillers Winter's End, The Touch of Ghosts, and The Darkness Inside.

He applied the "page 69 test" to The Darkness Inside and reported the following:

Page 69 of The Darkness Inside is actually pretty dull when taken out of context. Sure, the guy being questioned by the two Feds is … odd, but without knowing who he is it doesn’t add up to much. In context, we know this guy’s a genuinely disgusting multiple child murderer and that this is part if a flashback to his first meeting with the main character and the investigation which caught him. Important stuff, right? Well, without reading the rest you can’t answer that, I suppose. Maybe it’s not important. Maybe the rest of the book’s about the decline of the herring industry and this whole scene’s superfluous.

Anyway, on its own, p69 is probably one of the dullest pages in the book. It’s just a cop talking to a bad guy. In fairness, the first section of the book does feature conversations between the two of them pretty regularly (back in the present, years after the p69 scene, when they’re trying to find out where Cody Williams’ last few victims are buried before he shuffles off this mortal coil), but the conversations are rather different in tone and point. This is just one of those, “Where were you on the night of X?” opening police salvos we’ve all seen and heard a million times.

Then the whole thing switches to a discussion of the herring industry and state catch quotas and the plot really kicks off, of course.

Cue the quote:

His home is a narrow two-storey house with a square patch of slightly ragged greenery that passes for a front yard. A few shrubs, some flowers, starting to grow rampant. An unmarked white van sits on the driveway. When Williams – a wiry guy with long curly hair tied back in a ponytail, fit physique beneath a grey T-shirt, but pale to look at – opens the door, a wash of warm stale air, moist and acrid, floods past him. Slick skin reeking of old sweat. More ancient scents embedded in the fabric of the house itself. My nostrils recoil, but I try not to show it.

“Mr Williams, I’m Special Agent Alex Rourke and this is Agent Jeff Agostini.” We hold up our badges. “We need to ask you a handful of routine questions, if you have a few minutes.”

One side of Williams mouth twitches into a smile. “This is about that kiddie thing, right?” His choice of words jars. “I’ve seen it on the news. Then someone from the cops called about the van, asked where I was.”

“That’s right, Mr Williams. All we’re doing is asking people a few standard questions, just to eliminate them from our lists.”

“You guys the only two they got working on that? I’d kinda figured there’d be more of you. I mean, where’re we at now, four of them girls gone? Five?”

“There’s a lot of cops working on this too, Mr Williams.”

“A lot, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“And all they’ve got for you two to do is ask ‘routine questions’, Agent Rourke? With all them pretty young things still missing?”

Learn more about The Darkness Inside -- and read an excerpt -- at the official John Rickards website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"China: Fragile Superpower"

Susan Shirk is director of the University of California system-wide Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and professor of political science in the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego.

She applied the "page 69 test" to her new book, China: Fragile Superpower, and reported the following:

Page 69 captures the essence of the book’s argument that the greatest danger to Americans is China’s internal fragility, not its strength. China’s communist leaders are anxious about the risks looming over the country’s historic rise and about their own political survival.

The page falls in the chapter on the domestic threats confronting China’s leaders. It notes that China’s communist regime looks resilient and might survive for years so long as the economy keeps growing and creating jobs. Survey research shows widespread

“support (over 80 percent) for the political system as a whole linked to sentiments of nationalism and acceptance of the CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party’s) argument about ‘stability first.’” Without making any fundamental changes in the CCP-dominated political system – leaders from time to time have toyed with reform ideas such as local elections but in each instance have backed away for fear of losing control – the Party has bought itself time. As scholar Pei Minxin notes, the ability of communist regimes to use their patronage and coercion to hold on to power gives them little incentive to give up any of that power by introducing gradual democratization from above. Typically, only when communist systems implode do their political fundamentals change.

As China’s leaders well know, the greatest political risk lying ahead of them is the possibility of an economic crash that throws millions of workers out of their jobs or sends millions of depositors to withdraw their savings from the shaky banking system. A massive environmental or public health disaster could also trigger regime collapse, especially if people’s lives are endangered by a media cover-up imposed by Party authorities. Nationwide rebellion becomes a real possibility when large numbers of people are upset about the same issue at the same time. Another dangerous scenario is a domestic or international crisis in which the CCP leaders feel compelled to lash out against Japan, Taiwan, or the United States because from their point of view not lashing out might endanger Party rule.”

The page goes on to discuss one of the lessons the leaders took away from the traumatic episode of Tiananmen in 1989 when the regime was threatened by pro-democracy demonstrations in 132 Chinese cities and the Party leaders split over how to react – “keep the military on the side of the Party.”

Read more about China: Fragile Superpower at the Oxford University Press website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Nerve Damage"

In Peter Abrahams's Nerve Damage, the sculptor Roy Valois learns that his wife, Delia, who died fifteen years earlier while Valois thought she was working for a private think tank, may in fact have been working at something entirely different.

Abrahams applied the "page 69 test" to Nerve Damage and reported the following:

Page 69! Not fair. In Nerve Damage, page 69 leads off Chapter 9, and is therefore shorter than a normal page. But in its little way it is representative of the book. The mystery of the Hobbes Institute grows, with the possibility of its non-existence being raised for the first time. We also see Roy's artist eye at work. And the walking birds image, while not necessarily representative of the book, is representative of its author. As is the very name of the Institute: a red flag. My favorite page in the book is actually 304, the last one - but no sneak peeks.

Visit Peter Abrahams's website and browse inside Nerve Damage.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Five Skies"

Ron Carlson has received citations in Best American Short Stories twelve times since 1984. His books include the story collections Plan B for the Middle Class and The News of the World, and the novels Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Truants.

He applied the "page 69 test" to his new novel, Five Skies, and reported the following:

Page 69 of Five Skies has only a few lines on it, being a chapter ending,but one of them has the foreman of the ranch speaking about Ronnie Panelli,the 19 year old former thief, who has just welded some machinery supports,and he says: "It's a smart cookie." One of the real solid pleasures of this book was writing Ronnie Panelli's reluctant apprenticeship to the world of work, the nomenclature of tools and the elements of construction.

When first confronted with his task of assembling the tent which will be the three men's summer shelter, he was vexed, but then when he had completed the job and walked away admiring the edifice, his pride gave me one of the largest clues I would use going forward. In the pages just before 69, he's welding for the first time, and he gets it. In many ways, this smart cookie is the center of the book.

Learn more about Five Skies at the publisher's website and listen to an audio excerpt. Read or listen to an excerpt at the NPR website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"God Is Dead"

Ron Currie, Jr.'s first novel is God Is Dead.

He applied the "page 69 test" to the book and reported the following:

God Is Dead is such a freewheeling novel that I'm not sure any one page could be considered representative of the whole. But p. 69 is a solid exemplar of the book's spirit: skewed, funny in an acutely uncomfortable way, and just this side of believable. Not surprisingly, in the wake of God's death civilization has been a bit wobbly. In America, things fall apart because adults begin worshipping their children and having 24-hour pizza parties instead of showing up for work and paying their credit card bills. The narrator is part of a government organization known as the CAPA, or Child Adulation Prevention Agency, and his (very important) job is to keep adults from worshipping their children and thereby keep the wheels of society well-greased and turning at the prescribed rate. But, like the doctor who smokes a pack a day or the policeman selling pot on the side, our hero is guilty of the very thing he's charged with preventing. On page 69 we find him perusing his collection of illicit children's clothing catalogues:

"For a while I savor the cover photos, the little arms and legs, the crisp new parkas and snappy denim overalls, the milk-tooth smiles. Then I gather the catalogues together in a stack and flip through each one. All my favorite pages I've marked with Post-it tabs. Each of my favorite children is a boy, each has a name and a story, and all their stories are happy ones. I smile and share the happiness as they revel in the satisfaction of normal lives and natural fibers. At times I'm so moved I cry a little."

A little creepy, right? But we find that part of the man's problem is that he suffered a terrible loss while trying to do his part to save civilization, and his catalogue collection is an effort to deal with that loss:

"But these are the only fantasies I allow myself. Though sometimes tempted, I never pretend that Laura is still alive, or that our son survived his birth and is now an adorable toddling gape-mouthed two-year-old, quick to giggle, with red hair like his mother's and a predilection for Mack Truck worship. Never do I lie dozing on the sofa and imagine I hear his bare feet slapping across the kitchen floor in pursuit of a dust bunny or a Matchbox car. Nor do I fantasize about taking Selia, leaving this town to its miserable fate, and starting a family of our own in a warm, sane, place. Never, ever do I allow myself these luxuries."

Visit Currie's website and his MySpace page to learn more about God Is Dead and his other writing and enthusiasms.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Short Change"

Patricia Smiley's new novel is Short Change.

She applied the "page 69 test" to the book and reported the following:

This page is a turning point in the novel. It is the moment at which my heroine, Tucker Sinclair, enters the crucible with Charley Tate, a decision that binds them inextricably together for a wild ride from the beach community of Playa del Rey to the horse country of northeast Los Angeles county to uncover a tangled conspiracy of deceit and murder. The anatomy of Tucker’s character is laid bare in this scene. She is a reluctant sleuth, but she also prides herself on being a one-stop-shop for her consulting clients’ needs — business doctor, hand-holder, and friend. The scene provides insight into Tucker’s bond with Charley Tate the ex-cop turned private investigator. The relationship begins as business but morphs into something more than that as the story progresses. As for Charley, he doesn’t envision Tucker’s assignment as dangerous, only crucial to the case he is working on. The fact that he has asked her to help him, illustrates his growing respect for her, his faith in her ability to detect a lie. The page ends with a dramatic question, a hook. Can Tucker juggle her already full schedule to accommodate Charley’s request? She opines: “That was beginning to feel like an insurmountable problem until I remembered Eugene.”

Who is Eugene?

Visit Patricia Smiley's website to learn more about Short Change.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Deer Hunting with Jesus"

Joe Bageant writes an online column that has made him a cult hero among gonzo-journalism junkies and progressives. He has been interviewed on Air America and comments on America’s long history of religious fundamentalism in the BBC/Owl documentary The Vision: Americans on America. Until recently he worked as a senior editor for the Primedia History Magazine Group.

He applied the "page 69 test" to his new book, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War, and reported the following:

Well, page 69 is one of the more low keyed pages in a rather gonzo book. My goal was to take liberal Americans on a rip snorting, compassionate and informative journey through the red state America I grew up in and believe I understand. And I wanted to show educated liberals just what has made my people the way they are: tough assed, tender hearted, gun loving members of the huge new American underclass that has been growing and solidifying long before President Sparky ever started farting in the Oval Office chair. So we go into the holy roller praise temples -- my brother is a fundamentalist minister who casts out demons -- and drink a lot of beer with the forklift drivers and single moms at the dreary night shift gulag of the local Rubbermaid plant. These are people condemned to a life of white trashonomics, preyed upon by mobile home salesmen and the credit card rackets designed especially for people like them. The ones with bad credit and worse teeth. Only about 20% of Americans get a college degree. The rest are working mooks kept convinced they are "middle class" by bullshit media and advertising. Yet they are told when to work, how much they will be paid, how to do their work, piss tested on the job until they are blind, and told to take a hike when corporations no longer find them useful. That's called working for "the man" and it's called working class everywhere but in this country. Sixty percent of Americans fall into this category. So what we have is a class war going, but only one side knows it. Is it any wonder they are mad? Now what we gotta do is teach 'em to be mad at the right damned people and quit believing what they hear on talk radio. It's going to be a long and dirty job, but Bush's massive failures have begun to do some of it for us. Yes, it is a political book.

Visit Joe Bageant's website and read more about Deer Hunting with Jesus.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue