keirgraff.com

Marshal Zeringue, the one-man army behind the Campaign for the American Reader, asked me to apply the Page 69 Test to One Nation, Under God. Though he has a very impressive list of test-takers, for a little while I wondered what, other than a nice link-back, could result from examining a single page out of context.

To find out, I launched my book launch party with a reading of page 69 and received an enthusiastic response. Then I mulled it over and wrote a short post for the Page 69 Test blog. Nothing earth-shaking, but it is fun to think about what any single page does or doesn’t say about the work as a whole. I still have unanswered questions, though: why did Marshall McLuhan, the test’s creator, choose page 69 in particular? Was he feeling frisky? And was Marshal Zeringue fated to carry out McLuhan’s notion due to a shared (almost) first name?

Or was McLuhan making fun of Ford Madox Ford’s Page 99 Test?

Please sign up for my mailing list. I can’t guarantee you’ll win a prize, but I can’t guarantee that you won’t, either. And I’ll treat your precious e-mail address as if it were my very own.

(I don’t mean that I’ll sign my e-mails with your address–you know what I mean.)

I’ll be talking with Rick Kogan on “Sunday Papers” this Sunday, September 28, from 8:30-9 a.m. Central time. If you’re in the Greater Chicagoland area, that’s 720 AM on the dial (your radio does have a dial, doesn’t it?)–if you’re farther afield, you can listen online.

Hope you can tune in. Rick, besides being an institution in Chicago journalism, is one of the best book-panel moderators I’ve ever seen. If he can’t make me sound interesting, I don’t know who can. Although I promise to try to make me sound interesting, too.

I meant to mention this sooner, but last week, Time Out Chicago posted the second installment of “Back of the Book,” their new arts podcast, featuring a performance from “a local up-and-comer”: yours truly. (Do people ever tell you when you’ve become a “down and goer”?)

Anyway, the theme of the podcast is politics, which must be why I read the scene in One Nation, Under God where Seth and Ben go to a metal show at the Elks Club.

Actually, the selection had more to do with the podcast’s time requirements–you just try choosing a four-minute segment from your novel. Not so easy, is it?

The Chicago Sun-Times ran a nice review of One Nation, Under God yesterday (”‘One Nation’ takes a while to thrill but it’s worth the wait,” by Jeffrey Westhoff):

The tension builds slowly, but once Seth realizes his part in a fearsome conspiracy, One Nation evokes such paranoid 1970s thrillers as The Parallax View and Six Days of the Condor.

While noting that “the novel hardly fits the contemporary definition of a thriller” (I agree), Westhoff also compares Seth to “a film noir anti-hero” (I like it) and praises my ability to write “vividly about life in society’s margins, of dead-end retail jobs, squalid apartments and trailers on cinder blocks” (now I’m blushing).

Read the full review before the Sun-Times hides it!

Mr. Westhoff, you made my day.

A sampling of the Post-9/11 Fiction forum:

Just added–a launch party for One Nation, Under God. We’ll be having drinks afterward at the Billy Goat, as usual. Hope you can make it!

Thursday, September 4, 2008

5:30-7:30 p.m.

After-Words Bookstore
23 E. Illinois St.
Chicago, IL 60611

312-464-1110

When I was in Anaheim, William Taylor of Ingram Library Services interviewed me on the exhibit floor, asking me questions about book writing and book reviewing. You can stream or download the podcast by following this link. There’s a point about two minutes in where I completely lose my train of thought, but it really picks up after that.

Memo to myself: if, when being interviewed, you completely lose your train of thought, it’s far better to say “I just lost my train of thought” than to repeat the thing you said before you lost your train of thought.

Still getting the hang of all this.

I’ll be making a few appearances this weekend at the American Library Association’s Annual Conference in Anaheim, California. All of them will be at the Anaheim Convention Center. I visited Anaheim every year or two when I was growing up–my grandparents lived there–but my family usually went to Disneyland or the beach, so this will be my first visit to the convention center. Another dream comes true.

Saturday, June 28
1:30-2 p.m.
Interview with Ingram Library Services
Booth 800, Exhibition Hall

This will be a live interview that will later be made available as a podcast on the Ingram site. Ingram distributes books for my fine publisher, Severn House.

Sunday, June 29
1:30-3:30 p.m.

Booklist Adult Books Readers’ Advisory Forum: The Post-9/11 Novel

Convention Center 304 A/B

Also appearing: Ellen Gilchrist, Janette Turner Hospital, and Carolyn See. Am I nervous? Not unless you count obsessive speech rewriting as a sign of nervousness. I’ll be appearing as both author and moderator. I’ll try to keep myself in line.

Monday, June 30
1-1:30 p.m.
LIVE! @ your library Reading Stage
Aisle 2500, Exhibition Hall

I’ll be reading a passage from my forthcoming book, One Nation, Under God. Which passage? Um . . . I’ll get back to you on that. Probably not the sex scene.

A pleasant surprise to find myself on NewCity’s Lit 50 at #45. That’s pretty good company I’m keeping–being on the same page as Studs Terkel and Stuart Dybek (and Aleksandar Hemon and Chris Ware and Scott Turow and Joe Meno and Sara Paretsky) feels pretty good.

Of course, in the print version, you have to turn the page three times before you see my name–but online it’s just one long page.