When Therese Zink was teaching in the Rural Physician Assistant Program at the University of Minnesota, she became interested in the stories of small town medicine. Now she has compiled an anthology published as part of the Literature and Medicine by Kent State University Press filled with essays exploring this concept. The book is called The Country Doctor Revisited, and I’m honored to say it includes an essay drawn from Population 485.
Table of contents here.
Because a couple of folks have asked, the kidney stone story I often perform live is included in this book:
"Off Main Street" Paperback Cover
Also included: stories about truckers, truckin’, truckin’ music, Elvis, Steve Earle, manure, baldness, small-town funerals, tricky book tour moments, veterans, Aaron Tippin, giant musky statues, hot summer days, and existentialist cowboys.
P.S. The title my editor came up with for the kidney stone story was, “Rock Slide!” I still get a little pale when I think about it.
Sometimes people ask me if the books and the music are connected. Sometimes, yep. Amble Down Records compiled the following summary describing the connections from the Tiny Pilot album:
- The opening verse of “Edge of Town” is set on the highway overpasses described on pages 99-104 of Population 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time (HarperPerennial).
- The album’s title song, “Tiny Pilot,” was written in memory of Perry’s nephew Jake, as described in Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting (released in paperback as Coop: A Family, A Farm, and the Pursuit of One Good Egg).
- “If They Give You Wings” is a song drawn directly from scenes in “Branding God,” the essay found on page 256 of Perry’s book, Off Main Street (HarperPerennial). The song lyrics also include a Dylan Thomas sample.
- “Harry Was Right” (bonus song available on physical CD version of album only as track #14) is a song set in a real-life bar called The Joynt. Perry’s readers will recognize the bar and its denizens from Chapter 13 of Truck: A Love Story (HarperPerennial) and may especially enjoy singing along with the bridge, which is a direct quote from the book: No…light…beer!
- Perry wrote the first verse of “Indiana” while driving from Michigan to Illinois on his Coop hardcover tour. The song makes specific reference to “Seven A.M.,” the Edward Hopper painting that anchors Chapter 8 (beginning on p. 138) of Truck: A Love Story (HarperPerennial).
- The lyrics of “Cissy Moan” invoke Oxford, Mississippi (home of Square Books) and the writers Larry Brown, Barry Hannah, and William Faulkner. The main character of the song is caught stealing books at “Lemuria” in reference to the actual bookstore in Jackson, Mississippi.
Over at It’s All About Books, I did a “Pick Five” about my literary influences. Now I want to be back on the porch at Mom and Dad’s place, reading with the screens open…
I am. More than one, as a matter of fact. More on that in time. As the photo below demonstrates, there is still a ways to go before anything gets slapped between two covers:
As of today, Coop is now officially available in paperback. Included: new cover, new subtitle, new “P.S.” essay, and tucked in the back there, a little info about this project.
Book tour begins today as well. Details here. Before it’s all over, health and fate willing, I’ll go from ‘Sconsin to New York. Today, however, I’m planting oats. Pretty much right on the spot where that tot and those chickens are standing:
Time speeds along faster than a chicken coop on wheels! The very first paperback copy of Coop arrived via the UPS truck last week, and we are now able to take orders (all orders will be signed by Mike).
Here’s the cover:
Yep, those are our chickens, and that’s our tyke herding them. She had only recently learned to walk when the photo was taken. Now she’s threatening to read the book herself. Once again, this cover was the work of our friends John and Julie.
As you can see, the book has a new subtitle. On the hardcover, the subtitle was “A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting.” I’ve never had a book come out with two separate subtitles before. There were meetings involved. I believe we are attempting to broaden the demographic, as they say. I’m plumb happy with my current demographic, but welcome any newcomers. Question is, does this make the hardcover (signed copies still in stock!) even more valuable as a collector’s item?
By the way, this paperback version is a “P.S.” model, which means it includes an author interview and a new essay by Mike updating events (feral guinea hens, anyone?) since the hardcover release.
I’ll be on paperback tour in May and April. We’ve added tentative dates to the calendar with more details to follow soon.
Rodale Press has just published Going Long: Legends, Oddballs, Comebacks & Adventures, a collection of stories from Runner’s World magazine. The anthology includes a profile I wrote of Olympic marathoner Ryan Hall. I recall so clearly the smell of hot pine needles on the still day when I visited his family and met his wonderful grandmother.
In the process of researching the history of my hometown (New Auburn, Wisconsin) (now Population: 562) (urban sprawl!) for the book Population 485, I discovered that the town’s founder David Cartwright had written a bestselling book in 1875. I tracked down an actual copy of the book, but it took some doing. This morning a reader sent me a Tweet with a link showing me that along with everything else in the world the book has now been scanned into Google and you can read it here.
Here’s a portion of how I described the book in Population 485:
I have never seen any photographs of Cartwright, but the title page of Western Wild Animals is faced by an engraving tagged with the caption, “David’s Return to Camp.” He wears a white beard and a flat cap, and he is striding down a wooded trail, a rifle in his right hand and a dead deer balanced over his left shoulder. In short, he looks like a forbidding version of the Quaker Oats man. A selection from the preface seems a continuation of the furrow in his brow:
He is…not a professional book maker, and he knows that it is only by practice that there comes any great degree of perfection in any art or trade. What he gives you, he puts upon the basis of an experience of forty years, and gives it with that assurance that he believes should come of practical knowledge, as opposed to any hypothetical and visionary trash.
No dancing ‘round the campfire with patchouli and rain sticks, then. All well and good. But here’s where my ears really pricked:
Since the author of this book claims for himself an incompetency to the task of putting it into shape, and the more exact wording of its pages, and has placed that part of the work into the hands of another, it is due to him to say that…
Just a cotton-pickin’ minute. Back to the title page. Western Wild Animals, etc, and etc. By David W. Cartwright. In much smaller print: Written by Mary F. Bailey. Turns out David W. had a ghostwriter.
Thanks to nanaze for the note.
Weekdays at 12:30 p.m. CST from now until February 12, Jim Fleming will be reading Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Chapter A Day.” Jim has a wonderful reading voice (I have learned he is a favorite of rural mail carriers) and you can listen to a live stream of the reading right here.
Missed a segment? The five most recent chapters are available here: http://wpr.org/webcasting/audioarchives_display.cfm?Code=cad&repeats=no
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