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"The History
of Country Music" is autobiographical. Almost. I've never fucked
a pumpkin. That bit of business is a nod to the
watermelon scene in Cormac McCarthy's Suttree. I wanted
my narrator to be like McCarthy's character Gene Harrogate: a sneaky,
screwed-up hayseed.
I can't sing. My narrator sings. He's modelled on another screwed-up hayseed,
Hank Williams. I always wanted to rewrite Hank's life story and make him
gay. My narrator's trying to impress a boy by carving a terrifying jack-o'-lantern.
He carves up his hand instead.
That part's true to life. In high school I gashed my pinky while carving
a pumpkin for Halloween. Severed a tendon and a nerve. An ambulance whisked
me to the hospital for surgery. I wore a cast for
months. Months of physiotherapy. I got my finger working again. I
pretended I hadn't. My injury excused me from homework, housework, and,
most important, Phys-ed.
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