Das applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America, and shared the following:
The first paragraph on page 99 makes an important point in my book: that live performances in the tourism mecca of Branson, Missouri in the 1960s-1980s gave country music the sense of authenticity needed to counterbalance the genre’s strong commercial roots. As I write, “While sitting at home listening to the Barn Dance Radio Hour or a [country music] LP, one could imagine the social world of rural Americana. By attending a Branson show, one could experience it.” The second paragraph gives an example of a quintessential Branson performer who moved to the town in the 1980s boom era: Boxcar Willie, who was an accomplished country music performer who hadn’t ever quite reached #1 hit status. He maintained success with a heavy touring schedule, but Branson gave him an opportunity to settle down. He became one of the city’s biggest cheerleaders. Page 99 quotes from him: “I don’t think there is a better part of the U.S. that a fellow can open a business or move to such as the Branson area.” He definitely supported the idea of Branson as ideal not only because of its spirit of free entrepreneurship, but also adherence to an ideal of rural America as real America. As I write on 99: “He famously turned down $20,000 a week on Broadway for Branson. He harbored a disdain for urban poverty, which he did not explicitly state in racial terms but was implied by echoing Reagan’s coded language about welfare queens.” Boxcar Willie championed hoboes (that was his persona), but disdained bums, even though one could argue that both terms are names for transient people without stable jobs or homes.Visit Joanna Dee Das's website.
The Page 99 Test works for Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America because it reiterates one of my central claims that live performance in Branson, Missouri weaves together multiple strands of conservative ideology into a coherent whole. It demonstrates how Branson performers have championed the city as a model of both economic conservatism (the free market) and cultural conservatism, the latter which has sometimes dipped into racism (ie, Boxcar Willie’s implication that unemployed white men of the Great Depression, or hoboes, were valiant and moral despite their transience, whereas unemployed Black men on the street corners of New York were lazy.) Sometimes, capitalism and authenticity are in conflict with each other, which means that economic and cultural conservatism can be in tension. Live performers help ease tensions to create coherence. Yes, country music is fully invested in the capitalist marketplace, but through Branson performers like Boxcar Willie, who will chat with you before, during, and after the show, who will sign autographs and pose for pictures, who doesn’t seem too big for his britches despite his commercial success, makes audiences feel like the music is authentic, for lack of a better word. The Boxcar Willie example continues onto page 100, so you don’t quite fully get the whole picture just with page 99, but you get enough.
I think this Page 99 Test should work for any well-written nonfiction book. As a nonfiction author, you have to keep reiterating your main points and tie all specific examples back to those main points. Therefore any given page should be able to serve as a microcosm of the whole.
--Marshal Zeringue