Q: What's the difference between Hick Lit and Redneck Noir?

A: Redneck Noir is fiction. It fits into a genre. It is published and read. Its authors make a living writing.

Hick Lit is more literary. Too literary, one might even say. It doesn't fit into a genre. It goes unpublished, or underpublished. Its authors work, when they can find work, at a field outside of writing. My last two jobs were custodian and handyman.

Q: Your last job was writing training programs for the unemployed on an economics-stimulus-program grant.

A: That was a temporary job.

If I had a full-time job like that I'd be middle class.

I'm not middle class I'm poor.

That's the theme of my books.

The middle class is now poor.

The middle class didn't know it, but it was poor. It's only just now finding out, and it comes as a rude shock.

Q: They thought they were prosperous.

A: Yes. They voted for Bush. They listened to Rush Limbaugh. They watched Fox News on television. I worked with them. In Atlanta.

They had a house in the suburbs. They commuted. They had investments. Stocks. When the stock market tanked, they switched to real estate. They flipped houses.

They dealt in herds of cattle to get their shoelaces, as Thoreau said.

Q: They were anti-union. Anti-working stiff.

A: Yes. They were managers. Members of management. They weren't labor. They were anti-labor.

Q: That's interesting.

A: I was trained as an anthropologist. I called myself an Anthropologist-in-Residence (AIR) I wrote the Anthropologist-in-Residence (AIR) Creed. It got me sacked and blacklisted.