nice new voice of essays dealing mostly with the weirdness of low class usa. christian rock festivel ; big brother's near death experience ; author apprenticing himself to andrew lytle (sewanee review) ; driving around after katrina ; 'real life/road rules" aftermarket business ; tea party marches, and on and on. things to like about jjs: smart, includes interesting details in his narrative (rafinesque became really fat after getting a job at transylvania university) ; looks in to interesting phenomenon and what "real people" are doing (doing long interviews, ultimately complete failures, with axl rose's childhood running buddy), went to the basque country, is a liberal, of sorts. things (i didn't like anyway) not to like about jjs: sometimes TOO wordy and seems to just be showing off (one tree hill star hilliare (sp?) we are told is nice, we are told this lots and lots of times, but she didn;t seem that nice, he takes sides, at times as a conservative, at times as a liberal, just to create tension in story when really the story has enough tension already without that yoyo affect, he gave up on the census worker autolynching story and just left it drop that cops said the guy ducked taped himself naked to a tree and wrote FED on his chest and then stuck a gag in his mouth and suffocated. end dot. really? end dot? anyway, exciting to read a new, good essayist.