Written in 1967

"Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated. They are the Midwest's open sores. Ugly to see, a source of constant discontent, they sap the body's strength. Appalling quantities of money, time, and energy are wasted on them. The rural mind is narrow, passionate, and reckless on these matters. Greed, however shortsighted and direct, will not alone account for it. I have known men, for instance, who for years have voted squarely against their interests. Nor have I ever noticed that their surly Christian views prevented them from urging forward the smithereening, say, of Russia, China, Cuba, or Korea. And they tend to back their country like they back their local team: they have a fanatical desire to win; yelling is their forte; and if things go badly, they are inclined to sack the coach. All in all, then, Birch is a good name. It stands for the bigot's stick, the wild-child-tamer's cane."
-- William Gass, from the title story in his striking early collection In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, a book now unaccountably out-of-print. It is the best thing that Gass, born in Fargo, North Dakota, has written. If one updated the names of the countries that Gass's Christian men would like to smithereen, it feels as though this could have been written yesterday.