The Bootleg Manifesto

Book excerpt: This is a bootleg book. It didn't go through the proper channels. It took the backroads, sometimes blind drunk at at 100mph. It ran low on gas and low on oil. It ran on bald tires and a temporary spare. It stopped off at fleabag motel rooms and twobit dive bars and greasyspoon truckstops. It ran through Gatlinburg and Atlanta and Seattle and San Diego and Houston and Orlando and Little Rock and Tijuana and New York City. It found love there in those dark hollers and crowded streets. It found love and art and politics and philosophy and pain and justice and truth and beauty and history and racism and culture and religion and God. It found God on those twisted backroads and busy streets. This is a book about God. This is a book about The Gospel, that original bootleg manuscript, written longhand and passed around in secret by palsied hands and leprous fingers; passed around by the fingers of hookers and junkies, fishermen and truckdrivers, children and old folks, thieves and murderers. And it passed to me.