A long, successful career sometimes result in complacency, a sense of entitlement that dues have been paid and there’s no need to push any boundaries. It can also provide some insularity, or protection from retribution for crossing those boundaries.

Nobel Prize winner José Saramago (Nov. 16, 1922-June 18, 2010) has had a long and successful career, but Cain ($24, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, translated from Portugese by Margaret Jull Costa), his final novel, is proof that he didn’t suffer from complacency.

The Nobel laureate draws on the Old Testament to produce a fable that could end up uniting Christians, Jews, and Muslims in protest over this slim novel, something the most powerful nations in the world have been unable to do - ever. It’s heretical and hysterical, blasphemous and boisterous; it’s a new twist on an old story with over 2000 years of fallout, some imagination, and an author unafraid of stepping over the line.

Finally, just in time for the all-important 2012 election, a real American has the foresight to publish the guide we’ve all longed for. Roland Boyle’s The Tea Party Guide to Being a Real American; Arming Yourself Against Godless Liberals, Dirty Socialists, & Sexy Ideas ($24.99, Sourcebooks) holds court on all subjects — gun control, The Constitution, sex (yuck), big business, but most of all, the liberal agenda — that Real Americans know are right, or wrong in the case of sex and the liberal agenda. It doesn’t matter if you’re red, blue, black, white, male, female, or somewhere in between, The Tea Party Guide will help you not only choose a lifestyle, but also a home, and maybe even a spouse — the right one, of course. Boyle has spent countless hours researching data, public opinion and personal bias to produce a fact-filled (contrary to what his editor sometimes says; he’s obviously a left-wing liberal) self-help guide.

“This book is on your side . . .”: It will “help you make the right judgments, find the right parties, and right the right wrongs. It will confirm you as a Real American, which means being right, right, right.” To make the right judgment, “you have to know what you’re up against,” and Boyle lays out the liberal agenda and how liberals want to confuse matters; nothing is black and white to them. Included is a review of the Red, Blue, and in-between states. Alabama and Mississippi are the obvious Reds; Hawaii and California are the obvious Blues. Our beloved state falls into the “Swingin’ to the Right” category. As Boyle points out, “there was a time when the Tea Party values couldn’t have made a dent in this weird, Jewspanic state. And then came Marco Rubio, trailing clouds of glory ...” It seems that our very own Sen. Rubio is the next great, conservative hope.

Florida also failed to qualify as a “gun-friendly” state. Vermont tops that list with no permit required to carry a weapon, concealed or not. Who would’ve thought that the state that evokes visions of “White Christmas,” and with all that sap, would be the most gun-friendly? Did I mention they have a lot of sap?

Music has long provided inspiration, and the Jimmy Driftwood song, "The Tennessee Stud," has inspired the likes of Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Doc Watson, who each offered their own version. The song provides a different sort of inspiration for Thomas Fox Averill, who uses it as the basis of his recently published novel, Rode (University of New Mexico Press, $24.95).

"The Tennessee Stud" is a classic Americana, folk, country, or whatever hole you want to stick it in, and it's a bold step to appropriate a classic for other purposes. It better be good if you're going to do it. Francis Ford Coppola succeeded with the movie Apocalypse Now, which was loosely based on the Joseph Conrad novella, Heart of Darkness. Coppola used sweeping, lush cinematography to create his own, unique version of the tale. Averill uses similar literary devices to create a landscape and historical era in establishing his unique version of this musical standard.

The lyrics of "The Tennessee Stud" tell the story of a man who has to leave in a hurry after crossing his girlfriend's father. He meets all manner of trouble, from Indians to cheating gamblers, but vanquishes all, and ends up back in Tennessee to "whup" his girlfriend's Pa and claim his girl. That's a lot of action packed into a little over three minutes, but one of the peculiarities, and one of the attractions, of a song is not what is revealed, but what is left to the listener’s imagination.

All we really know of the hero is that he loves his horse and he loves his girl; the man with no name becomes almost mythical as he rides across the frontier in omnipotent anonymity. The listener gets to fill in the blanks in an affair that results in the development of a relationship between listener and song, if the song is any good that is. Fiction takes care of a good deal of that for us. Averill provides a name, face, and a breadth of emotion that both exceeds and deviates from the character in the song.