Nation of Faith & Flesh

A few months ago I wrote about about how I’d come up with “God, the Flesh & America” as the working title for my book in progress. The more it rolled around in my head, though, the more it annoyed me. There are just too many of those noun-noun-conjunction-noun titles. The book I’m writing is pretty unusual, has a distinct voice and rhythm, and I didn’t want to lock it implicitly into a too-familiar nonfiction beat. It also just didn't seem to catch the essence of the story I was telling.
      I thought about single-noun phrases, but then I realized that that would never work, because the book is essentially about conflicting cultural forces, about theses and antitheses. It needs a dyad, a pair of nouns squaring off against each other. But it also needs a synthesis, an umbrella noun to hold the conflict. A third noun, but not a simple serial.
       So now I’m calling it Nation of Faith & Flesh. Which is almost noun-noun-conjunction-noun, except it’s actually noun-preposition-noun-conjunction-noun. And the addition of that preposition changes the whole thing, not only the rhythm but the topography, as the last two nouns lie under the first, as modifiers, rather than just rolling along in sequence. It’s a story primarily about a nation, the way a national identity rose from the interplay and opposition of two distinct moral and ideological spheres. Which is more what I’m writing about. (And for clarity’s sake, I’m adding the subtitle, The Moral War That Shaped America.)
      I could still change my mind, of course. Or someone at FSG could change my mind for me. But right now it’s saying what I want to say to myself about the story I’m telling. And at this point, that’s what a working title should be: not a marketing hook, which can wait until the book is done, but a way of reminding myself what I’m saying.