Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
Simon & Schuster, 2005
In summer I write less and give myself over more to writers like Sarah Vowell, whose Assassination Vacation (Simon & Schuster, 2005) is the book I’ll remember best from the last three months. Wow, do I regret waiting until 2011! This is how I want to write nonfiction: confidently with a firm grasp on human nature as well as the past, which, in this appealing pilgrimage, Vowell conveys with affection, mischief and wit.
I’ll be brief as praise for Assassination is plentiful. The short review is this: Vowell deputizes the reader to see what she sees on a series of excursions to sites around the country where she enthusiastically acquaints herself with John Wilkes Booth, Charles Guiteau and Leon Czolgosz, the assassins of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley, respectively. She brings along relatives and friends who, as characters in her story, help to animate tired historic homes and other inanimate objects that show up often in her narrative and inspire lively—often comical—digressions. (Vowell loves plaques and statues.)
Vowell’s eagerness to have us draw the same “look how much things haven’t changed” connections she does is infectious. She endeared herself to me with a disparate range of modern and not-so-modern references, including, but far from limited to, the Broadway musical 1776, MapQuest, the song “Margaritaville,” the architect Louis Sullivan, and Archie comic characters Betty and Veronica—not to mention the obvious: early 21st century American politics. This odd assemblage sheds light on how her mind weaves a story, calling on both experience and innate curiosity, particularly for all things Lincoln, her favorite president.
Vowell’s writing voice is one of a kind. So is her speaking voice, which she parlayed into a gig moonlighting as a voiceover artist. She discusses that experience, in tandem with writing Assassination, in a video essay found on You Tube.
Serious history buffs might find Sarah Vowell too flip, but I’d caution the skeptic not to snap judge. She gives tragic moments in American history their due respect but assumes we know the big picture. It’s the epilogues, colorful asides, and off-the-beaten path discoveries (some of them ludicrous) Vowell shares that drive her unorthodox travelogue. Also receiving their due are the docents, tour guides and experts who, unlike the history they preserve and disseminate, live on Vowell’s pages: earnest, quirky, myopic, passionate and detail-driven folk who’ve dedicated a significant portion of their lives, if not their livelihoods, to keeping history accessible.
Uploaded 9/9/11
Little, Brown & Company, 2011
Audiobook downloaded from Audible.com
More often than not and for whatever reason or reasons, audiobooks are read by someone other than the author. But I can’t imagine the publishing suits considering anyone but Tina Fey to read her joyfully self-deprecating memoir, Bossypants. I also don’t see reading Bossypants on paper when there’s an audio option. Fey’s perfect delivery of her work may be the most fun I’ve had in a car since Robin Williams’ 1986 A Night at the Met cassette tape. (You thought I was going to say something else. Like...8-track?) It’s an impressive experience. And even though you can’t see some of the visual references she makes—not while you’re driving or ellipt-ing, at least—Fey refers often to the PDF document Audible includes in the download, kindly attentive to her listening audience. She encourages us to check out her circa 1970s shag haircut that flatters (not) every face and the “rad” white pantsuit she bought herself in high school. I did both, and found the shag unflattering indeed and the pantsuit truly rad.
The section on her dad, Don Fey, though also funny, is affectionate and moving, and anyone raised by a strong father figure will recognize him. And for any parent of a teenaged girl, the chapter on theater camp and its virtue of, well, preserving virtue, sparkles with the laughter and friendships Fey remembers as shaping who she is today. Fey devotes long stretches of narrative to her time at Saturday Night Live and, later, the development of her quirky show 30 Rock. At both, Fey tells the reader, she learned from the even-handed management style of producer Lorne Michaels, who left an invaluable and enduring impression that Fey describes with keen admiration. Using a memorable scene I won’t give away, Fey credits her friend and fellow comedian Amy Poehler for demonstrating how not to get pushed around in the comedy writers’ room. She also provides play by play of her debut as Sarah Palin’s double, a role she wore so convincingly, Fox News just this week confused an image of Fey playing Palin for the real ex-governor.
A couple of chapters pale, but only slightly. She runs a little long on the subject of parenting, for instance. And I find disturbing the Bossypants cover—Tina’s head and torso Photoshopped with Ed Asner-like arms. But that’s the point. For all her comedy and self-deprecation, Fey is passing along what she’s learned during her rise in the entertainment business, and not surprisingly, it isn’t all Vogue fashion shoots and free all-you-can-eat fare at the Kraft table. For a woman forging a path in television comedy, a world heavily occupied by arrogant Harvard boys and mostly-male improv geeks, there requires some cobbling together of incongruous parts, not to mention an off-kilter sense of humor.
Uploaded 6/7/11
Nemesis by Philip Roth
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010
I doubt I ever made the connection that polio and World War II overlapped, leaving families vulnerable on two fronts. Philip Roth’s latest book, Nemesis, takes the reader to a fictional polio epidemic in Newark, New Jersey, during the summer of 1944. This short-ish book (280 pages) centers on the misfortunes of Bucky Cantor, a strikingly mature and honorable young playground director who has been classified 4-F: unacceptable for military service. The plainness of Roth’s characters and the emotional restraint he uses laying out one sad event after another give the early sections of Nemesis a factual, journalistic quality. Roth reports the cruel intersection of war and disease evenhandedly, while drawing the reader’s sympathy for the principled Mr. Cantor.
Uploaded 12/10/10
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