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She jumps from one thing to another, sandwiched in between talking about all the fun she has, all the while telling us what an anti-social introvert she is.after about half a chapter, I'd had enough. I love listening to Sarah Vowell on NPR so thought I'd check out her books. Even not knowing any history, I can pretty much predict what she is going to say and how she is going to say it since the same cuteness creeps into everything. Listening to her stories in 15 minute excerpts is much different from an entire book though, even trying a chapter at a time. I thought I would learn some history in a fun way, but instead am subjected to Sarah's precocious name dropping of her favorite bands (none of which I've heard of), art gallery openings, plays, people she knows ad naseum with schizophrenic history facts scattered about in such a flurry that I have no idea what she is talking about. I have to hand it to her, doing all the research and being interested in all these things, and keeping it in her mind enough to write a book about it, but the interesting stories that sound good on NPR read like a jumble of disconnected facts on the page. Maybe if she employs a new editor.
I see now that I was wrong.After reading Assassination Vacation, it's clear that Vowell's politics and past are the reasons for which both The Wordy Shipmates and Assassination Vacation were written. Fine, no problem. Once you've read these two books, you'll know the following about Sarah Vowell, since the reader is relentlessly beaten over the head with these points. She has all of the skills necessary to be a great popularizer of American history. Garfield, William McKinley, John Winthrop or John Cotton; these are merely opportunities for Vowell to turn the conversation back on herself. I'm reminded of the kids who used ask how your Christmas was, just so they could tell you about all the cool stuff they got. When I read The Wordy Shipmates by Vowell, I thought that detours into Sarah Vowell's past and politics were simply irritating intrusions into an otherwise interesting narrative history. She's witty and easy to read, and clearly loves history and telling others about it.
She badly needs a less pliable editor who can tighten up her work.I may read more from Sarah Vowell in the future, but it'll have to be post-Bush. But the literary bait and switch technique is unfair to the reader.What's extremely irritating about Vowell is that she really is a gifted writer. Otherwise, it'll just be another trip though Sarah Vowell's therapist's office. Bush specifically.* is from Oklahoma and had ancestors on the Trail of Tears.* is an atheist.* likes creepy stuff.* doesn't like being outside.* likes big cities.* suffers from multiple neuroses, especially a fear of driving.* used to work at a college radio station.The last point is so clumsily worked into the narrative of both books that, every time Vowell went off on one of her "look at me" detours, I could almost hear Toad the Wet Sprocket playing in the background. These books are not about Abraham Lincoln, James A. And that's what's so maddening.
She:* hates Republicans generally and George W. Want to tell the world all this stuff about you in writing. When she can stay on topic, she's fantastic; the best part of Assassination Vacation is the Garfield section, which was both enlightening and amusing. I want to like her stuff so much, but the books are going to have to be about something other than herself.
Not only is this book good history but the author makes us stop and look at how history repeats itself. It makes me wonder if more people read history would we stop making the same mistakes. I am pretty familiar with the Lincoln bits bit Garfield and McKinley were new to me for study. I will look for more of her books.
Her sense of irony is impeccable. Well, now, it seems we have some rather distinct differences about Sarah Vowell's writing style. It is clear from her anecdotal descriptions of various events in her past that she has a passion for history and historic detail.I also think that some of her interpretations of historical events may get her into hot, but not scalding water. She does tend to bring the realities of events into a clearer focus by delving into the failures and even the dark sides of individuals who we know mostly through 2-dimensional mythologies. While I do find these comments to mar her fundamentally sound approach to history, I am not so myopic as to let it avert my interest from a truly interesting and penetrating view of historical events. After all, this is the stuff of historians, who argue over interpretations of detail all the time.
The few criticisms she attracts seem to dwell upon this aspect of her writing. Though I have not read all of the reviews, those that I have read do not criticize the veracity of her factual statements. It seems to me that it is primarily her lively descriptions of these realities that captures the approval of the majority of those who have commented.Alas, Sarah is also incapable of leaving her political views out of the scenarios. Most of these debates are never resolved, and it is understanding the differing viewpoints that reveals the history for what it really is--real life. In this sense, I find Vowell's descriptions of events to be incredibly refreshing. If you find this too distracting, especially if you have conservative leanings, then I fear you will be unable to look past it.
I think that the vast majority of readers will find they have the same (forgiving) reaction.
I do note that there are a number of one-star reviews which seem kind of cranky about Ms. She's funny, curious, a little strange, and willing to do a lot of leg-work to learn what she wants. needs to know about the deaths of the three Presidents (Lincoln is the third) which form the basis of her book.Predictably, Lincoln's chapter is the longest. Mudd, and finally to being burned out of a barn and dying shortly thereafter, in great agony, a fact which was underlined, probably with a measure of satisfaction, in the official report of his death. Garfield, a man about whom I'd known next to nothing. He's the best-known of the three, and possibly the only one still truly mourned in this country.
You might want a nice, dry recitation of facts and figures, and if so, cool, more power to you. Uh. Besides, with all due respect to James Garfield and William McKinley, I really didn't have much interest in their lives much less their deaths. That's a cool legacy, in my opinion.One of the things I like to do after I finish a book is to skim the reviews here on Amazon.com to see what others thought of it. He's a foreigner, so what can you expect." He wasn't). no thanks. Two of my best friends recommended this book to me, and I'm glad they did because I probably wouldn't have picked it up on my own. This book is about connecting to these people and events.
(Jinxy McDeath, as Vowell calls him in a note at the start of the final chapter).McKinley's chapter is most interesting for the portrait she paints of his successor, Teddy Roosevelt, a far more complex man that I'd ever imagined. I confess that after reading this chapter, I did a search to see if there were any Garfield libraries, feeling that it would be a shame if this man had never been commemorated by the one thing he would appreciate more than anything else, a library. Clearly it was his intention to escape, but in choosing that moment, he shot the President in the middle of a good belly laugh, and I don't think I'm alone in believing that if you have to be mortally wounded or killed, it's not a bad note on which to go out). As it happens, after his death, his widow had a wing added to the family home as a memorial library, and this is what set the precedent for all Presidential libraries. It's also in this chapter that Vowell introduces us to Robert Todd Lincoln who could easily have been considered a Presidential jinx for her was at or near all three of the assassinations Vowell writes about.
But much of the narrative is about following the trail of John Wilkes Booth from the time where he plotted with other southerners to kidnap President Lincoln, through the actual assassination in Ford's Theater (Booth timed his shot to a line in the play which always produced a good deal of laughter, so that the report from his gun would be less noticed. I was alive to see the assassinations of a number of prominent people, and frankly, that seemed like enough for me. That he rose to the occasion and chose to do what his conscience dictated made me like him all the more. Knee-jerk politics at its best. Vowell's politics, though they play very little part in her actual reporting of the facts of these assassinations, in my opinion, so I can only conclude that they simply don't like her because she's a liberal and it has nothing to do with the stories she's telling. along the path of his flight, during which Vowell becomes convinced of the guilt of Dr.
(He was President, he was assassinated). It's not a sit-down-and-be-quiet-this-is-HISTORY-book, it's a lively and very personal exploration of events that are important to Vowell, important enough to spend a lot of time, energy and money pursuing. Presidential assassinations. Of course this is the same reviewer who says "At times it seems that she is making up reasons to tell stories of something that have nothing to do with the topic of the book." and for that I have to thank him because he's hit upon an important fact about Ms Vowell's approach -- pop culture references and all -- to her topic. One reviewer complains that "she references every movie star, TV personality, or musician that she has ever encountered" to which I say "Dude, what book were YOU reading." Yes, there are pop culture references, and there's a reason for that which I'll get to in a minute, but unless Emma Goldman has her own talk show, or Frank Lloyd Wright is alive and well and fronting a rock band, I'm gonna say that this accusation is way off the mark. And yes, I did connect with the events in ways I never thought possible.
pretty much remained a sad non-entity in spite of his world-changing action.As with all things, your mileage may vary, and you might hate the way Vowell writes. Reading about how his political party attempted to manipulate and use him, made me feel very sad. Fortunately Ms Vowell doesn't take a dry, just-the-facts-ma'am approach to her subject. Though I'd never before even considered the assassins (with the exception of Booth, and then only in passing) I found myself annoyed with Booth and his idiotic Southern jingoism, both amused and horrified by Guiteau who was most probably certifiable, and vaguely sorry for Czolgosz, who, apart from his unpronounceable name ("Sszholgoats. But the surprise of the book by far, is the chapter on James A. It turns out that this quiet man who never wanted to be President, was a man after my own heart, a man who would have preferred to go home and read than do anything else.
And the people. But if you enjoy a reverently irreverent point of view, and a narrative that bespeaks a curious and lively mind, then check out Sarah Vowell.
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