I just finished Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation and just loved it. It's really a fantastic book.
And I have to confess that I went into this with somewhat of a chip on my shoulder, for a number of reasons. To wit:
She's part of that mysterious McSweeney's cabal, whom I loathe because, as I've mentioned before, they are the cool kids and haven't asked me to sit at their table, and also because I bear a really ugly jealousy about Dave Eggers' bestselling success. Because, I mean, I admire the whole start your own publishing house thing, and I actually really admire the whole work with urban kids on writing thing, but I just didn't think A Heartbreaking Work, etc. was that great. Or, I should say, I think there was an amazing, actually heartbreaking 200-page book in there surrounded by self-indulgent crap about interviewing for the Real World and meeting Puck and starting some hipster magazine. Not to mention the whole long, long, long thing at the beginning, in which he tells you that the book goes downhill after page 100, which is honest, but a pretty poor substitute for editing, and which ends with a drawing of a stapler captioned with "this is a drawing of a stapler." That either makes you smile and think "how delightfully insouciant!" or else it makes you roll your eyes and go "Jesus Christ, get over yourself." Count me in the latter camp. So he writes a bloated, somebody please edit this, entirely too pleased with itself book and has a runaway bestseller, whereas I write a much tighter, high-octane fear and humor cocktail of a book that is entirely too pleased with itself,(It Takes a Worried Man! Look for it on a remainder table near you!) and I'm on the way to the remainder bin. Such is life. But such is not Sarah Vowell's fault, because her book rocks.
Another reason I approached this with some distrust--she was the voice of Violet in The Incredibles. Not fair to hold that against her, because I haven't held it against Jason Lee or Holly Hunter, or That Guy From Coach Who They Obviously Got When They Somehow Couldn't Get John Goodman, or anybody else. And I actually liked The Incredibles the first time I saw it. But then we owned it and the kids watched it multiple times, and I realized that the whole thing is kinda uncomfortably Ayn Rand-y. Which is to say it kinda reminded me of The Fountainhead. Not that I ever finished The Fountainhead. I was 17 and therefore lacked the patience to wade through the turgid prose, and, being 17 and done with high school, I was already too mature for the philosophy. For those of you unfamiliar with The Fountainhead, do yourself a favor and don't read it--it's basically about how great, heroic figures are always being dragged down by the jealous herd of mediocre people that constitute most of society. (Funny how every adolescent who reads this book thinks that they are the heroic, exceptional figure and everybody else is the herd.) As far as I understand, this book, like all of Rand's books, is meant to illustrate her philosophy of "Objectivism", which holds that no one has any responsibility to anyone else, and the greatest thing to do is to indulge your own will and denounce any obligation to any other human being. Of course, Rand's big innovation was rechristening this "Objectivism." It is actually an old philosophy that had previously been known as "evil." But "Objectivism" sounds so much better. The idea that your only responsibility is to yourself dovetails nicely with the inherent egocentrism of adolescence, which is why Ayn Rand fans tend to be 16-year-olds or those with their mindset. And, the more you watch it, the more The Incredibles looks like a stealth version of The Fountainhead. The whole thing is about how the exceptional are always being dragged down by the mediocre members of the herd who are jealous of their exceptionalness. I mean, this is fundamentally why the Jason Lee character (spitfire? The Seether? Snarkyboy? Can't remember) hates Mr. Incredible in the first place. But, I mean, if Pixar wanted to pay me big bucks to voice a character, I would snap it up in a heartbeat, even if the underlying philosophy of the movie was a kind of petulant fascism. Unless it was like, you know, some kind of animated Triumph of the Will or something. I do have some standards. But none of that is Sarah Vowell's fault.
Also, Sarah Vowell is associated with This American Life. And when It Takes a Worried Man came out, This American Life flirted with me like crazy--Ira loves the book, they said, Ira's picked out an excerpt, Ira's editing your excerpt, we're just deciding which show to fit it in to. And then, suddenly, inexplicably, they lost interest. It would have been a tremendous break for me--Glass and Gross are to books what Leno and Letterman are to comedians--and it didn't pan out. But that's not Sarah Vowell's fault. Though I bet she coulda gotten my piece on the air if she'd really wanted to.
But anyway, did I mention that Assassination Vacation totally rocks? It's really a great book--like hanging out with somebody who knows a lot and is genial and funny but not in a ooo-look-at-me-I'm-Hilarious way. And she really does a great job of showing how events and conflicts in history keep echoing even into the present. And she's a really clear-eyed, unsentimental patriot.
So there you go--unlike most reviewers, I have outlined my petty, irrational grudges against a book, and I liked it anyway! I think that's a pretty strong recommendation--I mean, I was basically looking for an excuse not to like this book, and I couldn't find one. If you approach it unhindered by professional jealousy and a tendency to overanalyze children's movies, you will probably love it even more than I did.
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