All Sarah, All the Time

Awhile back, Piper was nice enough to buy me Sarah Vowell's Partly Cloudy Patriot, which is a humorous short essay collection in the vein of Davids Sedaris and Rackoff. Then, during her new work training, she passed on the CD reading of Vowell's Assassination Vacation. Since I'm slow to try new things and busy as hell, I put off reading and/or listening to them. Until, that is, I came back from my Atlanta conference.

During that five hour return trip, I had more than enough time to get through most of the Assassination Vacation CDs (released in 2005). In this collection, she traces the assassinations of presidents Lincoln, McKinley, and Garfield through "death tourism." As Vowell tours former houses, inns, prisons, and theaters of note, she gives her own creative rendition of how these assassinations went down with special emphasis of how we remember (or forget) them today. Along the way, we get to learn about the creation of the Lincoln legacy, the Oneida Community that Charles Guiteau belonged to, and the Anarchist movement that Leon Czolgosz so desperately wanted to join. As if her engaging prose and her lineup of guest voices including John Stewart and Catherine Keener weren't enough, Sarah's got a voice that's distinctive—pert, perhaps. If a voice can be pert. After I finished listening to these CDs, I was hooked.

Working backward, I read the 2002 release The Partly Cloudy Patriot. In it, Vowell talks a bit more about her childhood and propensity to question accepted "truths." Even so, as she ranges through different topics, you can visualize her working toward a more cohesive text that will be Assassination Vacation. While she discusses her dad teaching her to shoot a gun, people's propensity to co-opt Rosa Parks's legacy, and the fact that Tom Cruise is creepy (he is, isn't he?), she also includes a good deal of travel narrative as well. Here's the part that made me fall in love with her writing:
I was enjoying a chocolatey caffe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history of the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the captialist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top. No wonder it costs so much.

Finally, Take the Cannoli (2000) presents a much more personal tone than the one she evolves into. This book provides a foundational story for "Sarah" such that she writes her way through self-doubt, underemployment, and the expectations of others. In this respect, her writing here is much closer to David Sedaris's work and less invested in Americana (but completely worthwhile nonetheless).

While I'm still reading backwards (I've Radio On left to read), I can only express my continued enthusiasm for Sara Vowell. All Sarah, I say. All the time!