The Wordy Shipmates
Dec. 1st, 2008 09:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
callistotoniIn honor of Thanksgiving, and for my fellow Sarah Vowell fans:
I have never been a big fan of American history, a fact that is closely tied to my inability to be interested in history past 1603.* But Sarah Vowell has a knack for making American history entertaining. Hell, I can't think of anyone else who could (in Assasination Vacation) explain, in a cogent yet entertaining way, how the party of Lincoln became the party of rich industrialists. So when I heard about Vowell's newest release, The Wordy Shopmates, I ran out and bought it in hardcover.
I enjoyed TWS, and felt it was worth reading if you like Sarah Vowell's stuff, but I did not think it was as good as Assassination Vacation. I thought AV was great. But I did not actually *read* AV, I listened to it (an unabridged edition) on CD. I'm convinced Vowell sounds better than she reads because it re-inforces her innate quirkyness. :-) And it may be that TWS was a narrower topic so it did not have the fun quotient that the picardesque (sp?) AV had. ;-)
Anyway, TWS is Vowell's take on the Puritan's that founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The book is basically stuctured around the main personalities: John Cotton, John Winthrop, Roger Williams, and Ann Hutchinson, and one section explaining the Pequot war/massacre.
Given the mood surrounding the incoming presidential administration, Vowell's emphasis on Winthrop's "City on a Hill" sermon seems particuarly apt. For her and many of us it's easy to take parts of that sermon to epitiomize our best hopes for what the US can be. On top of the obvious "City on a Hill" metaphor, Vowell spends time with the following quote that is undeniably compelling and comforting:
" We must delight in each other, make other's conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body."
Vowell then characterizes herself as "a resonaably happy-go-lucky person with a serviceable sense of humor and a nice-enough apartment in New York" who, despite the scoffs of her friends, was inspired to write about these Puritans because of the meaning that these words had to her after 9/11 and seeing NY'er's pulling together. (And these words struck a cord with me, too, but I confess for much more selfish reasons: they just felt right for how I feel about J/S.)
There's 2 other parts that I thought were particuarlly good. The first was her telling of how she and her sister and her nephew go to the Mashanucket Pequot Museum and watch a video reenactment of the Peqout's destruction at Mystic fort:
"Owen is seven. His knowledge of seventeenth-century New England derives entirely from what he learned in his school's Thansgiving pageant the previous fall and repeated viewings of Scooby-Doo and the Witches Ghost...As the wigwams catch fire, Pequot kids are shrieking and holding on to their mothers. The English shoot at the Pequot who flee the flames. Horrified, Owen tugs my sleeve, demanding, "Aunt Sarah! When do they have Thanksgiving?" "The one with the Pilgirims?" I whisper, "That happened sixteen years earlier." Owen closes his eyes and refuses to watch the rest of the movie."
I was telling this to my housemate Maria, who works as a teacher at a young childcare center. She just went through the whole 'navagate Thanksgiving to please PC parents and administrators'-thing. Her basic take was: "It's all about what the little kids are ready for. We emphasize the sharing aspect of the Pilgrims and natives at this stage. Genocide can come later". ;-)
The other part that I thought was particuarlly good was her take on Ann Hutchinson. Here's Vowell's description of how A.H. shoots herself in the foot at her trial:
"I wish I didn't understand why Hutchinson risks damning herself to exile and excommunication just for the thrill of shooting off her mouth and making other people listen up. But this here book is evidence that I have this confrontational, chatty bent myself. I got my first radio job when I was eighteen years old and I've been yakking on the air or in print ever since. Hutchinson is about to have her life -- and her poor family's -- turned upside down just so she can indulge in the sort of smart-alecky diatribe for which I've gotten paid for the last twenty years." Yup, this is why I'm a Sarah Vowell fan. :-)
Yup, history is a funny thing. We pick and choose what we need from it at any given time.
*OK, that's not entirely true, because I do have a thing for Napolionic stuff.
Wow, a post with content! Go me! ;-)
I have never been a big fan of American history, a fact that is closely tied to my inability to be interested in history past 1603.* But Sarah Vowell has a knack for making American history entertaining. Hell, I can't think of anyone else who could (in Assasination Vacation) explain, in a cogent yet entertaining way, how the party of Lincoln became the party of rich industrialists. So when I heard about Vowell's newest release, The Wordy Shopmates, I ran out and bought it in hardcover.
I enjoyed TWS, and felt it was worth reading if you like Sarah Vowell's stuff, but I did not think it was as good as Assassination Vacation. I thought AV was great. But I did not actually *read* AV, I listened to it (an unabridged edition) on CD. I'm convinced Vowell sounds better than she reads because it re-inforces her innate quirkyness. :-) And it may be that TWS was a narrower topic so it did not have the fun quotient that the picardesque (sp?) AV had. ;-)
Anyway, TWS is Vowell's take on the Puritan's that founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The book is basically stuctured around the main personalities: John Cotton, John Winthrop, Roger Williams, and Ann Hutchinson, and one section explaining the Pequot war/massacre.
Given the mood surrounding the incoming presidential administration, Vowell's emphasis on Winthrop's "City on a Hill" sermon seems particuarly apt. For her and many of us it's easy to take parts of that sermon to epitiomize our best hopes for what the US can be. On top of the obvious "City on a Hill" metaphor, Vowell spends time with the following quote that is undeniably compelling and comforting:
" We must delight in each other, make other's conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body."
Vowell then characterizes herself as "a resonaably happy-go-lucky person with a serviceable sense of humor and a nice-enough apartment in New York" who, despite the scoffs of her friends, was inspired to write about these Puritans because of the meaning that these words had to her after 9/11 and seeing NY'er's pulling together. (And these words struck a cord with me, too, but I confess for much more selfish reasons: they just felt right for how I feel about J/S.)
There's 2 other parts that I thought were particuarlly good. The first was her telling of how she and her sister and her nephew go to the Mashanucket Pequot Museum and watch a video reenactment of the Peqout's destruction at Mystic fort:
"Owen is seven. His knowledge of seventeenth-century New England derives entirely from what he learned in his school's Thansgiving pageant the previous fall and repeated viewings of Scooby-Doo and the Witches Ghost...As the wigwams catch fire, Pequot kids are shrieking and holding on to their mothers. The English shoot at the Pequot who flee the flames. Horrified, Owen tugs my sleeve, demanding, "Aunt Sarah! When do they have Thanksgiving?" "The one with the Pilgirims?" I whisper, "That happened sixteen years earlier." Owen closes his eyes and refuses to watch the rest of the movie."
I was telling this to my housemate Maria, who works as a teacher at a young childcare center. She just went through the whole 'navagate Thanksgiving to please PC parents and administrators'-thing. Her basic take was: "It's all about what the little kids are ready for. We emphasize the sharing aspect of the Pilgrims and natives at this stage. Genocide can come later". ;-)
The other part that I thought was particuarlly good was her take on Ann Hutchinson. Here's Vowell's description of how A.H. shoots herself in the foot at her trial:
"I wish I didn't understand why Hutchinson risks damning herself to exile and excommunication just for the thrill of shooting off her mouth and making other people listen up. But this here book is evidence that I have this confrontational, chatty bent myself. I got my first radio job when I was eighteen years old and I've been yakking on the air or in print ever since. Hutchinson is about to have her life -- and her poor family's -- turned upside down just so she can indulge in the sort of smart-alecky diatribe for which I've gotten paid for the last twenty years." Yup, this is why I'm a Sarah Vowell fan. :-)
Yup, history is a funny thing. We pick and choose what we need from it at any given time.
*OK, that's not entirely true, because I do have a thing for Napolionic stuff.
Wow, a post with content! Go me! ;-)
