Vowell Sounds

Any hack can do a respectable job ruminating on Lincoln, but it takes a gifted writer to make the long-forgotten James Garfield and William McKinley come alive. All three Presidents were fatally shot while in office, and in her hugely compelling new book, Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell takes readers on a brisk, thorough tour of the victims, their killers, the places related to both groups of men, and the issues of the day that led to and illuminated each crime.

Vowell’s prose -- snappy, witty, stylish, eminently readable -- energizes the typically arid details of presidential history. Cardboard cutouts become flesh and blood, as interesting and as lively as any novelist’s creation. Traveling throughout the country to assassination-related locales -- some well known (Ford’s Theater), others obscure (the Florida Keys prison in which Booth conspirator Samuel Mudd was incarcerated) -- Vowell delivers an off-the-beaten-path history lesson laced with what may be termed essential trivia, minutiae that enlightens even as it amuses.

Vowell is no historian; she’s an essayist and a critic, and excels at each. The NPR darling as well as the perfectly cast voice of Violet Parr in the delightful The Incredibles, Vowell takes her time telling a story; in her writing you can hear the same nerdy, slightly lispy voice that makes her This American Life musings so entertaining and so much fun to listen to. Nowhere but here, for example, did I ever learn that Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the slain President, was present either at or within seconds of the murders of his father, Garfield, and McKinley. Vowell, ghoulish wag that she is, calls him “some kind of jinxed Zelig of doom” as well as “a presidential death magnet.”

Assassination Vacation often veers off into several such tangents of political opinion, pop culture, and reflections on the lives of those connected with the shootings. With exquisite timing, she knows just when to pull back and return to the main narrative, the detour having allowed Vowell to insert a spot-on observation along the road less traveled. Her viewpoint is unabashedly liberal, but with a ferocity that rejects once and for all the notion held by some that those who don’t march in lockstep with the current administration are somehow unpatriotic. Balancing nimbly on the line between commentary and history, Assassination Vacation is a breezy and unexpectedly moving rumination on the American experience.

Rating: ****1/2 (of 5)

Comments

[gr]

i went to her reading down here in DC a month or so ago. loved the piece about the original "OC."

[tim]

I'm going to McAfee Coliseum in about 10 days. I heard it was in a rough neighborhood, but it doesn't sound too bad. Thanks for the recon work. Love Sarah Vowell, too. I listened to that audiobook on my iPod last month. And we both write Phillies blogs. Ok, if you're part of a cult that worhsips Danny Bonaduce, then this is just too weird. Oh, maybe I've said too much.