June 3rd, 2009
The Partly Cloudy Patriot
The Partly Cloudy Patriot
by Sarah Vowell
I first learned who Sarah Vowell is, not from her books or from her appearances on NPR, but from a short film about her and one of her books that was on the DVD of “The Incredibles.” That film interested me enough to read her books and I have been well rewarded. This book is one of her oldest and is a collection of essays that she wrote for various publications. As you might expect from an author who writes essays about current events, many of her essays have not aged well.
The essays cover various topics including trips to North Dakota to see where Teddy Roosevelt lived during his sojourn in the west, a cafeteria at the bottom of the Carlsbad Cavern, Tom Landry, Canadians, and growing up with a fraternal twin sister. Other topics include the presidential election of 2000 and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. It is these essays that seem like ancient history now and reading them makes you wonder if Ms. Vowell would feel the same way eight years after writing them. And overall, there is no theme to carry the book along. These are just random essays that Ms. Vowell wrote for various publications in the period from about 1998 to 2002. They vary in quality and, after ten years, interest. Do I really care what Ms. Vowell thought about Tom Cruise ten years ago?
Anyway, there are some good hits among the misses in this group of essays and if you are a fan of Ms. Vowell’s writing, this is worth reading while you wait for her next book to come along.
