Book Report: Assassination Vacation

So I've decided instead of doing entries on all the books I read (because those frequently boil down to "I read a bunch of books! So there!") I'm going to only comment on the ones where I have something to say. Innovative, I know. This way of thinking could change the world of blogs as we know it. Even if this is more of a journal. Anyway, here's a book report on Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. Deal with it, pink boy!)

I didn't want to like Sarah Vowell.

For one thing, she's part of the McSweeney's bunch, and I'm kind of tired of them. I never got around to reading any Dave Eggers, because all the excerpts of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius bugged me. I made it all the way through David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest -- twice! -- and I read one of Neal Pollack's books. It was the one where he parodies literary journalism, which might be a funny idea to someone, but there isn't actually that much of the real article around to parody. Plus, the joke got old at page 20, with 200 to go. My basic objection to that who semipostmodern metafiction deal is that just when it gets annoying, they put a fake interview in the middle of the book where an imaginary journalist interviews the writer (or, well, the "character" the writer is "creating") and complains about how annoying the book is. That's all very clever, but it's also very annoying.

Okay. Sorry about that. Also, there's the way the introduction to McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales uses the word "quotidian" wrong. I keep feeling like I'd find McSweeney's funnier without the pretentiousness, but the problem is that the pretentiousness is the joke. And a lot of the time, the fact that there isn't much of a joke is the joke. It's all . . . kind of twee. You know?

Dammit! I thought I was done after that first paragraph. This isn't supposed to be about why McSweeney's gives me a vaguely annoyed feeling. Because that's all it is -- I'm not saying I'm enraged by them or anything; I'm just saying there's something about the whole thing that -- look, you get the point. Can we please stop talking about McSweeney's? I'm supposed to be talking about Sarah Vowell's new book Assassination Vacation here.

The other reason I've always kind of disliked Sarah Vowell (without knowing anything about her, because life is too short to actually learn about people before oyu form irrational dislikes against them) is that, well, her voice is kind of nasal. And when she shows up on The Daily Show, I spend the whole interview thinking, "Boy, her voice is kind of nasal. I wonder how come she has a career on public radio. I wouldn't have thought someone with a slightly nasal voice would get a job on radio." Now, I freely admit that this is about the most shallow reason available for disliking someone. But, well, that's how it works.

However, and this is where you Vowell-fanatics should stop writing your angry emails, I had to read her new book. It's about presidential assassinations, and I approve of that. I mean, not that I approve of presidential assassinations; I approve of books about them. I've seen three different productions of Assassins (the Sondheim musical about Presidential assassins. It's good! And, well, odd). I've got books. Plenty of books.

Vowell, too, has books. It looks like she's an assassination buff who realized in the cource of her randomly visiting assassination-related placed (the Ford Theater, Dr. Mudd's house, the site of the Pan-American Expsition, etc.) she realized she could write her own damn book about it. I approve of that. I also approve of the random collection of facts which (it appears) characterizes her attitude toward education. While wandering around New York, she's percectly capable of pointing at arbitrary objects and explaining their historical significance. I've done that. Well, not in New York, but still.

I was also pleased that at one point, she recommended a book I hadn't read: His Name Is Still Mudd: The Case Against Doctor Samuel Alexander Mudd. As the subhead clearly explains, it compiles the evidence that Mudd was involved in Booth's conspiracy. Incidentally, it looked to me like Vowell hadn't read my favorite book on the Lincoln assassination: We Saw Lincoln Shot: One Hundred Eyewitness Accounts. This fascinating book is pure primary source material: just people (including the actors on stage, the audience, the people in Lincoln's box, and even Booth himself) relating what they saw. What's interesting is how the stories change over the years; the first few people don't say anything about Booth's leg getting caught on the flag (allegedly, Booth broke his leg when he jumped to the stage). He may actually have broken his leg when he mounted his horse outside the theater. You also get to notice which people heard "Sic Semper Tyrranis" and which heard "'The South shall be free." Ms. Vowell, if you're reading this, first, I apologize for that crack about your voice. Second, I highly recommend that book. It's great! And it's fascinating how all the first-person reminiscences eventually converge on identical stories as people start relying more on each other's stories than their own fading memories.

Also great, I am forced to admit, is Assassination Vacation. I haven't gone on any specific assassination-related tours myself, although when I was at the Washington Hilton, I did go around the side to see the spot where Reagan was shot. And now I want to go pretty much all of the places Vowell goes in the book. Admittedly, I already wanted to go to Ford's Theater and the Mütter Museum (home of parts of Guiteau's brain and some random part of John Wilkes Booth, not to mention all sorts of medical oddities, including the growth in Cleveland's mouth that he had secretly removed).

Anyway, I enjoyed Assassination Vacation a lot. Not only was it perfectly pitched to assassination buffs like me, it also had random references to other things I like, like the Boomtown Rats. And it's entertainingly written; I kept reading bits of it out loud to Rhias, who was very tolerant. So now I guess I'm obliged to like Sarah Vowell. These things happen, I guess.