Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation is an excuse for her to dwell on her obsession and share it with the rest of us. My hunch is that she is the kind of person who would pull you aside at a party to tell you everything she knows about the influence anarchist thinker Emma Goldman had on Leon Czolgosz, President McKinley’s assassin. But if she is as engaging and funny and exuberant in person as she is in her writing, I would gladly listen to her for hours.
Assassination Vacation follows Vowell on a personal itinerary devoted to the lives and deaths of three assassinated American presidents: Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. Stops include the preserved home of Lincoln and his family in Springfield, the desolate Jersey resort town where McKinley died, and the former site of the utopian Oneida Community in upstate New York (which once hosted Garfield assassin Charles Guiteau). Vowell is at her most reverent when writing about Lincoln and she doesn’t miss the opportunity to take jabs at the modern Republican party and its betrayal of Lincoln’s legacy. But it is Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd, who serves as the book’s symbolic alpha and omega by having the the cosmic misfortune to be an invited presence at all three assassinations.
Vowell is clearly fascinated by the myriad cast of presidents, assassins, and eccentrics that populate her book. And in the best tradition of historical writing, she lets the reader share in her fascination.
Next up: the first volume of Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan.
Have you heard her? She has a very distinctive voice- was in some cartoon The Incredibles. She did a reading that was on Book-TV. She voices the Book on tape version of the book and that is the best way to read/listen to it.
Sara Vowell is as funny in person as she is on paper. I went to see her read from one of her books a while ago – very good.
Glad to see you’re reading Y! It’s the best ongoing comic book, hands down.