The Partly Cloudy Patriot
By: Sarah Vowell / Narrated By: Sarah Vowell, Conan O'Brien, Seth Green, Stephen Colbert
Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
No finer essayist on All Things American—The Good, The Bad, The Ugly… The Hilarious…!
I dunno, I’m blaming it on a dream (Nightmare!) I had overnight whereby Trump was President again and was doing his usual morally reprehensible things. I mean, who WOULDN’T feel all ill upon waking up? So much so that this Independence Day of 2021 I’ve but a single offering for our newsletter? Sick, who me? After such a dream? Heck YEAH!
But anyway, all this is to tell you how it’s taken me HOURS to bring Sarah Vowell’s collection of essays, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, the amount of enthusiasm and energy it deserves. Yes, this is early Vowell, but yes it’s as keen-eyed, as wickedly wry, as celebrity-laden as any of her works. Laced with all sorts of zany interstitial musical offerings from They Might Be Giants, having the rather nasally-toned Conan O’Brien doing the honors from the get-go as per her usual go-to Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln apparently had a squeaky voice… THIS I did not know!), and with the cast of thousands, er, a few, famed individuals as historical figures… and one friend, this collection has it all, and it had me from the beginning. Only Vowell would make it to the 137th anniversary of the cemetery dedication ceremony where Lincoln “delivered a certain speech” and would be sure to note her observation of a shopping mall which is “THE Gettysburg Address For Shopping!” She loves America even as she holds America up for closer inspection.
Only she would be a Democrat, with a capital D! and STILL be so civic-minded, so in love with her country that she would travel to the Inauguration of George W. Bush after the fraught 2000 vote recount debacle wherein it was the first, but not last, time a President was chosen without a majority of votes. She feels pride as she sings the National Anthem but she cries in despair as Dubya is sworn in. One Person no longer equals One Vote, but she loves her Democracy. She remembers the heady days of Clinton’s first term, back when she was an Intern, when being an Intern on Capitol Hill was a wholesome thing a young lady could do, and she recalls how they all felt the world was about to be saved. Now she looks around herself, and she sees bubbly Republicans looking the same way. Yup, I’d be weeping too.
I dunno why people still feel the need to leave negative reviews about Vowell and her work, like somehow she snuck up on them and hammered them over the head with her Liberal Views. Uhm, you DO know you’re reading/listening to Sarah Vowell, right? She’s unapologetic; she’s unafraid; and she feels no compunction about doing that whole thing the virulent right despises: Like bringing up Actual History. Slavery, anyone? She thinks of this as she uses a cotton ball, the South’s cash crop, to smear the eyeliner from her eyes. She ponders The Trail of Tears. And she even goes so far as to say what we’re all thinking: Tom Cruise is weeeeird.
How un-American!!!
But she had me on her warbly voice, and she kept me as she ponders how: Before Camus, there was Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry, the ULTIMATE Existentialist. She brings up her Pentecostal childhood, and dude, it was verbatim of my own: The Tom Landry Christian comic book that made a person question life; “The Cross and the Switchblade” comic book that invoked fears of violence; listening to The Hiding Place wherein child-me KNEW any year from now, a regime could force me to choose between fear and complicity, or bravery and… torture and death… uhm…? Vowell and I are twins!
Actually NOT; Vowell ponders her own twin Amy, the good twin, the daughter that was expected even as Mom was surprised that there was another baby on the way out. Enter, the extra daughter, the spare, Sarah the dark and moody one. While Dad was giving Amy a gun for hunting so they could Father/Daughter Bond, Sarah got a dollhouse, all the whilst hearing Dad teach her that weak Teddy Roosevelt got over his asthma with GRIT, something Sarah does not seem to have (He throws his hands up in despair after she comes back raving about a Woody Allen film!). While Amy grew to be the daughter who DOES things like gets married, has a kid, bakes pies; Sarah goes all Eastern Seaboard and thinks about music, and art, and history, and history, and history.
So expect it. When you pick up ANYthing of Ms. Vowell’s, you’re gonna get a gloomy woman’s musings about life, liberal values, civics lessons, and PLENty of herself (Pop-A-Shot, anyone?). All where she embraces her nerdiness (And why oh why couldn’t Al Gore adopt a Buffy the Vampire Slayer sort of self-deprecating nerdiness and EXTOL his virtues as an intelligent guy who knew it all?!). And Gore vs. Bush was Nerds vs. Jocks—wherein the Jocks won (When a would-be assassin takes a potshot at the Oval Office, Vowell is spastic but almost immediately relieved because of COURSE he wasn’t in there, working or anything, of COURSE he was in the gym).
Butterfly ballots, Manifest Destiny, a restaurant in Carlsbad Caverns, the responsibility of the media to get it right and be responsible and NOT be jerks? In here. Her nephew Owen, child soldiers who might mix up who killed whom as they’ve the weird bond that twins have, North Dakota, Canadian humor and Canadian Mounties? In here.
And so much more. Snippets they are, or well-developed essays, smooth and contemplative. But always entertaining even as they’re edifying. At not quite 6 hours this is such a hoot. I read reviews that the book was like watching Vowell navigate her worldview on training wheels whereas her later writing showed much more in the way of true genius. Oh, I dunno. I think she’s brilliant in her ability to see the brutal irony in Creek/Cherokee history being bought and sold with money that has Andrew Jackson on it. Plus, all her friends are pretty gosh danged insightful as well.
I got this on sale at Chirpbooks, but I DEFinitely think it’s worth whatever, money, credit, time. If you’re in the mood for a look at Real America, American culture, and… Tom Cruise? this 4th of July, give The Partly Cloudy Patriot or ANY Sarah Vowell a go.
Celebrating America’s holidays would NOT be right without her!
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