The Partly Cloudy Patriot

Vowell, Sarah. The Partly Cloudy Patriot. New York: Simon & Schuster 2002. Print

First Sentences:

There are children playing soccer on a field at Gettysburg where the Union Army lost the first day's fight. 

Description:

First things first. If you're wondering, as I was, about what the title meant in Sarah Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot, just think Thomas Paine. Remember the lines, "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country."

Author Sarah Vowell is a self-proclaimed history buff with a taste for the quirky. Take her book Assassination Vacation for example where she researched and then visited scenes significant to assassinated US presidents. She is certainly not a "sunshine patriot," but instead digs deep into the behind-the-scenes stories to uncover all sides of historical events. But she can also take a skepical view of government, thus branding herself a "partially cloudy patriot." Got it?

The Partly Cloudy Patriot is  a series of nineteen random essays about observations from her life. Her highly interesting musings range from the Gettysburg Address to ancient maps depicting California as an island, and the glories of Pop-A-Shot basketball (which Vowell is very good at). There's an essay about presidential libraries, people who compare themselves to Rosa Parks, a Salem witch trials souvenir shot glass, Canadian Mounties, and Tom Cruise (who makes her nervous). In other words, a completely delightful potpourri of topics all cleverly and wryly written.

Here's just a few samples:

• I was enjoying a chocolaty caffe mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to gulp down the entire history on the New World. From the Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of Seattle's Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top. No wonder it costs so much.

• [on voting] I love it in there. I drag it out, leisurely punching the names I want as if sipping whiskey in front of a fire. I mean, how many times in a life does an average person get to make history?

• [on Tom Cruise] Cruise's face is too angular to be sensual....His face reminds me more of a math problem than a love poem, the nose and chin right out of high school geometry, hard vectors of flesh. Picasso might have liked to paint him, though it would have been too easy.

• [on Canadians] All these nice people, seemingly normal but for the hockey obsession, had a likable knack for loving their country in public without resorting to swagger or hate

So now you are either intrigued and laughing (as I was) by Vowell's insights into our world or ready to move on to another book. For me, Vowell is an author I plan to read a lot more. She's clever, insightful, humorous, self-deprecating, and finds interesting tidbits in everything she encounters - and  is more than willing to share her thoughts with us, much to our benefit.

Happy reading. 

Fred

Other book recommendations
About The First Sentence Reader blog

____________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Vowell, Sarah. Assassination Vacation.   

Vowell researches and then visits the important sites relating to the assassinations of three presidents (Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) and offers insightful and humorous comments on the event itself and people behind these histories. As delightfully witty as it is informative.