Sure, we could be rushing out the door right (one must always rush toward the inevitability of sitting on the freeway), but instead we allowed the distraction of this interview with Sarah Vowell to derail our plans. As we read it, we thought, “This is the sort of pleasure we’d miss if we were in New York*.” We would return to an over-overflowing inbox and would be in frantic skim-and-delete mode. It’s much better this way.
For those who have been sleeping through the media blitz, Vowell’s new book Assassination Vacation ties together the first three American Presidential Assassinations, omitting more obvious choices (“Do you mean, Why not include Kennedy?”). It’s part of her quest to put the fun back in history.
One challenge of this book that I enjoyed was trying to make the Garfield administration fun. Garfield’s not the most fun guy. His administration lasted only a few weeks, and the major issues of that period were patronage and civil service reform. Luckily, he had a kooky assassin who’s fun to talk about.
But it’s not all history in the interview. Vowell talks about the importance of being entertaining and the power of incredible good luck (pun totally not intended):
It just turned out that the one time I was an actor, it happened to be in a globally dominant juggernaut. That was lucky.
* – Thanks to the brilliant Gwenda Bond who has spearheaded the Anti-BEA Backlash movement by reminding us about what matters in life.
