by Matthew Caverhill

Created on: December 22, 2009

Sarah Vowell has always been a character, something which you will have no doubt gathered if you have ever had the opportunity to hear her on National Public Radio or seen her interviewed on a talk show, because despite the fact that she is a relatively young woman, she carries herself like she is much older and her voice and manner of speaking really sell that fact. Naturally, this transfers heavily into her writing, and it makes The Partly Cloudy Patriot a fun read, though for those of you who are not particularly enamored with the left, you may find some of the content doesn’t fit with you ideologically.

The book is a series of 19 short pieces of non-fiction of varying topics, from trip toWashington DC for the Bush Inauguration to something as seemingly mundane as Ms. Vowell’s trip to Salem, Massachusetts and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and a whole bunch of points in between, with interludes filled with pop cultural references amongst the humorous political discourse. I have to give her credit for also writing a pointed essay about how creepy Tom Cruise was years before his public outbursts on Oprah and The Today Show… reading it now is eerily prescient. There are also discussions about Nerd Culture, Twins, Canadians and her first real job working for a notorious art dealer, and aside from being funny and filled with quips, the essays are also educational, as she tends to have a great grasp of history and its oddities.

I think the title essay is probably the most representative of Vowell’s style however. It begins by discussing the Mel Gibson movie, The Patriot and how the word patriot had changed in connotation between the mid-1990’s when it was associated with militias and how it began to be used in the aftermath of 9/11 (she wrote the piece in December 2001). She then explored a wide variety of American historical experiences to tell a personal story about her perceptions about New York, America and the world after that horrifying day. It is at times sentimental, but it tells a rather unique story, full of digressions and anecdotes that come together to paint a much broader picture. So it is fitting that amongst her collected tales, this longer essay would give the book its title

In retrospect, I think my favorite essay of all from the book is called “Democracy and Things Like That” which concerns a campaign stop in New Hampshire by 4 presidential candidates and how the comments of one (Al Gore) were taken completely out of context and misquoted by just one major news outlet and how that one error turned into a firestorm of derision and jokes across the media landscape. The whole episode has made me wary about taking any supposedly shocking comment presented without proof at face value, which is an important lesson to remember for anyone who considers themselves media savvy. The fact the tale was also humorous is almost beside the point.

Now in the opening of this review, I mentioned that if you didn’t really like the left or the Democratic Party, well, you might not like some of the things that Sarah Vowell has to say in this book (but I have a feeling you may have gathered that when I mentioned that she wrote about Al Gore and going to the Bush Inauguration), but there are still a lot of entertaining things in this book if you can get past the politics, and if you can’t, well, then this may not be the book for you.

Personally, I found The Partly Cloudy Patriot thoroughly enjoyable and I look forward to reading her other work, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes personal essays filled with historical references and humor.

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