The Partly Cloudy Patriot
by Sarah VowellSimon & Schuster, 208 pp., $22
Among Sarah Vowell’s many appellations — NPR commentator, political activist, essayist, atheist, Cowboys fan, Conan O’Brien regular — she can count herself a nerd, as well. It’s not a dig — she’ll be the first to tell you she’s a dork (complete with “public radio and marching band” credentials). In fact, she bases a whole essay, “The Nerd Voice,” around that state of being, in her new collection, The Partly Cloudy Patriot (a twist on Thomas Paine’s “sunshine patriot”). Vowell has an appealingly windy way of going about things; in “The Nerd Voice,” she starts with watching Revenge of the Nerds III, sidesteps to online political debate, then segues into her firsthand account of Bush’s presidential inauguration. And where does it all take us? Back to the nerd debate, and why Gore lost the presidency: He’s the prototypical geek (a good thing), but lacks the self-deprecation necessary to temper the smartest of smarty pants (a bad thing). Or: “While the preemptive mockery software is automatically included in most nerd brains under the age of forty, it still needs to be installed in Gore.”
Vowell must have been hardwired in the womb, though; she’s got the self-deprecation down pat, which is why it’s impossible to hate her for her alarmingly expansive knowledge of American history, international politics, German cinema, football, and the National Park Service. In fact, it’s downright inspiring. Musing on everything from the Gettysburg Address (“What He Said There”) and commercialism in Salem, Mass. (“God Will Give You Blood to Drink in Souvenir Shot Glass”) to how Tom Landry introduced her to dread (“Tom Landry, Existentialist, Dead at 75”), Vowell mixes hard fact with cheeky aside, historical and political perceptiveness with a pop-cult consciousness. The few pieces that fail, like “Tom Cruise Makes Me Nervous,” fail because the topics at hand are, frankly, too slight for her, too toothless. It’s easy to poke Tom Cruise with a stick; it’s much harder — and more rewarding for the reader — to offer humorous insight on presidential libraries. Save the few that earn her enduring wrath (Bush and any number of equally privileged, conservative white men in positions of power), Vowell’s subjects are treated fairly, even affectionately, from favorite presidents (Honest Abe and Asthmatic Teddy) to the staff of Salem’s Witch Dungeon Museum: “There’s a colorful old guy walking-tour guide named Bob who must not be a member of the chamber of commerce because he says things like ‘They hung dogs for being witches, that’s how stupid these people were.'” Vowell’s not stupid. She’s a smarty pants, all right, and she’s smart enough to know how to make erudition not only palatable, but disarmingly funny. She’s got my vote.
This article appears in October 4 • 2002.
