It Takes a Village Idiot
Complicating the Simple Life
by Jim Mullen
Simon & Schuster, 288 pp., $23
Did you know you may already be a regular Jim Mullen reader? Each week the It Takes a Village Idiot: Complicating the Simple Life author writes the “Hot Sheet” column for Entertainment Weekly. In one of his recent lists of the country’s current pop culture obsessions, Mullen quipped that the Broadway revival of Mel Brooks’ The Producers had collected 15 Tony nominations — one for each religious or ethnic group it offended.
In this tongue-in-cheek memoir, the Manhattan-based writer evokes A Year in Provence when he reluctantly follows his wife’s idea to purchase a Catskills cottage.
“What do we need a weekend house for?” Mullen proposes. “People in Omaha don’t have [them]. They do the smart thing — they buy a house they like and live in it.” The author, it seems, is perfectly content with the urban routine of mugger avoidance and choosing from among scores of Chinese restaurants within spitting distance.
Predictably, the move upstate gradually changes Mullen’s tune, and he eventually embraces his rural community. When the freelance humorist isn’t busy riffing about a variety of topics, including the Hamptons, quitting smoking, accepting charity from public relations agencies, The New York Times‘ Sunday travel section (“The Untouristy Side of Kinshasa”), and much more, he does a fine job of deconstructing the recent “simplicity” trend while making a larger and more genuine point about the virtues of escaping the city. Idiot is an amusing vacation read that will appeal to any fan of newspaper humorists like Dave Barry or Tony Kornheiser.
This article appears in May 25 • 2001.