Assassination Vacation
by Sarah Vowell
Simon & Schuster, 258 pp., $21
In this summer of rising oil prices, school finance woes, and escalating bloodshed in Middle Eastern war zones, nothing says getaway like a visit to the home of an obscure 19th-century presidential assassin, right? Well, when the murderer is Charles Guiteau, all-but-forgotten killer of James Garfield; the home is the Oneida commune in upstate New York, where Guiteau once lived and – yow! – a vegetarian sex cult flourished; and your tour guide is Sarah Vowell, razor-witted author of The Partly Cloudy Patriot and contributor to This American Life, the answer is a hearty yes. In her new book, Vowell leads us to this and other sites related to the lives, and more particularly the deaths, of Garfield and his fellow victims of the assassin’s bullet, Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley. Cemeteries, museums, the spots where the killers struck and where they themselves were struck down are all stops on this only-in-America road trip that combines our long national fascination with celebrity and our equally enduring fixation on violence. Vowell admits to a lifelong interest in assassination lore, and by interest she means obsession approaching the level of Star Trek fans who translate Shakespeare into Klingon. What distinguishes Vowell from the hardcore Trekker is: a) her keen sense of humor; and b) her ability to share her obsession in a way that’s infectious. She lays out the personal history of the wildly unhinged Guiteau – a nut-job who could handily out-wacko Jacko – in such revealing detail, spiced by her own hysterically sardonic commentary, that you get drawn into the subject and want to learn more. I know, I know: Reading and learning are oil and vinegar in the salad of summertime leisure. But every once in a while, a tome comes along that satisfies all the demands of the summer book (i.e., breezy, quick read, shamelessly entertaining) and still engages the mind. Vowell’s shot down the highway of history blows the dust off 19th-century America, revealing its heroes and villains as feeling, breathing, bleeding human beings and making it a place well worth a visit.This article appears in July 8 • 2005.