Summer Reading

Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World

Touchstone Books, 224 pp., $12 (paper)

No other voice in America is quite like Sarah Vowell's. In the paperback release of her anthology Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World, the frequent contributor to Public Radio International's This American Life writes about the American scene as intriguingly as her one-of-a-kind voice sounds aloud (think Linus Van Pelt on helium). Many of the 16 pieces within first aired on the Chicago-based radio program, while others appeared in places like GQ magazine. Vowell, who idolizes Greil Marcus -- arguably the finest pop-music historian alive -- began her career as a rock critic. Thus, music leads a parade of Cannoli topics that includes politics, pop subcultures, and American history.

Hers is a fertile, opinionated mind that puts itself firmly in the center of an America you may or may not recognize. This would be a nation hypnotized by Sinatra, obsessed with Elvis, in love with The Godfather, enraged by Reagan, righteous about the plight of the American Indian, and giddy about learning to drive in her twenties.

One of the highlights of this collection is a GQ piece regarding New York's infamous Chelsea Hotel, the site of Nancy Spungen's demise, hangout of Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith, and a writing refuge to Arthur C. Clarke. A Take the Cannoli low point is a pitiful, mocking "I was in the high school band" essay that probably should have remained private.

But Vowell's got guts. She has an extremely cool job: to write and speak about whatever the hell she wants to write and speak about -- before a sizable (and in her case, ever-expanding) audience. Those who enjoy her commentary like her very much. To them she's witty and isn't overly impressed with herself. To detractors of the social-comment-as-memoir approach, she's pretentious. Either way, Take the Cannoli will move you. Sarah Vowell's is a fearless and thought-provoking voice. America could use more like it.