‘Canoli’ follows author’s search for love for America
Sarah Vowell is a contributing editor on This American Life (TAL) and a columnist for Salon. Her new book “Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World” is intelligent, slightly sarcastic, sometimes poignant and always funny.
These essays, some assignments for TAL, are narratives of Vowell’s insights as she travels across America looking for validation to love it. Sometimes she finds it. Sometimes America lets her down.
Her journey takes her to places like New York, San Francisco and the Trail of Tears through North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Oklahoma. The essay, “What I See When I Look at the Face on the $20 Bill,” is an account of the latter.
Vowell writes, “I’m so free of history I have to get in a car and drive seven states to find it.”
Instead of finding answers, she admits American history does not make sense and cannot be rationalized. However, she balances her cynicism with optimism throughout the book.
In New York, she visits the Chelsea, a hotel possessing a unique counterculture history. This is where William Burroughs, Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas lived. It is also where Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol and where Sid Vicious allegedly killed Nancy Spungen. It is a home to those without one.
She answers a newspaper ad and goes to San Francisco for a makeover into a Goth girl.
Vowell writes, “I’m a meaning junkie.”
As a journalist, she analyzes every detail, including herself, to the point of being neurotic. “Take the Cannoli” is an entertaining montage of historical facts, personal insights and familial conflicts. It’s a detailed account of trying to find meaning.
“When I think about my relationship with America,” Vowell writes, “I feel like a battered wife: Yeah, he knocks me around a lot, but boy, he sure can dance.”
As an outcast, Vowell is drawn to the countercultures like the Beat Generation and punk rock music. However, she refuses to cast off her American heritage. She thrives on anarchy, yet she is patriotic. She loves the country, but hates the hypocrisy.
Grade: A-