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The 6-Foot-Deep Interview:“I’ve found my calling. History, to me, is so rich, and American history is more interesting than any other history because you have this sort of violent streak next to these high-minded ideals, our gun-toting side matched with our Declaration of Independence side. Our history is full of all these cranks and weirdos and heroes and muckrakers and sex maniacs and killers. And I just love dead people. They’re easier to interview.”
—Sarah Vowell (which is a great name for a writer), essayist
on public radio’s “This American Life,” and author of The Wordy Shipmates, 2008
on public radio’s “This American Life,” and author of The Wordy Shipmates, 2008
Yeah, cause they can't defend themselves.
ReplyDeleteI heard Sarah on NPR last week and she just cracked me up - she shares many of her observations about people and life and her style of delivery with my daughter who's a standup comedian in Australia, also named Sarah....
ReplyDeleteAnd she's so right - this country (past and present) is so full of - for want of a kinder word - "eccentrics???" - much more so, in my opinion, than in any of the other five countries I've lived in.
I dont know what it is - something in the water, perhaps?
Or maybe something in the fact that settlement was by the flotsam and jetsam of the old world.
That what was too 'out there' for the old country found wide open spaces here and not too many established rules, enabling that 'eccentricity' to flourish in gay abandon, to the point where its pretty much out of control...
I consider myself to be fairly well educated, well travelled, fairly liberal, mature and open-minded. And yet on most days I find myself standing there with my mouth agape in amazement, watching someone doing or saying something that in any other country on the planet would be considered insane... and here its taken for normalcy....
Mind blowing! Scary....