Sarah Vowell is back, and this time she's taking on the Puritans. In typical Sarah Vowell fashion, this version of events includes just as many pop culture references as it does source texts (including The Brady Bunch, The Godfather trilogy, Louis Armstrong, Happy Days, Nancy Drew, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Scooby-Doo, to name a few...a very few). And while normally I find this technique both charming and informative, this time around it wore a little thin. Maybe it's because I know significantly less about Puritan history than I do about presidential assassinations (the subject of Assassination Vacation), but I couldn't help but feel that this account of John Winthrop's "City On A Hill" is suffering from suburban sprawl.Vowell leaps from year to year, from theme to theme, from person to person in a way that I found very hard to keep up with. Overall, while I got a very clear sense of the general climate and ideals of the Massachusetts Bay Colony as well as Vowell's opinions of it, I don't feel that I could discuss the subject with any kind of authority, much less how our Puritan founders continue to shape our current political, moral, and social structure. As it was, that rambly, non-sequitur style that I usually love about Vowell's writing just got in the way of what she was trying to say, in a classic case of style superceding substance.
If you're a die-hard Sarah Vowell fan, The Wordy Shipmates is definitely a worthy read, but it doesn't quite live up to her previous books. If you're new to Sarah Vowell, I'd go with Assassination Vacation or The Partly-Cloudy Patriot instead.
The Final Verdict: 5/10
P.S. For a taste of Vowell without the commitment of an entire book, click here to read one of my all-time favorite essays. You can also hear her read her essays as a frequent contributer to This American Life, or hear her as angsty teen superhero Violet Parr in The Incredibles.
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