I’ve come back to Sarah Vowell’s work as I begin to consider the shape and scope of the historical piece I’m undertaking. I admire Vowell’s uncanny ability to catch me off guard and make historical events, places, figures, etc. rich with meaning totally relevant to my life right here. And be fairly fabulously entertaining along the way.
I’m working on pulling apart a few of her essays to analyze their structure and tone, but I must admit, I keep getting sucked into the delight of her storytelling voice and looking up, pages later, to discover that I’ve been having too much fun to diagram anything.
Here are the first two sentences from an essay on the Gettysburg Address:
“There are children playing soccer on a field at Gettysburg where the Union Army lost the first day’s fight. Playing soccer, like a bunch of Belgians – and in the middle of football season, no less.” (pg. 1)
- “What He Said There” in The Partly Cloudy Patriot, 2003.
I can’t tell you how much I admire the fact that in those two sentences she’s introduced her subject, a sense of place, and her own sense of humor; given us a time peg; dissed the majority of the world’s sports fans; and made sure that I’ll keep reading. The switch from “the first day’s fight,” which seems so somber – almost like she can’t quite look straight at it – to the mock-angry, dryly witty “like a bunch of Belgians” in such a short space makes me totally envious. No need to pick a single tone, Vowell suggests. Humans usually have several going on at once internally, so why should writing be any different?
