Stuff I’ve Been Reading: June 2011

BOOKS BOUGHT:

• Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America—Lawrence W. Levine
• Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Culture—John Seabrook
• The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Years and the Untold Story of His Conversion to Conservatism—Thomas W. Evans
• The Hardest Working Man: How James Brown Saved the Soul of America—James Sullivan
• London Belongs to Me—Norman Collins

BOOKS READ:

• Unfamiliar Fishes—Sarah Vowell
• Norwood—Charles Portis
• The Imperfectionists—Tom Rachman
• Mr. Gum and the Power Crystals—Andy Stanton
• Mr. Gum and the Dancing Bear—Andy Stanton

My friendship with the writer Sarah Vowell—history buff, TV and radio personality, ­occasional animated character—is now fifteen years old. For the first decade or so, it was pretty straightforward: whenever I was in New York, we would sit in a park staring at a statue of an obscure but allegedly important American figure, and she would talk about it while I nodded and smoked. Over the last few years, however, it has become complicated to the extent that it has started to resemble one of those Greek myths where the hero (in this case, me) is asked to perform tasks by some enigmatic and implacable goddess (her) or monster (also her). ­Vowell isn’t as well known in the U.K. as she should be—we have different chat shows, for a start, and because of the awesomely uncompromising insularity of her writing, her books aren’t published here. So, as one of her few English fans, I have been taking the literary challenges that she throws across the Atlantic personally. In my mind, at least, it goes like this. I tell her that I am an enormous admirer of her work, and she says, “In that case, I am going to write a book about the museums of the assassinated American presidents, excluding the most recent, and therefore the only one you are interested in. Will you read it?” I read it, loved it, told her so.

“I see that you are a worthy English opponent, so I will have to try harder. I will now make you read a book about New England ­Puritans—not the Plymouth Pilgrims, but the more obscure (and more self-denying) Massachusetts Bay crowd.” I read it, loved it, asked her to hit me with something a little less accessible.

And now she has come roaring back with Unfamiliar Fishes, a history of Hawaii, although obviously it’s not a complete history of Hawaii, because a complete history of Hawaii would not have intimidated the English reader to quite the required extent, and might have ­contained...