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Sarah Vowell doesn't drive, she can't read maps, and she gets seasick at the drop of an oar. If she's not exactly an intrepid traveler, though, she is an exceptionally witty and well-informed one.
Her latest book, "Assassination Vacation" (Simon & Schuster, $14 paperback) is part memoir, part travelogue, part polemic, part history book. Over 2 1/2 years, Vowell --- and assorted friends and relatives who could drive --- visited historic sites associated with the deaths of three American presidents: Abraham Lincoln (her unabashed favorite), James Garfield and William McKinley.
Some of the sites are obvious, such as Ford's Theatre, and some are utterly unexpected, such as the Oneida community in upstate New York, a 19th-century utopian, vegetarian, free-love cult where Garfield's assassin had lived for five years.
Vowell, 36, is best known for her sardonic essays on public radio's "This American Life" and as the voice of the sulky teenage superhero Violet in the film "The Incredibles." She also has been a guest op-ed columnist for The New York Times.
This week, her book tour brings her to Atlanta. By telephone from her home in Manhattan, Vowell talked about everything from her morbid streak to her cartoon counterpart.
Q: Is the column for the Times fun to write?
A: No. . . . I kind of hate it. Some people seem to enjoy reading it, but I don't know how you daily [newspaper] people do it. It all happens so fast. You write it, and then it's out on the Internet four hours later. I've gotten kind of slow.
Q: In "Assassination Vacation," you look at history through the lens of tourism. Did you have any role models when you started the project?
A: Not really. One book I really admire is Ian Frazier's "Great Plains." I liked the wholeness of it when you step back, but when you're in it, it can sometimes feel a little all over the place. I liked the structure of it and the breadth of it. It'll be about a historical figure one minute and then about someone he picks up on the side of the road the next. I find it kind of a true way to talk about America and Americans, actually. The other thing I like about him is the lurching back and forth between light and dark, which also just seems kind of true to me.
Q: Have you always been a history buff?
A: Sort of. I mean, in America, yeah. Nobody is, so if you can name more than five presidents, you're a history buff.
Q: Are you morbid by nature?
A: I guess, yeah. I pretty much feel like everybody is obsessed with death. That's what being human is about. Just some people choose to be obsessed with it by never thinking about it, and other people choose to think about it. I choose to think about it.
Q: Why not include President Kennedy in this book?
A: Several reasons. I'm not really that interested in him. And I sort of feel like he's overrated a little bit, especially in terms of civil rights. I think he was a bit of a dillydallier. . . . And there are some tact issues I didn't want to deal with. I mean, he's still being mourned --- not just by the country, but by his family.
But mostly, in terms of a story, I thought dealing with the first three assassinations afforded me several nice opportunities: Between 1865 and 1901, a lot of other things can happen, like watching the Republican Party turn into itself and watching the lingering effects of the Civil War, with Lincoln being assassinated at the end of the Civil War and McKinley being the last Civil War veteran president.
Also, all three of my guys are Republicans, so the same people pop up. . . . Obviously the most glaring jinxian example is Robert Todd Lincoln, Lincoln's son, being there for all three assassinations: at his father's deathbed, and then in the train station with Garfield, and then in Buffalo as McKinley is getting shot.
Q: Do you have a favorite historical fact or eureka moment that you learned in your research?
A: My favorite part of the book to work on was about the Oneida community. To me, that was like falling into a rabbit hole of intrigue. . . . I learned so much more by going there and talking to the volunteer docent tour guide than I did by reading all the books. The retired high school history teacher who was guiding me around had really spent time thinking about that place and why anyone would want to live there. Before I talked to him, I really hadn't considered them as people. . . . But especially if you were a woman [in the 19th century], there really weren't that many places in the world that offered you an option that wasn't clerical or marital. . . . I thought about those people with a lot more empathy and insight after going there.
Q: As I'm listening to your voice on the telephone, I keep seeing Violet in "The Incredibles" . . .
A: Well, I don't look totally dissimilar from her. We're sort of the same type, you know.
Q: Was it fun doing that movie?
A: You know, it was even more than that. The whole process was just so pleasant and funny and fun. Being a writer is pretty solitary, so it was nice to be part of something. I mean, talk about your utopian communities: Pixar is one.
Q: Will you do more movies?
A: I would do more stuff with them, sure. Eventually. You know, the problem with liking to write books more than anything else is that no one is ever really excited for you to keep doing that. But I am.
Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
