Customer Reviews

Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Sarah Vowell brings her trademark wit and attention to detail to a range of topics in this remarkable collection. She ranges from the everyday (mix tapes and UPS deliveries) to more complex subjects (her Cherokee heritage and Trail of Tears), and provides insights into American culture that are profound. She stakes her claim to be able to criticize American wrongdoings but also to wholeheartedly love her country (in an essay entitled "Vindictively American").

The love of music she evidenced in her previous book Radio On is still here, with her faves like Jonathan Richman sprinkled throughout the book. Her irreverent spirit is best displayed in the title chapter, where she appropriates the phrase "Take The Cannoli" from the film The Godfather and truly makes it her own.

Vowell goes to Rock N Roll Fantasy Camp, goes deep into the heart of the Chelsea Hotel, and gets glammed up as a goth girl, all in the name of journalism. She truly shines in this collection as a young person who has not given up on America or on rock n' roll, but who right claims her place to critique and evaluate them on her own terms.

Scanning the car radio while driving one night, I stumbled on a very young-sounding woman describing the tribulations of performing in a high school marching band during a football game: "having to maneuver into cute visual formations, like the trio of stick figures we fashioned when we played the theme from 'My Three Sons'" and then "pounded out a little Latin-flavored number called 'Tico Tico'". I remember laughing out loud, and wishing for more when she was done.

This same voice - wry, ironic, cranky, always engaging, and often very, very funny - can be found sans audio (Vowell herself says her speaking voice is "straight out of the second grade") in this collection of short memoir pieces and essays.

I should point out here that I'm not an unbiased reviewer: I admire many of the same elements of our culture that Vowell does: Elvis, 50's Sinatra, "The Godfather", Mark Twain, "The Great Gatsby", Beat writing, authentic music with an edge. So if Vowelll were in my high school I would have wanted very much to have compared notes when she was not performing "Tico Tico". But regardless of YOUR passions, there's plenty to enjoy in this book from a fresh new voice with a quirky but consistently insightful take on our culture.

Humor is so hard to pull off well in writing - and Vowell has fabulous timing and delivery. I'll look forward to her next book - where perhaps she can more consciously try to tie together memorable snapshots like these into a more unified whole. Even here, however, the book adds up to more than the sume of its component parts.

I liked Vowell's line that "'What is This Thing Called Love' is the driving question behind the entire Sinatra research project." Possibly her subsequent work could elaborate more overtly on her take of "What is This Thing Called Life?". In the meantime - this is a thoroughly enjoyable and memorable book, full of fresh and interesting takes on our culture from a rapidly maturing artist. I strongly recommend it.

If you taste for humor leans on the sardonic side -- this collection of essays by Sarah Vowell is for you. Vowell often finds herself to be the proverbial "fish out of water" with journeys that take her to many fascinating and diverse places such as Hoboken, NJ (home of Frank Sinatra), Walt Disney World, rock 'n roll "camp," and San Francisco "goth" clubs. You are guaranteed to be smiling or laughing out loud at some point as you read each essay.

But if fun is not all you are looking for, Vowell is also a walking encyclopedia. Vowell gives us a history lesson in two essays in particular. "Michigan and Wacker" is a virtual history of Chicago in 13 pages, while "What I See When I Look at a $20 Bill" is an intriguing take on the Trail of Tears which forced Native Americans out of Georgia to Oklahoma. Embarassingly, I learned more about this ugly chapter in American history than was taught to me in high school.

I recently had a chance to go to a Vowell reading (along with her NPR colleague, David Sedaris -- a wonderful pairing by the way). Vowell's speaking voice is very distinctive and made me enjoy reading this collection even more since I was able to "hear" her as I read. I encourage folks to seek her out on NPR to get the more complete Vowell experience.

...but I will caution readers that they MIGHT find it more enjoyable to hear Consigliere Sarah Vowell read them herself. That's what I discovered. Don't get me wrong, this is a fantastic book start to finish; my favorite This American Life essayist covers a wide and diverse variety of topics, from the Trail of Tears to growing up a gunsmith's daughter to going Goth for a day. Every essay in this book was a delectable morsel of Sarah Vowell's acid, accurate wit. This wonderful piece of insight made me laugh, made me think, and most of all, made me understand why I should leave the gun and take the cannoli. Thank you, Sarah Vowell, for continuing to grace the world of popular culture with your fresh, cutting perspective.

Though she's known to many as a voice on NPR's "This American Life" and to many more (even if they don't realize it) as the voice of Violet in the hit Pixar film "The Incredibles," I mainly came to know her through her written works. Having read her book "The Partly Cloudy Patriot" and loving the unique way she blends history, pop culture and humor with autobiography, I couldn't resist Sarah Vowell's essay collection "Take the Cannoli." To put it mildly, I was impressed. Even though many of these pieces were delivered on the radio, they translate to book form without a hint of strain. Whereas a book written by a comedian like George Carlin often comes off as a clumsily assembled blog, Ms. Vowell takes the time to put her thoughts down with clarity, and therefore her ideas and personality shine through.

Of course, that's what one should expect of any writer, much less an essayist whose main beat is her own life. So what makes this book hold up next to the likes of David Sedaris and Dave Eggers (both of whom are thanked in the acknowledgments)? For one thing, Ms. Vowell has a firm grasp of American history, both the good and bad, that most contemporary memoirists tend to ignore. In particular is "What I see when I look at the face on the $20 bill," in which she examines the Cherokee side of her family by taking a car trip along the Trail of Tears with her twin sister and tries to reconcile that shameful episode in American history with the country she loves today--this book is also useful ammunition against conservative blowhards who claim that liberals "hate America". Her conclusiions are both inspiring and heartbreaking, not to mention worth the price of admission all by itself. Ms. Vowell looks at the worst America has to offer--violence, racism, religious extremism--and balances it against the freedom, independence and opportunity it provides, and still proudly waves the constitution (that's right, the constitution--any idiot can display a mere symbol like the flag, but the U.S. constitution is about ideas, perhaps the most revolutionary and resonant ideas in the modern world, even if they're not in color).

The current vogue for memoirs can sometimes come off as a gimmick--did you have a screwed-up childhood and a weird family? Great! You too can be a bestselling author! Sarah Vowell proves that a relatively "normal" upbringing and an adult life spent with other people's stories--her takes on "The Godfather" (from where this book gets its title) and Frank Sinatra are mini-classics--can result in something beautiful and original. Call it "post-modern" if you like (or don't--that term went from cliche to plain silly a long time ago) but I'll just call it "brilliant."

Sarah Vowell is a wonderful commentary as well as essayist. I am a huge fan of NPR. I enjoy David Sedaris, Ira Glass and Sarah. I have read several of David's books but simply cannot compare these two broadcastors. Both are wonderful to listen to on the radio but I'm sorry, Sarah Vowell is by far, the better writer. Her book was so, so enjoyable. I laughed out loud so many times reading it. Her foray into the Goth culture had me in stitches. I related so well because I wanted my daughter to become a "goth" while she was in high school. She just rolled her eyes at me...anyway, I thought I was one of the few adults who appreciated the goth look. Sarah, you made me smile. Thanks so much. I just love your take on life...Keep it up.

"Take the Cannoli" is a short collection of essays by Sarah Vowell, mostly printed elsewhere before being compiled here. Emphasis on "short". The title article obviously takes its cue from "The Godfather", and I came to the end wishing that the book had been as long as the movie. Vowell's organized the essays by general subject, starting with the autobiographical, lingering heavily on the travelogue, and ending with reflections on her own music collection (back to the autobiographical, then). Taken all together there's not much of a start-to-finish personal journey here (Vowell is not, after all, Michael Corleone), but the places and reflections she shows us along the way are all worth remembering. Best essay in the book follows the Trail of Tears, as the author ruminates on her own part-Cherokee Indian heritage. Overall, I spent a couple of weeks dipping into and out of Sarah Vowell's life and now I can say I'd like to have read more than the barely 220 pages we're given.

I just finished reading "Take The Cannoli" after ordering it off of amazon.com. I'd seen Sarah Vowell on a late night talk show and thought she was hilarious and knew I had to have her book. Well, I was right, she is hilarious. She is also very intelligent and well read. She deals with both humorous and serious subjects equally well. If you are looking for joke after joke, then this book probably isn't for you, she tackles subjects such as the Trail Of Tears and manages to make the essay funny, touching, and a bit of a history lesson. I'm of Native American descent also and sadly, I found that I did not know much about the Trail Of Tears and learned a lot (and will read more) about it. However, that is just one essay in the book. Her other essays deal with everything from insomnia to music to getting along with her family. There is always wit and she makes excellent jokes. I wasn't disappointed by any essay. They are all wonderful. I recommend this for anyone that wants an entertaining read that also makes you think.

Sarah Vowell is a huge talent, there's no question about that. "Michigan and Wacker" and "What I See When I Look At a $20 Bill" are breakneck history lessons that are both funny and sad. Her essays on Sinatra feature some of the best writing I've ever read on the man. And while it's impossible to use the phrase "breathtakingly beautiful" without sounding like a blurb on a movie poster, the final paragraph of "The End is Near, Nearer, Nearest" actually earns it.

So why only three stars? T.S. Eliot once described Edgar Allan Poe as someone very gifted but "has yet to reach puberty", and I think the same could be said about Vowell. Too often (especially during her essays about Disney World and Rock 'N 'Roll Fantasy Camp), she comes across as a petulant teenager killing time during Honors English. It's hard to believe that someone this gifted can write "I've always admired goths" while keeping a straight face. You can almost picture her with a Planet of the Apes lunchbox and Sleater-Kinney t-shirt asking, "Am I cool? Am I cool? Please tell me I'm cool." (If you want to read similar essays without the hipster aftertaste, check out Susan Orlean or Elizabeth Gilbert.)

Take the Cannoli is definitely worth taking home, and it's scary to think about how good she could be in 10 or 20 years. Hopefully, by then she'll have realized there are worse things in life than being called "Hon."

What I find most admirable in Sarah Vowell's work is the way it illuminates what's possible in essay writing. While her work is often well-researched, she is not writing journalism exactly, nor is she writing analysis--though she's unafraid of pulling a quotation from Nick Carraway, Huck, or the Corleones into any discussion--nor, despite the strong presence of her own voice, is she writing a pure "personal essay." Her most successful work defies categorization simply by using whatever comes in handy at the moment. The subtitle "Stories form the New World" suggests the loose theme of these essays, the bred-in-the-bones idealism of this country that any sensible person resists and feels nonetheless. Besides being someone worth spending time with, Sarah Vowell creates prose like clear, cool water. She speaks through words, not into them, and that is a too-rare phenomenon among essayists.