Customer Reviews

Who Are You People?: A Personal Journey into the Heart of Fanatical Passion in America

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This is a delightful and funny read. The author takes us along on a journey to a series of odd and delightful social groups. We visit with rabid Josh Groban fans, stop at a Barbie doll convention, speed toward tornadoes with storm chasers, stroll with Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club and ponder pigeon racing.

What makes the book so likable is the sincere respect and wide-eyed curiosity the author has for each group she studies. It would have been easy (and tempting) to poke fun at these people but the writer resists. Instead, she probes deeper in her interviews and reveals profound motivations for why people need to connect with each other in these clubs and gatherings.

When we go to the Barbie convention, I was surprised to find a deeply moving story of a Barbie fanatic's recovery from devastating grief--a recovery that was based on the profound acts of caring and connection that she found through her membership in this group. (I'll never make fun of Barbie again!)

When Caudron asks, "Who are You People," we really know she's asking herself the question--who am I really? By the book's end, the writer has found new insights into these social groups and her own life.

Do not get me wrong--I greatly enjoyed this book. I read through it very quickly, for I was thoroughly engrossed on most of topics she wrote about, but it seems to me that it didn't have the punch it could have had by the end. Perhaps this is because Shari Caudron decided on a primary angle of self-exploration with this book. This is a good choice to give the book structure--Caudron travels through the book as someone alien to the kind of passionate fanaticism she encounters. Perhaps she is trying to take an everyperson approach and take a viewpoint possibly more empathetic to the reader's.

But sometimes this approach gets a little in the way of things. The chapters on Barbie collectors and pigeon racers and especially the furries (more on that later) are nicely vivid, but the chapter on the avid board gamers felt a little empty--I came out of that one a little mystified as to how these games could be played for the marathon sessions she described. I just didn't get much insight into that arena.

But maybe I wasn't supposed to. Caudron's work is somewhat plot- (or character-) driven: our experience of the current fanatics she is dealing with reflects her own stage in this journey of self-discovery. The meeting with the Barbie collectors is somewhat fluffy and a light intro into the world of fanatics. Later, her time with the furries (people who attend conventions to connect to their animal natures and dress the part) connects to delving into the more dark and disturbing sides of fanaticism, a dark forest in the author's journey. With the gamers, Caudron was trying to express a feeling of removal, but in the process she removed the reader from the experience a little too much.

Perhaps this is what keeps me just slightly reserved about this book. Formally, it's very tight and well done. Caudron does delve a little into the psychology of fanaticism and the need to connect and be with others who share similar experiences, and there's an absolutely wonderful section about "silver-medal" attitude and how siulver-medal winners tend to be less happy people that bronze-medal winners, but these glimpses are brief, and soon the book reverts back to a kind of travel-logue to meet eccentrics. Caudron stayed so close to her self-discovery theme that I think she may have kept the book from developing in the other directions it could have taken.

I would be most interested to see Caudron take the knowledge gained form this book and then find another niche of driven people, perhaps artists or professional wrestlers, people who do what they do in obscurity for the most part, and explore the connections derived from such devotion.

Denver-based freelance journalist Shari Caudron, once a reporter for the Enterprise-Record, is a Chico State University graduate and a former communications director of the Chico Chamber of Commerce.

Caudron admits to being a dabbler. In her 20s "I hooked up with a group of pagan, Mother-Earth, goddess-worshipping feminists. I became a vegetarian. I bought Tarot Cards. I attended week-long festivals in Yosemite National Park with topless 'womyn' who chanted, wore crystals, believed in past lives."

That lasted about a year. Then she took up running, followed by "backpacking, Buddhism, Scrabble, snowshoeing, bridge, belly dancing, golf, gardening, fencing, piano and an abundant amount of non-professional, highly unstructured wine tasting." Though Angela, her partner of more than a decade, was big-time into dogs (well, dog-sledding), none of her other friends had any "singular, all-consuming interest."

So, asked Caudron, where was the passion? She discovered a wealth of passionate special-interest hobby groups online and decided to report on some of them, at the same time trying to discover what they had that she didn't.

She begins with the National Barbie Doll Collectors Convention in Denver, moves on to the Three Lakes Ice Fishing Contest in Granby, Colo.; pigeon-racing in New York; the World Boardgaming Championships in Baltimore; the annual Mayberry Days Festival in Mount Airy, N.C.; a meet-up with the Grobanites, rabid, mostly middle-aged female followers of young singer Josh Groban (one observer said they were "like a post-modern menopausal version of the Deadheads"); and a science-fiction convention in Illinois.

She also tracks tornados with storm chasers in Kansas and attends the Califur Conference at the Holiday Inn in Costa Mesa, at which participants ("followers of furry fandom" who find a certain eroticism in the anthropomorphic representation of animals) often dress up in animal costumes (like Disney characters) or even surgically alter their faces to look more like animals.

It's all about the people. Everywhere she goes Caudron meets social misfits who have found others just as passionate about, say, Legos or Otis the Mayberry town drunk and who fit right in. Though never sharing those passions, Caudron does admit that, for example, "these Mayberry fans are teaching me what it feels like to be fully yourself without apologies."

Later in the book the author investigates the historical sources of hobby passion and looks at its psychological and even genetic basis. There have been "50 years of socially approved fun combined with 30 years of self-absorbed self-interest, 20 years of wealth, 10 years of online connectivity, (and) five years of social trepidation," as even one's neighbors are less trusted than your own group of like-minded Barbie Doll collectors or filk singers ("filk" is a folk song with a science-fiction theme) or pigeon racers. Some years ago the book "Bowling Alone" suggested the unraveling of community in the United States; Caudron finds community alive and well in passionate hobbyists.

In her quest to find her own single-minded obsession, Caudron is often funny and self-deprecating, and in her sometimes salty accounts of "passionate fanatics" she finds at long last what she is really looking for. Herself.

Copyright 2006 Chico Enterprise-Record. Used by permission.

I loved Shari Caudron's first book, so I was looking forward to this one and was not disappointed. She's only gotten better as a writer, which is saying something. She's a great natural storyteller -- she always grabs me in the first couple of sentences and keeps me wanting to know more. Along the way, I always laugh, and she often tugs at my heart.

The odds of my collecting Barbies is small, and of becoming an ice fisherman less than nil. But that isn't important. Although I learned to understand many subcultures better, the book is aptly subtitled a personal journey. What Caudron learns about herself is what lifts the book far above superb reporting to a plane of genuine wisdom. Caudron gets there by refusing to condescend to those she writes about and by being fearlessly honest with (and about) herself.

But in the end the most compelling and surprising thing about the book is how much I learned about myself. You can't read Caudron's sparkling prose without thinking about your own passions and the place they have in your life.

Here's hoping we can get Caudron to come speak at the Shari Caudron Fan Club I'd like to start. Thanks to her book, I have some great ideas on how to go about forming one.

I loved reading this book. Shari's writing style hooked me in the introduction. She chose fascinating subjects. Her insights were wonderful and she used her journalist's curiosity to ask great questions while avoiding judgement. I learned a lot from the book. I think Shari's passion is in learning new things. I am sure she can find a conference hosted by those with a similar hobby!

I'll be honest..when this book arrived in my mailbox, I wasn't overly excited about reading it. You know that old saying "don't judge a book by its cover?" Well, I didn't do that exactly, in fact I think the cover is interesting in this case. I did however, judge the book by its subtitle.

"A Personal Journey Into the Heart of Fanatical Passion in America."

Oh. Swell.

I think I was supposed to read this is a sociology class in college or something..

All that said, imagine my surprise when after reading the first few pages I wasn't miserably bored. Not only was I not miserably bored, I was sincerely entertained. Mental note to self, never judge a book by its subtitle.

The author, Shari Caudron, is sharp--she's intelligent, witty and borderline sarcastic, and as a result the stories she shares in her book made me smile.

Shari felt she had no passion in her life. All around her she noticed fanatically obsessed people and wondered why she didn't have a passion of her own. She set out on a journey to discover who these people were, and what exactly it was that made them tick.

Her book details hobbies such as collecting Barbie dolls, board gaming, pigeon racers and of course the imfamous trekkers. Over the course of three years she ventures around the county to meet these people and experience their passions first hand. The result is this book which made me laugh and shake my head in amusement, for I too have witnessed these people in their elements. This book is about the quirkiness of our fellow Americans, and its an entertaining subject to read about.

My suggestion to the author though..maybe rethink that subtitle.

After hearing Shari Caudron interviewed on NPR, I rushed to purchase this book. I was really enchanted by the stories she related on the radio and I couldn't wait to read the book.

Happily, the book surpassed even the interview. I was quickly caught up with the quirky and idiosyncratic groups that the author profiled. More importantly, I was struck by the humanity of the individuals she describes and by the revelatory path that she finds herself on during the journey.

The book did all one could ask of a book -- made me think about myself, how I judge or treat people (most often without taking any time to even try and understand them first), what passions inspire me (and why/how passion inspires anyway), and the poignancy of the human condition.

I highly recommend this book and look forward to future reads from a sensitive, passionate, and talented author.

Having dabbled in innumerable activities over the years--photography, Buddhism, belly dancing, golf and gardening--never settling on any one thing for very long, author Shari Caudron began to wonder, she tells us, what so many other people had that she didn't: why is it that some people are so passionate in their hobbies, sacrificing time and money and occasionally marriages in their fanaticism? Caudron logged more than 25,000 miles over three years trying to answer that question, exploring the various worlds of obsessive hobbyists, from a convention of Barbie doll collectors in Denver to pigeon racers in Brooklyn to storm chasers speeding across the Midwest in a mad hunt for tornadoes. She attended the World Boardgaming Championship in Baltimore, the Mayberry Days Festival in North Carolina, a Josh Groban concert in San Antonio. Who are You People? is the very readable, entertaining fruit of Caudron's travels.

Caudron entered into her project a cynic, and readers too are likely to shake their heads in wonderment at some of the people the author found in her travels. How can a grown woman "lose herself for hours each night dressing and redressing her dolls"? What is it about Josh Groban that can make middle-aged women act like teenagers squealing over a David Cassidy album cover? Most disturbingly, what madness would prompt a man (one of the "furries" whose unusual interest in anthropomorphized animals Caudron considers in chapter ten) to have his face rendered more cat-like through repeated surgical procedures? But Caudron emerged from the project with a greater understanding of her subjects' obsessive interests and of hobbydom generally: how people who don't fit into society's more popular niches can find community through their shared interests with other misfits; how an increase in leisure time and disposable income in the 20th century led naturally to both being spent increasingly on hobbies; how the internet has been instrumental in bringing together people with obscure interests; how people with vastly different backgrounds, bonded over some unusual hobby, can act as a support group. Caudron finds that while people may be participating less than their parents' generation did in traditional organizations--the school board and the Rotary Club, for example--subcultures formed around hobbies are thriving, a development which Caudron sees as cause for celebration:

"When born-again Christians and leather-leashed Goths come together at the same party, when middle-aged women and gum-snapping teenagers gossip online about the same celebrities, when retired auto workers and international money managers play the same board games, well, to me, that can't help but breed the kind of understanding, acceptance, and community that's always been the promise, if not reality, of America."

Caudron's conclusions may not be earth-shattering, but they are interesting enough, and Caudron herself turns out to be a likeable escort through some of America's weirder pastimes. Her book is breezy and well-written and appeals in the same way that Susan Orlean's essays and books do: both authors offer a look at lives lived differently than our own, though Orlean usually focuses on individuals while Caudron's attention is focused more broadly. Caudron portrays her travels as being part of a quest for insight into her own character, and she structures the book around this path of self-discovery. My one complaint about the book is that this conceit sometimes seems forced. Her own alleged failure of passion may indeed have planted the seed in Caudron's head, but surely she persevered in the project because she realized that the idea she'd come up with--to infiltrate the lairs of obsessive hobbyists and remark on what she found there--would make for a whomping good book.

Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)

Enjoyed this book--I can relate to some of the people Shari interviewed and wrote about, being a collector of odd things:
paper memorabilia like old books, magazines, stamps, maps, as well as being a rock, coin, and trinket collector--The group gatherings definitely would make me feel like a part of a larger whole--kinda like church/religion/sports--Shari has a good sense of humor--she needs to expand her search for other unusual hobbies and write another similar book.

I took to Shari as a person who was very outfront about her own perceived flaw of a life lacking in passionate persistence at hobbies; she right away reveals many other personal proclivities that helped win my trust and affection. But after the first few chapters reporting on assorted offbeat hobbyist groups, I felt I wasn't learning anything terribly interesting or being well entertained. I think we all instinctively know there any number of people in our own hometowns with idiosyncratic recreational interests; it seemed contrived for Shari to have fashioned a 3-year cross country oddysey to 'discover' that there are groups obsessively dedicated to their Barbie doll collections or to memorizing trivia from, and re-enacting episdoes of, their long-gone favored TV sit-coms. A catalog of a dozen or so peculiar pastimes and some cursory chats with a few ardent devotees is suitable for a quick magazine-length read; the heft required to make a book-worthy effort takes far more passionate digging than Shari musters here. An excellent example of a superlative book about the addictiveness of an offbeat hobby is Dan Koeppel's "To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, A Son, and a Lifetime Obsession" -- for which I gave a 5-star review.