Sarah Vowell at the Colonial Theatre

Sarah Vowell at The Colonial

 

by Chris Newbound

 

One of the perks of seeing and hearing any writer read his or her work isn’t so much hearing the work itself in the author’s voice aloud—though this is briefly of interest too—but rather hearing her speak more directly to the audience off the cuff: it’s when the author glances up from the page in front of them and looks straight at the audience that things get interesting. It’s not often we get to see the person behind the book as she speaks more about herself, her work, or even talks about the piece she is about to read or has just read.

 

Vowell, like David Sedaris (though, of course, there is no relation, there is something about these two that makes you feel that they could be blood related, both in the way they look and sound, not to mention that they both have sisters named Amy), reached her fame mostly through appearances on National Public Radio. In Vowell’s case, it was on Ira Glass’s This American Life; when researching one of her early books about listening to the radio, Radio On, she met Glass.

 

So it is the voice, her peculiar, almost pre-teen nasal one, that is so familiar to us that even when reading her work to ourselves we still hear that voice of hers in our head. All to say that hearing Vowell read her work last night at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, Mass., wasn’t all that special. What was special about the evening was being privy to all the more casual asides to her audience, her impromptu footnotes to the stories she shared—this despite her saying afterward how reluctant she is to talk off the top of her head, given that she’s a writer and would much prefer to think about what she wants to say first and then go home and hone it further for about two months. “But what are you going to do? You have to sell some books.”

 

Vowell displayed her range and historical interests in reading for about an hour from her work, starting with a Berkshire-specific piece about a visit to Chesterwood for some research on Abraham Lincoln and her fraught visit to a local, though unnamed, B&B, something she loathes because one is expected to talk to strangers while having breakfast. She then moved on to some lengthy passages from her two most recent books, Assassination Vacation (2005) and The Wordy Shipmates (2008), where her passion for history was on even greater display.

 

She spoke afterward about this, about her love of research, and how after starting out as a critic for Salon and various print publications, her writing life changed when she did her first piece for This American Life called "Trail of Tears," a personal exploration with her twin sister, Amy, about the Cherokee’s Trail of Tears. Vowell, originally from Montana, is herself part Cherokee, something she's previously equated with being about as common as people from Chicago rooting for Michael Jordan. But it was on this “assignment” that she discovered her love of history and research, and which she credits launching these later works, creating her own trail (though not of tears, more like readers) by pointing out how one thing has often led to another in her work.

 

Why history? Because, she said, “there are just so many amazing stories to be had.”  [April 24, 2010]

 

[Photo of Sarah Vowell by Bennett Miller]