Last night, author/radio personality/voice actress Sarah Vowell (one of my personal role models) came to campus to read from her new book The Wordy Shipmates. 

It is always such a shock to me that the authors of books are actual human beings and not some sort of demigod. Sarah showed up in baggy jeans, black ballet flats, and a striped T-shirt. Until she walked to the podium I thought she was one of the students! (Don’t get me wrong, I love this. Had she been snooty I’d have turned on her like a wolverine.) The woman had no pretensions whatsoever. 

She did read excerpts from her book, but she also told other hilarious stories. The one I was most impressed with was the story of Charles Preuss, the cartographer who went along with Fremont and Carson to map their explorations. The poor man hated the food, the bugs, and the whole business of exploring. While Fremont was atop a mountain, living his bliss, poor Preuss had fallen on his bum and slid down the mountain. So now I have to go track down his diaries and laugh at/commisserate with him. (I act the same way when I go camping with my husband–he’s standing outside, taking deep breaths of the woodsy air, and I’m furiously scratching my legs because I’ve managed to get into poison ivy or chiggers AGAIN.) 

Afterward, she answered a few questions from the audience. It is wonderful to listen to someone talk about something they are genuinely fascinated by, especially if they can do so without boring you to tears. Each question received a detailed answer which led to another interesting story–about the Puritans, about her experience with Pixar. I did have to disagree with her twice: once when she assumed that students don’t “get” to write about things that fascinate them–at least, I have usually done so–and again when she said that she believed that most Americans pretty much believe that you should be able to believe in whatever religion you want. I don’t think that’s strictly true, at least not here, but I wasn’t about to press the point. 

And then, she signed books, and I was second in line!

Tags: America, history, religion, Sarah Vowell, signed books

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Another great book that will be passed over by the very people who need to read it. Jacoby outlines the history of America’s willful ignorance and how it manifests today. She gives no suggestions on how to fix the situation; indeed, she doesn’t think it can be fixed, the way things are going. Americans just enjoy being stupid too much.

I disagree with her on two major points. First: I don’t think the Internet is necessarily killing intellectual discourse. In fact, I think that for those of us who are too shy to hold such conversations in person–or for those of us who are surrounded with the type of person Jacoby reviles–the Internet can be a great facilitator. I have been part of many good, intellectual conversations in blog comment threads. Jacoby seems to think that only ignorant non-sequiturs get posted to these threads, and that the other commenters don’t police them. This could not be further from the truth. Check out blogs like Shakesville; the commentariat there is ruthless in the driving out of trolls.

Second: Jacoby does not seem to take into consideration that many Americans work a LOT. When you’re working twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day, you don’t have a lot of mental energy left to read something educational or engage in stirring discourse about the failings of Plato. It’s easy to see how people could extrapolate from their own experiences that people who do these things obviously don’t work grueling, mind-numbing jobs, and are therefore somehow less. Maybe if the economic situation were better and people didn’t have to work so hard, they’d be more accepting of intellectuals…But then, it is their disdain of intellectuals that helped lead America to elect The Big Dumb twice, and possibly to elect The Even Bigger Dumb in 2012. So, I don’t know.

Tags: agnosticism, America, atheism, freethought, ignorance, irreligion, reason, religion, Susan Jacoby, willful ignorance