Sarah Vowell seems to be at the center of a stylish sort of literary entertainment scene. Contributing editor and consigliere to This American Life, Vowell seems to have come into contact with all sort of famous people, getting to know them well enough to get them to play characters in the audiobook version of her previous book The Partly-Cloudy Patriot. It featured Conan O’Brien, Seth Green, Stephen Colbert, David Cross, Paul Begala, Michael Chabon, Norman Lear, and music by They Might Be Giants (hear excerpts).
Hearing her unusual voice led director Brad Bird to hire her to play Violet in The Incredibles and the audiobook of her new book Assassination Vacation, an investigation of the tourism around the sites of presidential assassinations, features Bird as assassin Charles Guiteau. Conan O’Brien plays a Lincoln’s son, depressed that whenever he meets a President, that President is shot. Stephen King plays Lincoln, Dave Eggers plays a contemplative tour guide, Catherine Keener a museum curator of body parts, Jon Stewart plays the nation’s first slacker president, and Tony Kushner plays the leader of a sex cult.
In this excerpt, Vowell gives a short revisionist history of Maryland:
Listen to Sarah Vowell read an 8-minute excerpt from her new book [6MB MP3].
Keywords: Maryland, offbeat, offputting, Civil War, state song, Lincoln, patriotic gore, racist, Timothy McVeigh, George W. Bush.
- Buy from Amazon
- Sarah Vowell webpage (including book tour info)
posted March 25, 2005 07:16 PM (Books) (1 comments) #