Sarah Vowell Can Beat Up Her Fans: An Interview

How important is your nephew Owen to the research that you choose to do? Because it seems you pick things that he might enjoy.

Well, in this book perhaps. He really fell in love with Hawaii. The one before that was about Puritans. I guess I did take him to a swimming pool with a replica of the Mayflower with a water slide coming out of it. Otherwise, it was a lot of driving around New England. Going to mosquito infested swamps to see the battle sights from King Philip’s war and visiting Plymouth Plantation and all of that, which he was fine with, but I don't think he's crucial. His mother can be crucial just because my twin sister drives and I don't drive. So, a lot of times if I need to go somewhere and do some reporting in the hinder lands I will invite her to come along and drive me around. You know how children need to be supervised.

Right.

He does have some prospective on a place that brings me back down to earth. Like in this book it was whaling. One of my favorite books is Moby Dick. I got very caught up in learning the war of whaling and all the equipment, and the voyages, and how important whale oil was to the world as a light source because male, male oil candles were the cleanest, brightest burning candles the world had ever known. All the parts of the whale were so important, like the parts of the whale are kind of the precursors to plastic, and I just get so kind of enamored with all of the details and the lore of some things. And I took him to the whaling museum in Maui. He was just so disgusted that they would kill that many whales, and just kept coming up to me, complaining about it, and was just horrified. Finally, I told him, "Well, cheer up, pretty soon they're going to discover petroleum in Pennsylvania and the whole world is going to go ape for fossil fuels," and he said "Good!" And he's reminding me how there's just always some Earth-raping thing going on that's going to be replaced by the next Earth-raping thing. But I guess, you know how children are so obsessed with animals, and the justice- the injustice done to animals.

At the writing center where I volunteer in Brooklyn, the elementary school-aged students wrote these speeches about what they would do if they were president, and, honestly, if they were president, the entire agenda all day long, instead of dealing with North Korea, or terrorism of the economy, would just be all about pets based on the presidential speeches these kids gave. Sometimes it's good to have that perspective, plus I just kind of like having him around.

In The Wordy Shipmates, you sort of reconcile the destructive side of American history with the more liberating side, more than, I thought, in Unfamiliar Fishes. Am I way off on your intention there, did you mean to sort of focus more on, you know, the pompous and arrogant side, or is there some other third thing?

Well, what do you mean, I reconciled- the Puritans? I don't know if you can reconcile the fact that they burned alive 800 Pequot Indians just because I think some of their sermons are pretty. It's true, one of the things I'm most drawn to in the New England Puritan is some of their writing, which is some of the most beautiful works in American literature are that sermon, A Model of Christian Charity by John Winthrop or Anne Bradstreet's poems. But that thing I find most beautiful about them, their love of community. The dark side of it is how violent is they could be, and how dismissive and how unwelcoming they could to anyone who disagreed with them, and would banish dissenters, or eventually would hang Quakers in Boston Common. I don't know if that's called "reconciling," by recognizing that one of the most beautiful things about them is tied up with what's darkest in them. Is that a reconciliation? As for this story, it's true, it's shy on idealism. Each story has it's own, kind of, moral compass. It's really hard to identify with anyone, I guess. I guess, of everyone I wrote about, probably the one I identified with the most was David Malo. My title comes from something that he wrote. He was fascinated by the moment of contact of two different groups of people meeting and how they change and influence one another.

So, stuff like that I find just inherently intriguing, but then you have that first generation of Hawaiians after the missionaries arrived and it is intriguing of how some of them took advantage of what they were learning from the missionaries and then some of them were kind of destroyed by being pulled between the two worlds. David Malo, he was pretty old when the missionaries arrived, almost 30 when they came and he learned to read and write and then he was this natural born writer, born into a culture of oral tradition and then these people come to teach him to write and within a few years he was writing this beautiful book about all of the old classical Hawaiian traditions that were dying away.

He wrote this letter where he talked about how if a big wave comes in from the dark ocean, large and unfamiliar fishes see the small fishes of the shallows and they will eat them up. And then, later on before he died he asked that he would be buried on a hill where no white man would ever build a house, and to me, I guess he of all of the figures I identify with him the most just because he is so... He's a writer and he's a little bit grumpy and he doesn't really fit in anywhere anymore. I mean, he's westernized enough and he's enough of a Christian that he's divorced himself from the old ways but he also has enough appreciation for the old ways that he writes a book about them so that he can record all of these traditions that are dying out. But he's not so enamored with everything about all of these white people engulfing his country that he's happy about that...I don't know what else to say about it.

Gotcha.

And he sort of gets caught between these two worlds but he gets a book out of it... And so did the Hawaiian people, I mean that book is still being read, it's still being used. It's actually a valued source on a lot of the old chants and religious rituals that were dying out even before the missionaries arrived. ...I guess you're right, I mean the one thing I would say...the last book had the...at least the Puritans in spite of all their darkness and ...violence, they left behind some beautiful ideals. I mean, in some ways, what animates my ire at the corner that this country turned in 1898 when we became a colonial overlord, when we became an empire really for the first time. The thing that animates that is that I still believe in all those old founding ideals. I still believe in government based on consent of the governed. I still believe that all men are created equal, I mean, I also really did identify with the anti-imperialistic writers in the 1890s because I certainly know what it’s like that writers in the last 2 years tried to publically demean some governmental decisions. There are times in the last ten years when I was writing “Hey, let’s not torture”, you know, stuff like that, and going back to the 1890s when Americans were really debating imperialism and whether this is who we are.

I mean, that’s not who we are; and so finding them in our times, in the libraries, and unearthing their words, releases those forgotten people. It was kind of comforting, but even though the decisions made by, say, the McKinley Administration to annex those colonies, including Hawaii, those decisions still stay with us. It wasn’t a unanimous decision by any means, and the voices of the dissenters can still be heard. But also, so much of what they worried about, and so much of their paranoia came true.

How much of what you choose to write is based off of your own personal interest and how much do you choose to fill gaps in American collective memories?

I mean filling gaps in American’s collective memory is fine, and, I’m happy to do that. It’s really not my first, second, or third goal. I guess I am drawn to subjects that are a little more obscure, I think because maybe there is something I can offer there. I'm so interested in the Revolutionary War but that's something even Americans know about, which is saying something. Well I guess I can phrase it like "What do I have to offer?"

I had gone to Hawaii I took the tour of the Hawaiian Palace and it was a fascinating place. It was just a weekend and I went back home. The second time when I went to Honolulu I was there with some people from California. We were just there for a friend's concert and I was telling them about the Palace and really trying to get them to go take the tour. I was very excited about it and kind of worked it up. But I did not end up convincing them to take the tour but that was the moment I realized that I really care about this, I'm really interested in this. And it's good to, I guess, inform others. But it's only something I think about until after the fact. When I'm doing it I really don't think about any of that stuff. I want the books to be clear and clarity is a virtue to me and I think part of that comes from having gone to graduate school and being assigned a bunch of gobbledy-gook and I was always so offended by that sort of writing because I just thought that "This is bad writing".

Uh-huh.

So being clear, which I guess translates into being user friendly. But I don't even think about it that way. To me it's just a point of pride to try and tell a story clearly. So I guess my only egomania can translate into writing these user friendly books that inform people about topics which they are under-informed about but I don't really think about the reader too much when I'm writing. I'm so hard on myself and my readers are so nice and welcoming and generous if I meet them. They are way less hard on me than I would ever be.

The problem is books don't sound good. Not hardly ever. At least this is about Hawaii which people seem to have positive feelings about. But still, I feel like if I get really excited about something or I have some kind of enthusiasm or passion or outrage or just any kind of emotional response, I feel like that generally translates into the writing. And you can transfer to other people to be a hoot.

Did I sound -- maybe it makes me sound stuck up but it is basically my job description.

Well you also called your readers "kind and generous" so I don't think that's how you come off.

They are! They are so nice, you should see them. I could beat them up. They're so meek and they're soooo polite and so cute. I mean they're just ridiculously lovable. Way more than I am because I am a bit of a grouch a lot of the time, you know.