"The Partly Cloudy Patriot" by Sarah Vowell

A "This American Life" commentator celebrates nerds and explains how to love your country without turning into a boorish, jingoistic, kitsch-crazed lout.

By Douglas Cruickshank

Sep 11, 2002 | Wouldn't it be nice if you could be a patriot without having to fly the flag from your porch and the antenna of your car every day, if you could skip applauding crappy, gung-ho songs about how great America is, cheering saccharine, saber-rattling speeches about how great America is, and otherwise wallowing in all the lamebrained, jingoistic posturing that now seems required behavior for U.S citizens who wish to demonstrate a commitment to their country? Yes, it would be very nice.

Good news: At least one of us has managed to pull it off. In her third book, "The Partly Cloudy Patriot," Sarah Vowell does a bang-up job of being a good American without being a terrible bore. A solid thinker with a warm heart and a smart mouth, she loves the U.S. in much the same way that one loves one's family (or perhaps a favorite flea-bitten old dog) -- acutely aware of its many shortcomings, but true-blue to the end. "My ideal picture of citizenship," Vowell writes, "will always be an argument, not a sing-along."

Vowell is a patriot for the rest of us; she believes that devotion to one's country and an unquestioning support of its government are very different notions. She's not a breath of fresh air; she's a deep, satisfying toke of pure intellectual oxygen. This collection of essays, two of which were first published in Salon, arrives just in time to remind us that America is at its best when it's not blustering, preening and patting itself on the back. When a citizen with a sharp tongue and a wicked sense of humor exercises her mind without kowtowing to that "my country right or wrong" baloney, the U.S. can really shine, as well as laugh.

"Immediately after the attack" of Sept. 11, Vowell recalls in the book's title piece, "seeing the flag all over the place was moving, endearing. So when the newspaper I subscribe to published a full-page, full color flag to clip out and hang in the window, how come I couldn't? It took me a while to figure out why I guiltily slid the flag into the recycling bin instead of taping it up. The meaning had changed; or let's say it changed back. In the first day or two the flags were plastered everywhere, seeing them was heartening because they indicated that we're all in this sorrow together. The flags were purely emotional. Once we went to war, once the president announced that we were going to retaliate against the 'evildoers,' then the flag started making me nervous. The true American patriot is by definition skeptical of the government. Skepticism of the government was actually one of the platforms the current figurehead of the government ran on. How many times in the campaign did President Bush proclaim of his opponent, the then vice president, 'He trusts the federal government and I trust the people.'? This deep suspicion of Washington is one of the most American emotions an American can have. So by the beginning of October, the ubiquity of the flag came to feel like peer pressure to always stand behind policies one might not necessarily agree with. And, like any normal citizen, I prefer to make up my mind about the issues of the day on a case-by-case basis at 3 a.m. when I wake up from my 'Nightline'-inspired nightmares."

In the 19 essays collected in "The Partly Cloudy Patriot," Vowell writes about her love of Abraham Lincoln's writing (she calls him "the American Jesus"); "growing up pretentious" in Bozeman, Mont., as a teen cinéaste who doted on the films of Wim Wenders, Werner Fassbinder and Schlöndorff; Teddy Roosevelt; her family; the Salem witch trials and a tour of Salem; the weird lunchroom 750 feet underground at Carlsbad Caverns, and numerous other disparate topics, all of which have to do with the odd character and affectations of this peculiar country and how they resonate in Vowell's life.

Her grim funniness makes reading her prose addictive, especially if you've never quite been able to cram yourself into the American dream. Recalling her own second-grade self in a piece about selling antique maps in San Francisco, she writes, "I think the reason I wasn't cut out to be a good map seller or a good Californian had something to do with the fact that I dressed up as Wednesday Addams for Halloween that year. 'The Addams Family' and 'The Munsters' shows, where roses were grown for their thorns and pretty blondes were pitied as monsters, were on TV every afternoon after school when I was a little kid. Throw in three Pentacostal church services a week where they preached that the Antichrist would be a sunny, smooth, all-American charmer, and you have the makings of an insular worldview. Namely, a sneaking suspicion that there's always a dark side of nice."

Next Page: Putting Ted Nugent in his place

• View blog reactions