Sarah Vowell

Photo By: Bennett Miller

by Interview by A.D. Amorosi

Rather than create a grim portrait of dead presidents, their zealous stalkers and the hot spots they loved in Assassination Vacation (Simon & Schuster), author/public-radio maven Sarah Vowell turns the riddles of history into grist for the mill of her dry, irreverent wit. That doesn't mean that the partly cloudy patriot doesn't actually take part in the ritual of tourism. It's just that beyond the myths of jinxed presidential son Robert Todd Lincoln (somehow present at three assassinations) and rarely discussed biblical sex cults, the medieval brick forts of Dry Tortugas National Park and James Garfield's love of books, Vowell finds haunting likenesses between the past and present, between a Bush that pre-emptively struck Iraq and the McKinley who took on Cuba.

City Paper: What made you want to go down the road of assassins? What was the real lure of trailing killers with egos bigger than their prey?
Sarah Vowell: The honest truth is that it wasn't any big deep philosophical inquiry. It was more like I just kept getting sucked into the lore. I just kept tripping over one great anecdote or odd coincidence after another. Assassination was just a frame, a starting point — a big colander where I could sift through a bunch of yarns. There are ideas and conclusions of course. And probably the present and my own comparatively low-key resentment of the current president might have fueled taking trips trying to learn more about bad guys who had done something more about their resentment of their presidents than just scream at the morning paper like I do. But I'm way more driven, day to day, by discoveries. Like: Abraham Lincoln's son was in close proximity to the first three presidential assassinations? Huh!

CP: The goofy beard wife, the writings on men's strong thighs — what's your final say on a gay Lincoln?
SV: I'm barely interested in Lincoln as a person. His public speeches are the most interesting thing about him, followed by his political acumen, the guts it took to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, and his ups and downs as a commander in chief. Those rumors just come from his affectionate letters to his friend Joshua Speed and the fact that he and Speed shared a bed — a truly common, no-big-deal practice at the time. But I don't think those letters are anywhere near as dreamy as the second inaugural address.

CP: You were cast not too long ago in The Incredibles on the quality of your voice. What were you looking for in peeps like Jon Stewart and David Eggers for the audiobook version, especially in regard to Stephen King playing Lincoln?
SV: My voice casting is a combination of someone being somehow right for the role and being a person who would take my calls. Stephen King is the one voice on the book I don't know. He's a fellow Simon & Schuster author and a big listener of audiobooks apparently, and my producers had him in a studio anyway and we just sent him a request and amazingly he said yes and knocked out the Lincoln lines that afternoon. But I thought he was a good fit because he has a certain stature and also the timbre of his voice. King's voice is ever so high. It's not deep. Nor was Lincoln's. I hate that in documentaries where they get some stentorian baritone to do Lincoln. The guy was reportedly squeaky, maybe even sounded like a girl. You can say elegant, stentorian words, have elegant stentorian thoughts without having the voice of Gregory Peck.

CP: Is death really the preoccupation so many people imagine, or is your death thing greatly exaggerated, no pun intended?
SV: You don't write a book largely about murder without having an inkling of interest in the end of life. Death, I find, is a subject that brings people together, what with it being entirely universal, the "we're-all-going-to-die" sure thing being the one thing every person shares with every other person. Most people are trying to stave off death. Some people do it through exercise or plastic surgery. I actually think that what I've done here — tried to dig up the long dead and try to get to know them by reading their words and going to places where they lived or passed through — is another way of fighting death. I feel like I'm momentarily bringing these people back to life by remembering them.

Sarah Vowell, Thu., April 21, 7 p.m., free, Free Library of Philadelphia, Central Branch,1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341.