Sarah Vowell is both smart and smart ass -- if you've seen Jon Stewart interview her on The Daily Show, you know she does more than hold her own. She's a curious amalgam: she writes for NPR and yet revels in her "white trash" background. All in all, Take the Cannoli is a very uneven collection of stories, which comes with the territory with a writer like Vowell. To grossly oversimplify, her style is to take whatever happens to be going on in her life or her mind at the moment and then whip it into a story. It's not quite stream of consciousness so much as stream of life. Sometimes that's interesting, sometimes not. Some of her stories: She goes to Disney World with her gay New Yorker friend. She learns to drive (with Ira Glass). She steps out of her introvert comfort zone to go through a goth makeover to check out the club scene in San Francisco. Which leads to what may be one of her best lines in this book: "By the time they're done cinching up the corset and stabilizing my bustle, I'm in so many layers of black lace scarves and fringe and fishnet stockings that I could play strip poker for three weeks without baring my belly button". Counterbalancing stories like that are those about Frank Sinatra -- she includes TWO stories about him in this collection. Frank Sinatra???One of the most moving of her stories is "Take the Cannoli" (from which the book also takes its title) where she talks about her guilty, compulsive watching of The Godfather in her college years, as she struggles with her loss of religious faith and seeks comfort in the moral certainties of Sicilian mafia family values. (Religion can really mess you up). The line is from the Godfather, where the gunman says to a fellow mafioso after killing someone: "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli." I think that's supposed to encapsulate a philosophy of life.In "The End is Near, Nearer, Nearest", she talks about growing up with religion, Oklahoma-style: fire and brimstone, Armageddon and sin. So, naturally, near the end of the 1990's, she just had to go to a Y2K seminar, the Apocalyptic message of which was all too familiar to her from her fundamentalist upbringing. The difference was that by now she was no longer a child and could actually consciously reject that nonsense and understand why she was doing so. In that story is my favorite passage of the whole book:"Heaven such as it is, is right here on earth. Behold: my revelation: I stand at the door in the morning, and lo, there is a newspaper, in sight like unto an emerald. And holy, holy, holy is the coffee, which was, and is, and is to come. And hark, I hear the voice of an angel round about the radio, saying, "Since my baby left me I found a new place to dwell." And lo, after this I beheld a great multitude, which no man could number, of shoes. And after these things I will hasten unto a taxicab and to a theater, where a ticket will be given unto me, and lo, it will be a matinee, and a film that doeth great wonders. And when it is finished, the heavens will open, and out will cometh a rain fragrant as myrrh, and yea, I have an umbrella".As long as you skip the Sinatra stories and anything else that doesn't grab you in the first couple of pages, you'll enjoy this book. It's kind of narcissistic, but if you like the author's point of view, that's OK.
Continuing on my Sarah Vowell binge, I picked up this early release, a compilation of essays previously published in other editions. My guess was that the title references the famous The Godfather line "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli" and I was correct; that film serves as an inspiration for an essay here as Vowell visited Italy partly due to her love of the film.The essays here are varied in topic, mostly focusing on Vowell's life, pop culture often music, and American history. I think my second favorite essay was "What I See When I Look at the Face on the $20 Bill" where Vowell and her sister follow the Trail of Tears, the forced march of Native Americans (including the Cherokee from whom Vowell descends) from Georgia to Oklahoma in the 1830s as the United States government stole their land. This happened under the presidency of Andrew Jackson, who was originally ranked very high but whose legacy has been challenged in recent years, in large part due to his actions in this regard. I loathe AJ so I am thrilled with this change. However this essay is more personal due to Vowell's ancestry.My favorite essay was actually the first titled "Shooting Dad." Vowell's father is a gunsmith with conservative leanings counterbalanced by Vowell's more liberal leanings. For a long time, she didn't get guns but as she grew older, she appreciated the artistry of his work and they learned to communicate better even when they disagreed. It was a great way to start off the collection.Like most collections though, there are invariably a chapter or two that don't speak to the reader. That happened here too. Maybe I tried to plow through the book too fast and would have enjoyed savoring a chapter a day. I just became a little tired of Vowell's voice and the topic of the essay didn't speak to me the way earlier ones had. Still I am very happy to have read this and I will continue to seek out Vowell's writing because it is generally enjoyable with wonderful accents of humor.
What do You think about Take The Cannoli (2015)?
Take the Cannoli collects some of Sarah Vowell's earlier published essays and "This American Life" segments. With her trademark quirky, intellectual sense of humour and political passion she takes on topics like why Frank Sinatra was actually a punk icon, the meaning of the Trail of Tears, and dubious solutions for insomnia. She flies across the country for a goth makeover, harangues a tour guide at Andrew Jackson's plantation, and makes a mixtape for a friend's maybe-almost girlfriend. Overall, a fun collection that holds up well almost 15 years after it was published. Recommended for anyone with a geeky streak and a sense of humour, who likes learning more about under-examined aspects of our world, culture, history and politics.
—Jarrah
Sarah Vowell deploys remarkable wit, nerdy interests and an easy, accessible style to cover a huge range of subjects in her books. If I had a criticism of this collection of essays, it would be that sometimes she strives for resonant or emotionally evocative ending that don't really feel earned. They're kind of tacked on, almost like a non sequitur. Think David Sedaris. For me, the highlight here is her pilgrimage on the Trail of Tears, when the Cherokee Indians were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma, suffering extreme misfortune along the way. She weaves travelogue, fascinating historical accounts and her own emotional journey as a Cherokee descendant to tell a moving and important story.
—Wes Ferguson
I've always liked Sarah Vowell. I think I first became aware of her when she was a guest on Craig Ferguson, but it may have been other shows, as well, but I doubt it. There's something about her that I just "liked". So, I've been meaning to read one of her books ever since. Finally, I have. Take the Cannoli is a collection of previously published essays that I found humorous, thought-provoking, and insightful. She lives in the same nocturnal world of pop-culture nerd-dom that I do, albeit in slightly different corners. I was reminded of my own Native American studies, as she and her sister followed the Trail of Tears...I've never been to those points of tragic history, but I've been touched by them over the years. I empathized with her obsession with The Godfather and her ensuing trip to Sicily. Hour-long conversations about grammar? Yup. Mixed-Tapes? Hell, yes! But my favorite one had to be the final piece, "American Goth." I laughed out loud, but felt a total support of her in her Goth makeover; Sarah Vowell is a true goth, on the inside, without a need for all the visual bells and whistles. (Or corsets and eyeliner.)
—Michele Cacano
