Politics Is Murder

SARAH VOWELL'S MACABRE CAMPAIGN

For the record, Sarah Vowell, a contributing editor at NPR's This American Life and the voice of the sullen teenage superhero Violet in The Incredibles, is "a more or less peaceful, happy person whose lone act of violence as an adult was shoving a guy who spilled beer on me at a Sleater-Kinney concert." But, horrified by the Iraq war and not a little scared by her "simmering rage" toward the current president, Vowell had an epiphany. Suddenly, she could sort of understand how a person, albeit a crazy "narcissistic creep," could turn into an assassin. So before you could say, "Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?," Vowell, with pen in hand, set off on an "assassination vacation," a macabre and patriotic pilgrimage across America, revisiting the assassinations of three presidents (Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) while delving into the colorful lives of the crackpots (Booth, Guiteau, and Czolgosz) who did them in. And then she wrote a book about it. Part history lesson, part hilarious travelogue, the charmingly obsessed Vowell's stories cheerfully highlight the oft-appalling ways in which popular culture has spun these politically based murders into tragitainment. Touring the various museums devoted to the lives of dead presidents, Vowell views fragments of Lincoln's skull, Garfield's lopsided reading chair, and one of McKinley's ice skates while picking up souvenirs such as a McKinley memorial yo-yo decorated with an image of his mausoleum. With Sarah Vowell at the wheel, Assassination Vacation (Simon & Schuster) is a far-out trip into America's storied past. I call shotgun.

E.S.