A Surprising Coincidence

For President's Day I found myself ticking off time in a most relaxing way. Curled up by a fire, reading.... much like President Garfield, I might add.... my book for book club: Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell. You have to admit, it is a wee bit eerie to have chosen this book and scheduled our book club the Tuesday after President's Day... it was by no means an intentional choice but as procrastination always plays a part in my reading schedule there I was remembering the fallen presidents of our past more than I have ever have in my life.

I'm enjoying this book immensely. I love the Paul Harvey "rest of the story" style that seems to happen at remarkably frequent intervals throughout Vowell's story. She is also a master of Kevin Bacon style connections. She manages to connect the O.C. TV show to the 19th century Oneida Colony in upstate New York which connects to Guiteau, assassin of Garfield... and of course it turns out Robert Todd Lincoln connects to everything!

And connecting it all is the narrative of Sarah Vowell... her views, her phobias, her chatty voice. When I mentioned reading this book, a friend immediately lept to the "current president" and speculated whether or not she'd address his level of popularity and whether or not there are folks out there eager to "off" him... that thought hadn't even occurred to me. Well the following excerpt, found in the introduction of the book immediately goes to that very place... read on.

"On the bus home, I flip through my Assassins program from the night before and read the director's note. Of course talking about the murders of previous presidents is going to open the door to discussing the current president. That's what I like to call him, "the current president." I find it difficult to say or type his name, George W. Bush. I like to call him "the current president" because it's a hopeful phrase, implying that his administration is only temporary. Timothy Douglas, the Assassins director, doesn't say the president's name either, but he doesn't have to. Clearly, Douglas is horrified and exasperated by the Iraqi war. He writes,

Proportionate to my own mounting frustrations at feeling increasingly excluded from the best interests of the current administration's control in these extraordinary times helps me toward a visceral understanding of the motivation of one who would perpetrate a violent act upon the leader of the free world. My capacity for this depth of empathy also gives me pause, for I have no idea how far away I am from the "invisible line" that separates me from a similar or identical purpose....Please allow me to state for the record that I am completely against violence of any kind as a way of resolving conflicts.

That crafty explanation slaps me in the forehead with all the force of "duh." Until that moment, I hadn't realized that I embarked on the project of touring historic sites and monuments having to do with the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley right around the time my country iffily went to war, which is to say right around the time my resentment of the current president cranked up into contempt. Not that I want the current president killed. Like that director, I will, for the record (and for the FBI agent assigned to read this and make sure I mean no harm -- hello there), clearly state that while I am obsessed with death, I am against it.

Like director Tim Douglas, my simmering rage against the current president scares me. I am 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. So if I can summon this much bitterness toward a presidential human being, I can sort of, kind of see how this amount of bile or more, teaming up with disappointment, unemployment, delusions of grandeur and mental illness, could prompt a crazier narcissistic creep to buy one of this country's widely available handguns. Not that I, I repeat, condone that. Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot."

One thought she adds after this section is that she rather hopes no one DOES to decide to assassinate our current president because to do so would make him a martyr as it almost always does. I am actually still reading this book even though we met last night for our book group and I expect to finish it soon... since I'm having trouble putting it down. When I do I'll post our book club post and perhaps include more quotes and favorite bits. For now, I'll say that it's evident that Ms. Vowell really respects and honors Lincoln. Her enthusiasm for understanding the events of his assassination and Garfield and McKinley's is contagious and I, too, am a little amazed at the interconnectedness of this world.