Cody Bond
Sarah Vowell admits her new book, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, might present a marketing challenge.
“It’s a tough book to sell. I have to go across the country and tell people ‘Guess what? We owe the French so much for our independence.’ That’s not a message Americans love to hear,” Vowell tells Isthmus in advance of her reading at the Madison Public Library on Oct. 30.
If anyone can sell a pro-French history of the American Revolution to a Francophobic nation, it is Vowell. Lafayette in the Somewhat United States is Vowell’s seventh nonfiction book on American culture and history. It follows her previous New York Times best-sellers, including Unfamiliar Fishes, which covers the conquest of Hawaii, and Assassination Vacation, where she visits the sites where U.S. presidents were murdered.
In between writing books, Vowell served as a contributing editor to This American Life, voiced the character of Violet in the Pixar classic The Incredibles and was one of Jon Stewart’s favorite recurring guests on The Daily Show.
Vowell’s dry wit and numerous asides create a warm and accessible version of history. Her research is impeccable, but her tone is informal. In Lafayette, she humanizes the Founding Fathers, a group of people who often seem more mythic than historical. For example, she acknowledges the beauty of Thomas Jefferson’s prose while pointing out the terrible job he did as governor of Virginia.
The central figure in the new book is the Marquis de Lafayette, a French aristocrat, barely older than a teenager, who left a pregnant wife and fled his country to join the American revolutionaries in their fight for independence. A general in the Continental Army, Lafayette put his own life at risk for a country not his own. He served alongside several famous faces, including General George Washington.
Lafayette’s personal story is matched with a broader narrative of the American Revolution as the Americans try to scrap together an army and Lafayette’s countrymen in French court debate whether or not to aid the upstarts across the Atlantic. The irony runs thick as Vowell describes a new republic that required the financial patronage of the French monarchy to survive.
Vowell didn’t set out to write an account of the Revolutionary War; she was first drawn to Lafayette by learning about the stories of his later years. In the 1820s, President Monroe invited Lafayette, then the last living Revolutionary general, to return to the United States for a celebratory tour. It ended up being a nationwide party that lasted for more than a year.
“Half the population of New York City showed up to greet his ship. There was a party in his honor every night as he toured all 24 states. The whole country went berserk for him. This patriotic frenzy and the idea of the country being excited for this one guy just seemed so exotic to me,” says Vowell. “In my lifetime, the country has been so divided. My first memory is watching the Watergate hearings. It seemed like such a luxury to write about someone Americans loved communally.”
However, as Vowell began to research Lafayette’s experience in the war, she soon realized it was not going to be quite the vacation from dissent that she had hoped for.
“Ultimately, the joke was on me because, during the war, everyone is bickering and undermining each other. I was reading letters from the Continental Congress,” says Vowell. “One congressman was writing that all Congress does is bicker and waste time while getting nothing done. It all sounded very familiar.”
Instead of becoming discouraged, Vowell found the infighting to be reassuring. “This is what this country has been like all along. Then, as now, the whole country seems like it is ready to fall apart,” says Vowell. “Yet, it manages to kinda sorta stick together.”
Vowell hopes there is another message readers take from Lafayette. “There is something in the American character that loves self-reliance. Sisters doing it for themselves,” says Vowell. “While we need to be able to disagree with each other, we still need everyone. It took the efforts of the army, the Continental Congress, the women at home, the French, other nations angry at the British — it took all of them to win American independence.”
Sarah Vowell will be reading from Lafayette in the Somewhat United States on Friday, Oct. 30, at 7 pm at the Central Library, Community Rooms 301 & 302. The event is free and open to the public.
