Take the Cannoli : Stories From the New World | 
 enlarge | Author: Sarah Vowell
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Rating:  78 reviews
Sales Rank: 19472
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.6
ISBN: 0743205405
Dewey Decimal Number: 081
EAN: 9780743205405
ASIN: 0743205405
Publication Date: April 3, 2001
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Product Description
Take the Cannoli is a moving and wickedly funny collection of personal stories stretching across the immense landscape of the American scene. Hailed by Newsweek as a "cranky stylist with talent to burn," Vowell has an irresistible voice -- caustic and sympathetic, insightful and double-edged -- that has attracted a loyal following for her magazine writing and radio monologues on This American Life. While tackling subjects such as identity, politics, religion, art, and history, these autobiographical tales are written with a biting humor, placing Vowell solidly in the tradition of Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker. Vowell searches the streets of Hoboken for traces of the town's favorite son, Frank Sinatra. She goes under cover of heavy makeup in an investigation of goth culture, blasts cannonballs into a hillside on a father-daughter outing, and maps her family's haunted history on a road trip down the Trail of Tears. Take the Cannoli is an eclectic tour of the New World, a collection of alternately hilarious and heartbreaking essays and autobiographical yarns.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 73 more reviews...
 A clever and witty delivery of truth. October 25, 2007
Vowell's book is definately a clever and witty delivery of truth. Some of it is her own truth through life experience. Even if you don't share her opinions, you understand her point without feeling like you are sacrificing your own. She makes you think, laugh and enjoy yourself with introspection mixed in..well done Vowell!
Funny, well-written, but a bit short... August 24, 2007
I became a fan of Sarah Vowell after reading Assassination Vacation, and decided to go back and read her early works. Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World is very good although a bit short. It's also a bit dated, although that's entirely my fault for taking so long to discover Vowell.
Take the Cannoli is a compilation of short stories that mostly deal with the author's life. She writes of being born in Oklahoma and raised in Montana, her twin sister and her parents, her education and her background (she's part Cherokee), her political beliefs and her interest in history, and especially her travels. Many of them are downright funny, and Vowell has a wicked, self-deprecating wit. The chapter on her trying to alter her appearance to become a "Goth" was a scream! I also enjoyed her escapes as a band geek. In high school, Vowell wasn't exactly your average high school student. "I have intimate knowledge of what it was like to be young and uneasy and outraged under Reagan. My high school was 1980s in miniature--you either belonged or you didn't. And if you didn't, you learned to seek relief where you could find it--and for me, that relief was with other black-clad malcontents who could quote defense-spending statistics even though we were barely passing algebra."
Vowell is at her best when she chronicles her travels and two that I enjoyed were her trip to Disney World and her tracing the Cherokee Trail of Tears. While her reflections on her Disney trip were funny, her take on The Trail of Tears poignant, sad and reflective. But even The Trail of Tears is good for a few chuckles, at Vowell's expense. When traveling on a road near her hometown, she relates that "only I know its topography with the intimacy that comes from leaning over every inch of it, carsick. I can't help but wonder if the grass grows so close to the shoulder because of my personal fertilizer crusade: I was a little Lady Bird Johnson of puke."
I wish that Vowell wrote books a little quicker, but in the meantime, I'll have to content myself with reading her earlier works.
Decent collection of author's early work July 24, 2007
Writer Sarah Vowell established a following on NPR's "This American Life" in explorations of the byroads of American culture as well as her own life. Many of those pieces appear in TAKE THE CANNOLI in essay form alongside articles that originally appeared in print and online. The collection reveals the growth of the writer, from insightful young talent to a person shedding the edges of youth for a mature perspective on herself and, especially, her relationship as an American with this world. While her most recent work, ASSASSINATION VACATION, has her at the top of her powers, this collection, interesting in itself, shows her getting there.
Vowell begins by peeling back her youth as the liberal daughter of a Second Amendment gunsmith in Oklahoma and Montana; her life in high school band; and finally, growing up under the threat of doom held over her head by her family's Pentacostal religion and the Reagan administration's imagery of the evil empire and nuclear war. She moves onto tours of Frank Sinatra's hometown, Hoboken, New Jersey; Disney World and Celebration, Florida; New York's infamous Chelsea Hotel; Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp; and Goth culture. There a hilarious episode in which the creator of "This American Life," Ira Glass, tries to teach Vowell to drive. The second strongest piece in the collection is the essay from which she takes her title, an account of watching "The Godfather" religiously in college, hanging onto its simple imperatives in defense against the uncertain waves of diverse philosophy that swirl in academe. The strongest piece is the trip she takes with her twin sister Amy tracing the Trail of Tears their Cherokee ancestors were forced to march when President Andrew Jackson banished them from their own property. In that, you see Vowell learning to wrangle the kind of ambiguities that usually stop others in their tracks. I love how she loves America, clear-eyed but without apology.
This collection of essays is often topical and thus some of them are a little dated, or at least ironic given more recent events. I'd really like to sit down with Vowell, to see what she thinks now.
Read it, just not first. November 17, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Having read The Partly Cloudy Patriot first, I loved this book because it invited me to learn more about the author and her life. And in that respect, the book is very good--well-written and full of Vowell's characteristic wit. I would not, however, recommend it as a first taste of Sarah Vowell; I think it's funnier and more interesting once you're familiar with her style.
Take the Cannoli August 27, 2006
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
She's a staple of This American Life on Public Radio International, and she's also appeared in GQ, Salon and Request. Her humor and wit are sharp and perceptive. But, let me work from the back cover blurbs.
Essays on American history, pop culture and her own family. Yep. But it's not easy to get me interested in American history or pop culture. A madonna of Americana. Yep, but I'm bored again.
Her writing about her family, early on, was great. Then we got some history that bored me, but I kept going because she is talented. Surface, but talented. Then an essay about the Trail of Tears that really hit home for me, then some amusing stuff. It's not bad, but I don't see myself going back for seconds. I'll keep an eye on whatever else she does.
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