Nerdy dirty hippie, turned midwestern academic, turned quasi hipster, turned aspiring dot-commer. Who like clothes.
I’m seven weeks into 2010 and eight books into my challenge. One week ahead of schedule!
These two books could not be more different. The first, Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader For a Day follows Venkatesh as he gets more and more intertwined with Chicago’s Black Kings gang during the 1980s in Chicago. The second, Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife provides a fictionalized account of Laura Bush’s life, from the eyes of protagonist “Alice Lindgren.”
A little background: I spent six years in Chicago, four of them on the South Side. By the time I moved to Chicago, the Robert Taylor Homes has already been closed, and the city was in the process of tearing down Cabrini Green. I was also in Chicago when Freakanomics came out, and I remember both Leavitt’s celebrity on campus, and everyone’s fascination with the chapter on why drug dealers make only minimum wage.
Venkatesh’s work is fascinating — he calls it sociology, but I’d suggest it’s more anthropological in that’s it’s an intensive study of a civilization. That civilization happens to be public housing residents. He’s an adept story teller, and in many ways I felt like this book taught me more about urban poverty than anything I read in my African American studies classes in school.
On to American Wife. I’ve read Sittenfeld’s two previous books. Both of them — Prep and The Man of My Dreams — left me with a sort of melancholy feeling; this one was no different. I was worried when I picked it up, after reading the reviews on Amazon. Many were scathing. I think, for the most part, they must have come from Republicans, as I found the book fairly complimentary to Laura Bush.
The protagonist, Alice, is simply madly in love with her husband, Charlie. And because of this love, she’s able to accommodate his lesser qualities… his interest in his legacy; initially, his drinking; later, his born again beliefs; expectations of her, etc.
Reading it, I enjoyed the first few sections more than the latter. By the time they arrived at the white house, I’d lost my interest a little. I think it may be that the White House section is where it becomes less fictional seeming. There’s a 9/11, a Cindy Sheehan-esque character, etc. Sittenfeld is a deft storyteller though, and regardless of whether or not you like the Bush family, it’s a compelling read, at least for the first 400 (!) pages.
