[Books] Rouse, Turner

[thefourthvine]

Book I Have an Issue With: At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream, by Wade RouseI love essays, particularly funny ones. Find me a book of them and I will happily hand over $12 for the privilege of reading it. And this one starts off really well, because there's a raccoon attack. Raccoons to the head are funny. It's a basic rule of

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[margueritem]

"The Fiddler on the Roof ISN'T set in 1970s Canada! Which probably means Canadians aren't vicious anti-semites, and I should probably stop worrying that these Quebecois are going to kill me!" (Yes, I was very young when I made the assumption, but it lasted for years. I still sometimes have to take a deep breath before I out myself as a Jew to someone from Saskatchewan.)

...

*blinks*

Okay.

[thefourthvine]

I thought I'd already told that story here, so everyone would be bored by it again! But since that line is confusing out of context, here's the story:

When I was four, my mother called me in to see Fiddler on the Roof on TV. I didn't understand it, of course, but I liked the singing, and she explained the plot. Just, either she didn't mention the key word "Russia," or I didn't hear her. But she did mention wheat, and the only place I knew of where they grew wheat that wasn't in the U.S. was Saskatchewan. So I assumed the events she described happened there - she took pains to emphasize that it was based on real events - and I also assumed they happened in, oh, 1970 or so. Because she said it was long before I was born, and that was long before I was born, to me at that age.

I was really alarmed when we went to Canada a few years later, like, did no one notice that we were going to a land of NOTORIOUS JEW-HATERS? I looked at all the people I met, wondering if THAT VERY WOMAN was involved in doing Bad Things to Jews! Or that man! But

[hannahrorlove]

Because the polls aren't on Livejournal: Eddie Izzard was correct when he said everyone calls San Francisco 'the city.'

[thefourthvine]

Whereas I totally had never heard that. I am educated! Thank you.

[hannahrorlove]

You'd like Izzard - he's one of the funniest stand-up comics out there, and the source of the idea of an original sin being poking a badger with a spoon. Also the 'cake or death?' bit.

[cofax7]

We truly do.

[kindkit]

I would tend to see "the city" as just a generic term, in distinction to "the country" and "the suburbs." It would have to have capital letters or something to make me think a particular city was being referred to. (Also, and perhaps contradictorily, people for a large, large area around Minneapolis/St. Paul, where I live, refer to MSP as "the cities." As in, "Jane moved to the cities" and "Mary and Bill's kids come up from the cities every Christmas." Everyone knows which cities are meant.)

By the way, if you count the metro area, which is reasonable because many U.S. cities have far outgrown their original boundaries, there are considerably more 350,000 people in St. Louis. Well over 2 million, in fact.

[angevin2]

St. Louis proper is small because a) it's an independent city (i.e. not part of the county) whose boundaries were established in 1876, and b) because a lot of the city's white population left in the fifties and sixties (hence the enormous urban sprawl). The relationship between the city and the county is highly fraught and fairly complicated and has a lot to do with race and racism.

Also I agree with you on the phrase "the city," but then, I live in St. Louis and thus bristled a tiny bit at the OP. ;)

[kindkit]

It sounds like Minneapolis and St. Louis are similar in some ways. We too have sprawling suburbs due to white flight, and deceptively small population numbers. We don't have the city/county issue, but we do have two cities that are geographically contiguous, Minneapolis and St. Paul, but that have separate governments and therefore split the population. Minneapolis's population is 390,000, St. Paul's is 287,000, but the MSP metro area has 3.5 million people (according to Wikipedia, it's the 13th largest in the US). And yeah, I bristle too when people assume that MSP is a tiny hick town.

[thefourthvine]

I apologize! I wasn't meaning to insult your city.

[stasia]

... I clicked on Post Comment before reading Hannah's comment, but that's what I was going to say. San Francisco has, as one of its names, "The City". Really. There are hats and everything.

New York, for me (and I was born there, I still have family there, and I still say I'm from there, even though the last time I lived there was when I was 6), either New York, Manhattan, or The Big Apple. It wouldn't occur to me, if you said you were from 'the city', that you meant NY.

However, I'm amused by your frustration with the first book. Essays are a difficult style to pull off. I've never found a book of essays that was consistent enough to make me happy to buy all of it. Well, except for anything by Thurber, but, well, I'll read anything by the man who wrote The Night the Bed Fell on Father. *grin

[musesfool]

Huh. I've lived in New York my whole life, and nobody I know who is from here calls it The Big Apple. That is very much a tourist/marketing term. We always call it "the city."

[stasia]

I wouldn't call it that, but if someone said it, I'd know what they were talking about. I have a secret fondness for the Apple grocery stores, even though every one I've been in hasn't been particularly clean.

I miss NY, sometimes.

Stasia

[thefourthvine]

Essays are a difficult style to pull off. I've never found a book of essays that was consistent enough to make me happy to buy all of it.

See, I only ask for a few hits in a book of essays, because, yeah, it's hard to hit a high note consistently. So I'm happy to have paid for Me Talk Pretty One Day, because of the essay of the title, which is hurt-yourself-laughing funny. I'm happy to have bought David Rakoff's books, even though they aren't super funny, because they are consistently amusing. I'm happy to have bought A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again for just two of the essays, which are truly funny and also validate all my fears about cruise ships and chickens (living). And so on. And, of course, I am happy to have purchased everything by James Thurber, because he really IS just that funny, at least in the things he wrote in the first part of his life. (I'm also happy to have Thurber's friend and co-worker E. B. White's essays, although they are, in the main, not funny and not intended to be.)

One I've found is Keladry

[macey_muse]

Have you read the 'Daughter/Servant/Mistress of the Empire' trilogy, by Janny Wurts & Raymond E Feist? Because Attolia sounds a lot like Mara of the Acoma to me~

*notes down 'Megan Whalen Turner' for future reference*

[macey_muse]

Also, to me, obv, the City is London, more specifically the London financial district. This despite living in Edinburgh which is /also/ a capital city (despite how adorable and tiny it feels to me ♥). I mean. that district in London actually is officially called 'the City', it has a tube line and everything!

/london bus icon now doubly-appropriate!

[macey_muse]

Also (also squared?), I feel your poll is restrictive! By far my favorite is Greatness by accident; 'Oh sorry I didn't see that throne there when I tripped', 'Shit, no one told me /not/ to pull it out of the stone!', '...okaaay, I seem to have formed a rebel army. now what?' yay sillyness!

[stasia]

I like this one as well. Good point! Any recommendations?

Stasia