A Puritan view
Sarah Vowell's books offer up the sort of chatty, cheeky history lessons that make erudite reading far breezier than it should be. The NPR correspondent's latest book, "The Wordy Shipmates," tracks the Puritans' settlement of Boston in 1632 and relays the growing pains of the religious rabble-rousers as they attempted to settle in their new surroundings.
Q. Why a book about the Puritans?
A. Can we start with another question, because I [stink] at starting with that one. The actual reasons are kind of depressing. I'll come back to it.
Q. How much time did you spend in Boston doing research for the book?
A. I came up here a few times. Plymouth is a more satisfactory 17th-century tourist experience, because nothing happened in Plymouth after the Pilgrims, whereas John Winthrop and the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony built a successful city with Boston. One of my favorite moments in Boston was when I went to the site of John Winthrop's house and found only a plaque there. There was a late 19th-century building that is the first steel-framed skyscraper in Boston on the site of Winthrop's house. That to me seemed like the perfect image of how Boston kept growing and reinventing itself as a modern city.
Q. Your book talks about the influence of John Winthrop's "city upon a hill" speech. I heard Sarah Palin use Winthrop's speech in one of her campaign stops. Do you think his words have become overused and misunderstood?
A. I think it's only partially understood. That sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity," was the thing that made me care about the Puritans because it's such a beautiful piece of writing. I came of age in the Reagan years and heard that phrase over and over again. I thought it was basically the 17th-century equivalent of USA! USA! Later I read the actual sermon and realized that it's much more. It's a hymn to community. It's about being members of the same body. And this is the depressing reason I wrote the book: Living in New York in September 2001 we were grief stricken. But it was also a really beautiful, wonderful time. There was brotherly love on the sidewalks. There was eye contact. I turned to Winthrop's speech, and especially that part of his speech about being members of the same body.
Q. Other than sexual repression, are there any traits that we still possess from our Puritan forefathers?
A. So much of American culture is so very English, and we have some of the best traits of the English. There's a kind of sweetness and a love of language. The traits we inherited are the same traits that gave us Shakespearean sonnets, the Kinks' "Village Green Preservation Society," and Dickens. Of course the Puritans were also really violent and chauvinist on the cultural side of things. I think we picked up some of those traits too.
CHRISTOPHER MUTHER 