Source of book: Borrowed from the library
I checked this one out after a friend recommended it. I’m sure I have read one of these essays before, although probably online after the fact, given that these were all originally published in the late 1980s or 1990s, mostly in The New Yorker. (The title essay first appeared in Outside, and a single essay each appeared in Esquire and Women Outside.)
There are two different lengths of essay in the book. About half are long form journalism, in the literary non-fiction category. The other half are grouped into a single chapter, entitled “Short People,” and are one or two page sketches of people. In fact, one might say this entire book is about people, except for one chapter that is about a dog.
I found Orlean’s writing to pleasant and informative. She is in these stories just a little, describing the interview process, which is usually a longer-term thing, over the course of a few days or even longer, following her subjects around, traveling with them, and so on. I thought it was a good balance: Orlean never feels intrusive, but rather every instance where she describes what she is doing to enhance the portrait of those she is writing about. She does her best to enter into their worlds.
The subjects are really all over the place. There is the random 10 year old boy. An obscure and not very good rock band (The Shaggs) with a cult following. A Hip Hop personality. A real estate agent selling high end apartment rentals in NYC. A Southern Gospel vocal group. An aging Hollywood agent. A high school basketball star. A show dog. The king of the Ashanti people in the US. (Fascinating story - one of the best in the book - and also one that I am pretty sure I read before somewhere.) Tiffany. Three Bulgarian sisters who were tennis stars in the 1980s. A clown. Female surfing culture in Hawaii - another favorite. And more. I haven’t even mentioned all the short ones. And, the title essay, about a female bullfighter.
It would be impossible and pointless to summarize beyond this. What ties all this together is Orlean’s compelling writing and her genuine interest in the lives she profiles.
There are, of course, good quotes.
In the section on Freddy, the hip hop personality, Orlean nails the cultural aspect that would eventually sweep much of pop culture in the United States.
His philosophy of career advancement is not a matter of being a successful hanger-on. It’s a philosophy that appreciates mastery and technical proficiency but prises the knack for courting accomplished, proficient people, the knack for noticing which direction popular culture is heading, the knack for grafting one art form or pop form onto another, the knack for attracting a lot of attention to whatever you do, and the knack for understanding that attracting attention is, ultimately, the real art for of this era.
There is also fascinating incident recounted in the essay on the Southern Gospel singers. While the genre includes both black and white performers - and the roots are similarly interracial - black southern tradition combined with English revival hymns via the Methodist church - Orlean profiles one of the black groups on tour.
Anyway, the group recounts the time they blew a tire and ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere in Ohio. This farmer came out and assisted them, including putting a tire he had sitting in his barn on the bus. And then showed them his KKK membership card and told them to get going.
Also in this essay is a collection of slang that Orlean heard at the concerts. My favorite was the description of dead people as “having their mail delivered to them by groundhogs.”
One of the shorts is about “Moon Trip.” Which is, well, I’ll let Orlean describe things.
At the very moment the New York street festival season was beginning to seem like one gigantic Pennsylvania funnel cake, we ran across the Big Lee Moon Trip. The Moon Trip is not for sale. It is not a Simpsons T-shirt, a slap bracelet, a neon green ripstop-nylon hip pouch, a souvlaki sandwich, a Dianetics handbook, a six-pack of tube socks, a neon-pink terry-cloth-covered hairband, a pair of fake gold Cleopatra hoop earrings, or fudge. The Moon Trip is, therefore, a street festival anomaly.
Oh my, if that didn’t dump me back to my Junior High years really fast. I guess I got distracted….here is the description:
The Moon Trip is an amusement ride, forty-five years old and currently bright red with yellow racing stripes. It is shaped like a huge beach bucket, is lined with seats (capacity eighteen), and is suspended from a ten-foot-high steel sawhorse mounted on a red Chevy one-ton pickup. Its only motion is back and forth, like that of an oversized porch swing. It is not, technically speaking, scary.
Another of the shorts is about Jaleel White, aka Steve Urkel. That’s another one that took me back to Junior High. Remember when everyone was “MC” this or “MC” that? Thank Hammer Time. Well, my brother got the nickname “MC Urkel.” Because he looked like white Urkel, and could do the nerd look perfectly. (Ironically, I am far nerdier, and he is the athletic one in the family. Okay, so we are both nerdy.) (Additional note: MC Hammer was okay for good Christian kids to listen too - as long as it was “Pray.” It was…an era.)
I also found the one on designer Judith Leiber to be pretty funny. Not because I care anything about designer clothing. But because of this exchange.
[A]nother husband and wife come up to the counter. The wife is going crazy for the handbags, and the husband is doing the death grip on his wallet when he notices Mrs. Leiber. So he says to her, “Are you Mrs. Leiber? I’ve long been an admirer of yours.”
Mrs. Leiber says to him, “Oh, really?”
The husband says, “Actually, my wife more than me.”
Mrs. Leiber says, “That’s good. You shouldn’t be carrying handbags. You’re not the type.”
Another hilarious bit was in the short on Steven Jenkins, who runs the Fairway produce market in NYC. He does these hand-lettered signs for stuff, and they tend to be humorous or quirky or both. For example:
Raw Sex
Fresh Figs
Same Thing. 69 Cents
Going back to “A Gentle Reign,” about the king of the Ashanti - the “king” is actually elected for a two year period, and serves kind of like an MC combined with a judge - there is a fascinating bit that I didn’t notice when I read it years ago, but stood out now because of current circumstances.
The Ashanti language has no pronoun genders, unlike English, where everything human is gendered, or Spanish, where most words are gendered. This meant that Ashanti ex-pats tended to call everyone “he” when speaking English.
This is a great reminder that our very ways of thinking are limited by our language, something more than a few philosophers have pointed out. Because of the English language’s gender binary and gendered human pronouns, we end up thinking in a gender binary. For many, using “they” or other gender neutral pronouns - even though “they” as gender-neutral singular goes back hundreds of years - meets as much resistance from habits of language as it does from bigotry. One has to wonder if our language lacked gender, if there would have been nearly the hullabaloo over pronouns.
There is also a scene in this essay about the politics of the position of king. Right before Nana is elected, there is a succession crisis, with a previous occupant insisting on it being a lifetime position. This caused a split in the community. It is to Nana’s credit that he is able to not only gain the near-unanimous support of the community, he even managed to bring the previous king and his supporters back into the fold. When Orlean asks if he has any political ambitions beyond this, he says he isn’t a politician. When she asks “Isn’t this politics?” he responds that he doesn’t think it is - it is just what a king does.
This is an interesting response, and I think it is why Nana is such a beloved king. Of course this is politics. But not the nasty, partisan, scorched earth sort that the Right Wing is currently waging. Rather, it is the common good sort - finding a place for everyone in the community, judging fairly, finding common ground. And Nana is really good at it.
Another essay, “Short Cuts,” is about another sort of admirable character. In this case, Robert Stuart, a hairdresser who once wanted to be a social worker - and kind of is in his own way. He also is against violence (including in movies) and in favor of true emotional intimacy. At one point, he notes that he likes group therapy best of all the kinds he has had, and that he notices that women are more able to open up than men. Furthermore, he considers his own sentimental nature and enthusiasm for conversation to be fundamental feminine traits.
Mind you, he is also heterosexual, which means definitely an unusual sort for American society, which, despite its progress during my lifetime, is still often brutal on men who show their feelings. Like Robert, I think our world would be a better place if men were more emotionally healthy, if they were able to freely express emotions other than anger without being viewed as “effeminate.” And also if caring for others were considered more manly than seeking to punish those different from you.
On a related and contrasting note is Orlean’s observation about bullfighting. She enjoyed certain aspects of it - the idea of an ancient tradition, the uniforms, and the drama of it - before the killing starts. But, like myself, I have a problem with the entire principle.
I loved the ancientness and majesty and excitement of it, the way bullfighting could be at once precious and refined and yet absolutely primal and raw. But beyond that I was lost and nauseous and knew I didn’t understand how so many people, a whole nation of people, weren’t shaken by the gore and the idea of watching a ballet that always, absolutely, unfailingly ends with a gradual and deliberate death. I didn’t understand it then, and I doubt I ever will.
This is a picture at least, of what is in this book. Orlean’s writing is what makes these disparate essays work. At its core, it is about seeking understanding of other lives, of finding commonality amid the diversity of humanity, and about seeing all of us as interesting and worthy of attention.
***
Another book that I should plug here is Noodling for Flatheads by Burkhard Bilger, another empathetic look at a slice of American culture. Believe me, it is a great read.
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