A book review of The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell (Riverhead Books)
According to Sarah Vowell, the New York Times best-selling author, humorist, and pop-historian who found fame on NPR’s This American Life, we underestimate the Puritans. That’s the topic of her latest book, a 272-page “essay” (it’s uninterrupted by chapters) The Wordy Shipmates. In it, Vowell purports that those curious Pilgrim-like creatures who helped founded the Americas were far more savvy and influential than what most of us learned while reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s A Scarlet Letter or Jonathan Edwards’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
What is the Puritans secret weapon? Vowell’s theory is their passion and appreciation for words.
Vowell begins her history-lesson-a-la-hilarity with a sermon entitled “God’s Promise to His Plantation.” Delivered by the much-respected Reverend John Cotton to a host of 700 anxious colonists as they are about to set sail for the land of spacious skies and amber waves, Cotton uses his biblically-based farewell speech to inspire the future Americans by reading out of Second Samuel and prophesying that the New World is God’s new Promised Land. Vowell suggests it’s this ideology—the one about America being a “new Israel” of sorts—that will soon become an influential foundation for America and its history. It also works nicely as a launching pad for ‘Shipmate’s’ narrative about Puritan significance.
Within a few pages, Vowell focuses the attention on her book’s leading man, John Winthrop. Through a witty and well-searched lens, Vowell showcases the good, bad, and the odd influence of Winthrop and company (as well as a couple of Winthrop’s enemies), and though the book at times feels scattered, an exciting and insightful story unfolds. From a war of pamphlets between two disagreeing public officials to brawls with Native Americans to politically-motivated tirades with the Motherland, Vowel offers her reader a first class seat into America’s early struggle to become, as Winthrop put it, “a city upon a hill.” Vowell injects the text with short bits about how she views the future influence of certain Puritan events/beliefs/expressions on folks like Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, George W. Bush and others.
It’s not a simple task to entertain and at the same time move people with a history lesson, especially Puritan history. But Vowell succeeds because her respect and appreciation for her subjects is as evident as her sarcasm and frustration. The Wordy Shipmates brings meaning and insight into the lives of the Puritans, not minimizing their description by casting them as religious zealots, but sheds light on the power and influence of their words and how their beliefs, for good or bad, are weaved tightly into America’s history. It also serves as an important reminder: the words we use matter.
QUESTION: Do you think modern technologies such as blogging, Twitter, and texting (just to name a few) have diminished society’s value and importance of words?
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Interesting question. I think that may be true, but to get to the roots of it you have to go back to the 1800s, when increasing literacy and improved printing technology made it possible for publishing giants like Hearst and Pulitzer to sell cheap newspapers to the masses. Thanks to the steady development of new communications technology, the supply of information (words) has been increasing ever since, to the point that I can now bounce a message to my daughter that “I’m sitting on the patio” off a gazillion-dollar wireless network and onto her cell phone. And what’s the value of that?
I don’t think modern technologies have diminished the importance of words so much as they have diminished the importance of thought.
The words we use are only containers for the thoughts that they contain. In our culture, more and more words – constant talk and constant communication has not created a higher level of thought.
I can’t always blame my ADD, but a lot of times its good for me to unplug and simply to think… meditate… study. Maybe then, like the Puritans, I might have something worth talking/writing about.
The technologies you name all use words as their primary mode of communication. So, no. Maybe words are more disposable now, because blogging and twittering etc is easily done anonymously, and anonymously written words are words written by cowards and thus may be disregarded.
Videoblogging, you tube, those kind of technologies diminish the value of words by increasing the value of the visual etc. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing.
There’s a lot of information out there these days, but then, there always has been. Information overloads happened back then too, as did distractions and whatever. Ultimately, it all comes down to what it always comes down to: your own choices. Do I act in such a way that my and other people’s words don’t matter or do I take responsibility for my actions?
PS I liked The Wordy Shipmates, but I liked her other books better. I’d try to get the audiobook version – she has a very distinctive voice and hearing her read some parts aloud is hilarious.
PPS Over words: seeing as we live in a time in which people are taking the Bible way more literally than they used to do (and thus attaching more importance to its words)…
@saskia… Why do you read my blog again? You disaggree with everything I write. Or it seems that way.
My point was this: I’m pretty sure the Puritans wouldn’t have used LOL or spelled words using short cuts… Our word usage and choice has been dumbed down to some degree… And partly that is due to the technologies we use to communicate.
I do think that technology is impacting how we value and use words. The glut of words is causing people to tune out. I think writers and journalists have started to “play chef” a bit. Their agents and PR people want to make sure that the masses are tantalized with a perfectly seasoned “amuse-bouche” so they hunger for more. The problem is that most people are learning to feast on the little bites–going from one person’s soundbite to another and getting filled up–rather than sitting down and thoroughly savoring a substantial meal.
I think it’s becoming a problem in our schools, too. Teachers cannot hold the interest of students. Students are using “textspeak” in their papers. Students cannot stick with a conversation that gets a little meaty; they just want a quick gulp of Red Bull to get them to the next class.
New technologies offer us wonderful ways to spread ideas and to connect with others, but they also seem to be dumbing down our communication and undermining our ability to concentrate. I’ll bet right now, many of your readers think I could have (and should have) made my comment shorter. Maybe something like:
“I NO, RITE?”