Sarah Vowell's Lonely Puritan Gleanings

Is the breezy topical tone (N.B.: it's not all Brady Bunch references) meant to contrast with the more sobersided writings of the Puritans, a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, or are you just genuinely following idiosyncratic (and/or syncretic) impulses and associations to a larger purpose? [Ed: This is a terribly worded question. We're aware of the problem and the writer will be punished.]

SV: I don't really sit down at my desk every morning and think, "I'm going to follow idiosyncratic associations to a larger purpose." I am, however, feeling rather satisfied that you use the word "breezy." Do you know how hard it is to write a breezy book about the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony?

I'm not a scholar. I'm a writer. Whatever I'm writing about, Puritans included, I simply try and make the writing as un-generic as possible. Sometimes that means joking around. Sometimes that means milking emotions. Sometimes that means executing some analogy between past and present. Basically, my subject is America. So it stands to reason that whatever is happening in America seeps into my work.

But to answer your question, sort of: the way the book is structured simply reflects how I think. For example, as someone who came of age during the Cold War, there's no way I can think about the Puritans' communitarian/authoritarian ethos without linking it to Soviet communism. That ends up in the book in this section that mentions the film Reds and former Communist Whittaker Chambers's book Witness as a way of talking about the disconnect between Puritan ideals of community and the often totalitarian methods Winthrop and his fellow magistrates used to keep their community in line.

You mention how the "outcast Puritan" Roger Williams lived in exile with the Native Americans in the area. It's hard to imagine how he kept a starched collar clean (or starched). But what's your sense of how difficult it was for him to adapt to Native American life--outside of his attempts to adapt his hosts to Puritan morality.

SV: One of my favorite works from colonial New England's literature is Williams's book A Key into the Language of America, his English-Algonquin dictionary-type tome. It contains really heartfelt and lovely indications that he was just so grateful to the Narragansett for taking him in after he got banished from Massachusetts.

One thing I like about the book though is that it's just so real. He'll talk up how welcoming the Indians were but he also describes their wigwams as "filthy, smoky holes." And he was clearly alarmed by their religious ceremonies which he thought of as out-and-out devil worship. Decades after his snowy flight from Massachusetts into the wilderness he was still complaining about how cold it was. One reason I find him so touching is that he's so lonesome. He doesn't fit in with his fellow Puritans in Massachusetts and he doesn't fit in with the natives.

Part of your search in the book seems to deal with the roots of American exceptionalism, part with getting a sense of what really happened--these two elements seem related, in that it's our blindness to our past that permits our faith in our future wonderfulness. Why do you hate America?

SV: I pretty much admit that I myself can't really escape American exceptionalism, this idea handed down to us from the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay that we're God's new chosen people. It's such a deep and strong part of the American DNA that I still find myself buying into it even though I know it's ridiculous and I don't even believe in God.

I love the irony of the Massachusetts Bay Colony's official seal, the one they brought over with them from England-an Indian saying "Come over and help us." We're still like that: We're here to help whether you want our help or not! I do think it's worth trying to be aware of this mindset and to question it in light of current events.

Someone writing for posterity might not record the time they closed the bar at 1 a.m. Do you think the sources you found give you a whole person, and not just what they thought about?

SV: I'm not interested in the whole person. Take John Winthrop, who is more or less my main character. I mention a few biographical things about his marriage and his children and his sea voyage over from England.

But I'm mostly interested in what he thought about religion, government, community, Indians and how much Roger Williams was getting on his nerves. I don't really give a hoot what he had for breakfast or how he felt about his mom. I find his sermon "A Model of Christian Charity" a thrilling piece of writing.

Puritan New England was just so wonderfully heady. I just had so much fun chronicling all the hilariously petty disputes and arguments and debates. My affection for the piles of Puritan writing is one reason I wrote the book. Such vigor!