"The Wordy Shipmates" has Vowell sifting among the writings, artifacts and present-day vapor trails of "those Puritans who fall between the cracks of 1620 Plymouth and 1692 Salem," or between Thanksgiving and the witch trials of Early American cliche. 4 persist: laying out a premise only to lose track of it later and, as researcher and humorist, not knowing when to say when.
That no one in contemporary letters does it better than her makes it all the more disappointing that bad habits from book No.
Both of the latter, "Assassination Vacation" and her latest, "The Wordy Shipmates," have Vowell thrusting hands into a tide pool of American history and wisecracking her way through the process of discovery. The author of five books has traded the essayistic chunks and chapters that formed the incisive, heavy-eyed hilarity of her first three efforts in favor of the discursive, heavily researched monologues that gird the last two. Something has gone wrong about two-thirds of the way through the literary voyage of Sarah Vowell.
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