An odd tale, reflecting the motivations of contemporary group-think, but otherwise skippable.
Idiosyncratic memoir of a London journalist’s experiences forming a “karma army.”
In 2002, Wallace placed a small ad in a London paper exhorting readers to “Join Me!” by sending him a passport-sized photo, but giving no other details about his reasons or intentions. He was inspired to this eccentric project by boredom and a great-uncle’s death; at the funeral, he learned that the uncle had been much mocked in youth for attempting to form a farming commune and impulsively decided to revive the project. Wallace was so pleased to meet the first iconoclasts who joined—each of these early meetings is recreated in exhaustive detail—that he began to obsessively propagate Join Me, spreading the word online and with flyers, still without divulging any specifics. While this alienated some, resulting in a bit of hate mail, a surprising number of high-spirited nonconformists continued to join this collective (or “cult,” as many wags dubbed it), leading its instigator to set a thousand joinees as an ostensible goal. The organization’s purpose amounted to vaguely defined minor philanthropy: “They wanted to do good,” Wallace enthuses about his joinees, “they just never had enough of an excuse before.” Yet the “good” seems limited to random acts of kindness directed toward elderly pensioners, while the rambling narrative becomes increasingly subordinate to the ego-demands of its author’s exhibitionistic and hectoring personality. (Even his shabbily treated, long-suffering girlfriend finally wises up and dumps him.) For a sense of movement, the joke-heavy prose relies principally on disingenuous false surprise and wisecracks that refer back to the preceding paragraph, tactics that quickly become tiresome. By the time we reach the minor-key denouement—Wallace intends to relinquish Join Me, but is voted the collective’s “Leader”—only the most guileless readers will think the journey worthwhile.
An odd tale, reflecting the motivations of contemporary group-think, but otherwise skippable.Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-452-28501-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This early reader is an excellent introduction to the March on Washington in 1963 and the important role in the march played by Martin Luther King Jr. Ruffin gives the book a good, dramatic start: “August 28, 1963. It is a hot summer day in Washington, D.C. More than 250,00 people are pouring into the city.” They have come to protest the treatment of African-Americans here in the US. With stirring original artwork mixed with photographs of the events (and the segregationist policies in the South, such as separate drinking fountains and entrances to public buildings), Ruffin writes of how an end to slavery didn’t mark true equality and that these rights had to be fought for—through marches and sit-ins and words, particularly those of Dr. King, and particularly on that fateful day in Washington. Within a year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had been passed: “It does not change everything. But it is a beginning.” Lots of visual cues will help new readers through the fairly simple text, but it is the power of the story that will keep them turning the pages. (Easy reader. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-448-42421-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
Sedaris’s sense of life’s absurdity is on full, fine display, as is his emotional body armor. Fortunately, he has plenty of...
Known for his self-deprecating wit and the harmlessly eccentric antics of his family, Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day, 2000, etc.) can also pinch until it hurts in this collection of autobiographical vignettes.
Once again we are treated to the author’s gift for deadpan humor, especially when poking fun at his family and neighbors. He draws some of the material from his youth, like the portrait of the folks across the street who didn’t own a TV (“What must it be like to be so ignorant and alone?” he wonders) and went trick-or-treating on November first. Or the story of the time his mother, after a fifth snow day in a row, chucked all the Sedaris kids out the door and locked it. To get back in, the older kids devised a plan wherein the youngest, affection-hungry Tiffany, would be hit by a car: “Her eagerness to please is absolute and naked. When we ask her to lie in the middle of the street, her only question was ‘Where?’ ” Some of the tales cover more recent incidents, such as his sister’s retrieval of a turkey from a garbage can; when Sedaris beards her about it, she responds, “Listen to you. If it didn’t come from Balducci’s, if it wasn’t raised on polenta and wild baby acorns, it has to be dangerous.” But family members’ square-peggedness is more than a little pathetic, and the fact that they are fodder for his stories doesn’t sit easy with Sedaris. He’ll quip, “Your life, your privacy, your occasional sorrow—it’s not like you're going to do anything with it,” as guilt pokes its nose around the corner of the page. Then he’ll hitch himself up and lacerate them once again, but not without affection even when the sting is strongest. Besides, his favorite target is himself: his obsessive-compulsiveness and his own membership in this company of oddfellows.
Sedaris’s sense of life’s absurdity is on full, fine display, as is his emotional body armor. Fortunately, he has plenty of both.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-316-14346-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2004
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