OFF RAMP

Observant, compassionate collection of newspaper pieces exploring America’s odd corners.

Oklahoman Stuever, now a Washington Post Style section writer, having reported from locales including LA, Albuquerque, and Austin, describes his beat of defunct malls, K-Marts, and sci-fi conventions as “Elsewhere . . . the kind of world where I look for ideas, for joy and loss and the marginal things, the funny quirks of what is bland and true.” The 26 essays and profiles here range from offbeat consumer studies to artful deconstructions of common rituals, all of them underpinned by notes of angst, isolation, and millennial fearfulness. The self-deprecating author (“I got lost a lot . . . and I was not terribly cool”) proves adept at fly-on-the-wall reportage, insinuating himself into the lives of quirky or mildly desperate individuals without imposing his own personality on their situations. Many essays find a starting point in pop-culture phenomena: “Panic Rooms,” for example, depicts the cable TV show Trading Spaces’ Darwinian effect on two home-owning strivers in Plano, Texas, who submit to its redecorating schemes. “The Josie Problem” and “Wonder Woman’s Powers” look at the histories, creators, and strange commercial afterlives of a TV show and a comic-book series that both present oddball visions of female empowerment and are beloved by gay men. Some pieces were clearly written in response to current events: “Recallifornia” finds an ideal metaphor for that state’s troubled gubernatorial process in the lonely, cynical, yet indefatigable person of Gary Coleman, while “Evil Queens” reminds us of Richard Hatch, the Survivor schemer we loved to hate. “Modern Bride” is a detailed yet ambiguous take on a mid-sized wedding thrown by a middle-class Hispanic family. The best essays—a piece on storage-unit culture and a haunting personalization of the Oklahoma City bombing—dig deeper into our domestic isolation and wanderlust. Stuever’s work recalls that of David Sedaris or Augusten Burroughs (who provides a blurb), but it’s generally sweeter and less biting.

Low-key, modest pleasures.