Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Monday February 7, 2011
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NEW IN PAPERBACK The case for an unplugged life
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Reviewed by Nora Krug
The domestic scene that Susan Maushart describes in her memoir "The Winter of Our Disconnect"  (Tarcher, $16.95) will resonate with many parents of teenagers: three children, 18, 15 and 14, locked in front of screens, "uploading photos from last night's gathering, stalking a potential boyfriend's ex-girlfriend's Facebook friends," howling at the latest YouTube gag. So ingrained were these habits that the hum of her son's PC, Maushart writes, had become "as familiar and insistent as my own pulse." Until one day Maushart, a journalist and single mother then living in Perth, Australia, decided to pull the plug: "I was worried about my kids." (Also, as someone who slept with her iPhone, Maushart was worried about herself.) Her book chronicles the six months her family spent living technology-free. (There were, however, some important caveats: Computers could be used outside the home, while cell phones were allowed if they were used only as phones. LOL.)
What transpired, as one might expect, was a mix of balking and bonding. Gradually, the whining about boredom and threats to move out evolved into happy if not quite Norman Rockwell moments: kids playing musical instruments, cooking meals and playing Sudoku, gathering around the fireplace to eat and share. Sleep habits improved; rooms were cleaned; library cards were rediscovered. "I'm not saying anybody suddenly went from Hannah Montana to Homer," Maushart writes. But "I watched as my kids awoke slowly from the state of cognitus interruptus ... to become more focused, logical thinkers."
Writing in a breezy, conversational style, Maushart weaves anecdotes with statistics and cultural studies. The result is a book that itself suffers from cognitus interruptus. Nonetheless, she makes an inspiring and entertaining case for the unplugged life, if not for the considered one.
Parents need not get so exercised about technology, the authors of "Not Quite Adults" (Bantam, $15) argue. "The much-maligned digital age," Richard Settersten and Barbara E. Ray explain, in fact "might be a panacea" for the many young people today who lack ties to a community beyond their families.
Reaching into the ether for connections is one of the many ways that members of Generation Y are redefining the act of growing up: "The path to adulthood is no longer one of independence, but interdependence," Settersten and Ray write. This also means living at home longer, delaying marriage, and job-hopping. Some have blamed kids and parents for this "failure to launch," but Settersten and Ray take a broader view, examining the economic and cultural forces that have sparked and prolonged the phenomenon -- a poor job market and the limits of a college degree among them.
The book, which is based on extensive data and field research, has been criticized as an apology for lazy kids and indulgent parenting. Indeed, statements such as "tough love rarely works" won't sit well with Tiger Mother types, nor will the observation that helicopter parents "aren't so bad after all" appeal to cool free-rangers. Still, the book is a thoughtful, thorough analysis that offers constructive suggestions for parents to gently lead their 20-somethings out the door.
From our previous reviews
Donna Rifkind praised Julie Orringer's "The Invisible Bridge" (Vintage, $15.95), a fictional "account of the very particular way in which Hungary's Jewish population was decimated by the Holocaust," for its "brilliant use of a deliberately old-fashioned realism to define individual fates engulfed by history's deadly onrush."
In "The Girl Who Fell From the Sky" (Algonquin, $13.95), a first novel by Heidi W. Durrow, a young biracial girl is forced to face harsh realities following a family tragedy. Lisa Page described the book as "a modern story about identity and survival."
Physician and medical journalist Randi Hutter Epstein offers an "engrossing survey of the history of childbirth" in "Get Me Out" (Norton, $15.95), according to Stephen Lowman.
"Stuff" (Mariner, $14.95), by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee, is a thoughtful study of hoarding in which the authors, both academics, "take the position that hoarding is an actual physical and neurological condition that may be related to OCD or autism or Asperger's syndrome," noted Carolyn See, who called the book "utterly engrossing."
In "Nothing Was the Same" (Vintage, $14.95), a memoir about her late husband, psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison offers "a clear-eyed view of illness and death, sanity and insanity, love and grief," Reeve Lindbergh wrote.
"The Talented Miss Highsmith" (Picador, $24), Joan Schenkar's biography of Patricia Highsmith, reveals a "catalog of torments" about the celebrated thriller writer, according to Jonathan Lethem.
A.N. Wilson's "Our Times" (Picador, $20), the third volume in his history of modern Britain, "is a sharp-tongued elegy to what Wilson considers a vanished country," according to Stephen Lowman.
Nora Krug's paperback column appears once a month. She can be reached at krugn(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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ZOMBIE SPACESHIP WASTELAND: A Book by Patton Oswalt
Patton Oswalt
Scribner
ISBN 978-1439149089
191 pages
$24
Reviewed by Mike Sacks
Patton Oswalt, a Sterling-raised comedian who toiled for years in Washington (D.C.) area comedy clubs, is one of those rare performers whose material translates to any medium without losing its sharpness -- including, for the first time, print. Part memoir, part graphic novel, part collection of humor essays, his "Zombie Spaceship Wasteland" is a little ungainly but extremely likable.
The book will be valuable to anyone who wants to know how to get from here to there. Simply: how to go from being a broke, carless teenage movie usher in the Towncenter strip mall in the 1980s, just an outcast "stuck in the syrup of the suburbs" and surrounded by "paint huffers and skate rats," to becoming one of the most respected comics working. Oswalt has appeared in more than 25 movies (including playing the lead in 2009's wonderful "Big Fan"), released numerous albums and toured with a veritable who's who of today's top comedic talent, including Zach Galifianakis, David Cross and Todd Barry.
So, how did he do it? It helps to start out, as Oswalt did, as a "dopey faced" kid obsessed with science fiction and post-apocalyptic fantasy board games that allow a player to create highly imaginative, personal worldviews and characters. Oswalt breaks it down into even further geeked-out minutiae. In his opinion, the average teen outcast falls into one of three highly specific categories: those who prefer zombie stories (and feel a "disgust with the slick and false"), those who enjoy spaceship stories (and are content with "their insular, slightly muted lives" because their "deflector shields (are) up"), or those who, like him, tend to gravitate to stories that take place after the apocalypse (and are "confused but fascinated" by the blandness of the world).
For Oswalt, this blandness begins to evaporate with a little help from Monty Python, Richard Pryor and George Carlin -- and with the arrival of an even more exciting, possibly treacherous, obsession: "I went to a pool party -- the first one I was skinny enough to swim at without my shirt. I made out with a girl, and the curve of her hip and the soft jut of shoulder blades in a bikini forever trumped the imagined sensation of a sword pommel or spell book."
While Oswalt might have written more about the skills he used to wend his way through the bleak landscape toward success, it is well worth it to join him on his odyssey. That the hero of this tale is a formerly overweight nerd who hails from suburban Virginia makes it only more gratifying -- especially for those outcasts dreaming that, one day, they too will be able to bridge the gap between here and there.
Mike Sacks is on the editorial staff of Vanity Fair magazine and is the author of three books, including a forthcoming collection of humor pieces, "Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason."
Copyright 2011 Washington Post Writers Group
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