South of the Northeast Kingdom (Directions)
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South of the Northeast Kingdom (Directions) Details
Compared to some of its New England neighbors, Vermont has seemed to long-time resident David Mamet a place of intrinsic energy and progressiveness, love and commonality. It has lived up to the old story that settlers came up the Connecticut River and turned right to get to New Hampshire and left to get to Vermont. Is Vermont's tradition of live and let live an accident of geography, the happy by-product of 200 years of national neglect, an emanation of its Scots-Irish regional character? Exploring the ways in which his decades in Vermont have shaped his character and his work, Mamet examines each of these strands and how the state's free-thinking tradition can survive in an age of increasing conglomeration. The result is a highly personal and compelling portrait of a truly unique place.
Reviews
Reviewers R. M. Perterson, Jeffrey Weigand and Peter S. Tobias, in my view, are spot-on in their criticisms of the book. Stream of consciousness writing is often hard to follow. With Mamet, it is harder because of his wild transtions to political opinions or the evils of Enron or the greed of polticians. His transitions are confusing and over generalized.The dust jacket of the hardcover tells us this is a memoir from a sardonic and articulate Jewish city kid who falls in love with Vermont. He has lived in Vermont forty years (he repeatedly tells us this fact –REPEATEDLY) and reminds us that most of his good Vermont friends are Jewish and his Vermont community is a Jewish clan. Tedious and overdone, but hey, it’s his memoir. It is not a vivid portrait of Yankee Vermont as the book jacket suggests. Mamet exhausts the reader with his overdone characterizations of himself, after living in Vermont for 40 years, as: “foreigner”, “interloper”and inauthentic (page 135). Come on, after 40 years! What’s that insecurity all about.For articualte, authentic well written essays from a city kid spending his summers on his grand parents New England farm (and has lived there since 1979) may I suggest Donald Hall, United States Poet Laureate, e.g. String too Short to be Saved, Seasons at Eagle Pond, Eagle Pond.There are several anecdotes about hunting and guns. Not stories about hunting and guns one would think a Vermonter might tell, rather, how much money he spent for an antique gun he had expensively restored in that “dour”, politically right-wing state, New Hamsphire. There are several references to him walking in the woods with his hunting rifle – end of story. Looking the part. He likes reminiscing with WWII veterans, going to the 4th of July parades to see the veterans in their uniforms and rubbing elbows with police detectives and local law enforcement. Vicariously, he likes war stories. I can’t help wondering why there was no memoir note of his thoughts, feelings and experiences as a young man who was draft age for the Vietnam war because there are many references to guns, WWII veterans, hunting – the macho things. For men his age, the Vietnam war era was a uniquely defining experience worth a sentence or two in a memoir like this.