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State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America
From the bestselling editors of The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup comes an American road trip in book form: original writing on all 50 states by 50 of our finest novelists, journalists, and essayists
Inspired by the example of the legendary WPA American Guide series of the 1930s and '40s, now 50 of our foremost writers have produced original pieces of reportage and memoir that capture the 50 states in our time, creating a fresh portrait of America as it lives and breathes today.
At turns poignant and funny, and always insightful, these 50 writers tell us something lasting and revealing about each state through personal memory or contemporary reporting that captures the essential qualities that make each state its own. With an array of revealing facts and figures comparing the 50 states in a range of surprising measures (toothlessness, military enlistment, suicide), State by State is more than an anthology: It is a classic American road movie in book form.
Featuring original writing on all fifty states
Alabama by George Packer
Alaska by Paul Greenberg
Arizona by Lydia Millet
Arkansas by Kevin Brockmeier
California by William T. Vollmann
Colorado by Benjamin Kunkel
Connecticut by Rick Moody
Delaware by Craig Taylor
Florida by Joshua Ferris
Georgia by Ha Jin
Hawaii by Tara Bray Smith
Idaho by Anthony Doerr
Illinois by Dave Eggers
Indiana by Susan Choi
Iowa by Dagoberto Gilb
Kansas by Jim Lewis
Kentucky by John Jeremiah Sullivan
Louisiana by Joshua Clark
Maine by Heidi Julavits
Maryland by Myla Goldberg
Massachusetts by John Hodgman
Michigan by Mohammed Naseehu Ali
Minnesota by Philip Connors
Mississippi by Barry Hannah
Missouri by Jacki Lyden
Montana by Sarah Vowell
Nebraska by Alexander Payne
Nevada by Charles Bock
New Hampshire by Will Blythe
New Jersey by Anthony Bourdain
New Mexico by Ellery Washington
New York by Jonathan Franzen
North Carolina by Randall Kenan
North Dakota by Louise Erdrich
Ohio by Susan Orlean
Oklahoma by S.E. Hinton
Oregon by Joe Sacco
Pennsylvania by Andrea Lee
Rhode Island by Jhumpa Lahiri
South Carolina by Jack Hitt
South Dakota by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
Tennessee by Ann Patchett
Texas by Cristina Henríquez
Utah by David Rakoff
Vermont by Alison Bechdel
Virginia by Tony Horwitz
Washington by Carrie Brownstein
West Virginia by Jayne Anne Phillips
Wisconsin by Daphne Beal
Wyoming by Alexandra Fuller
Inspired by the example of the legendary WPA American Guide series of the 1930s and '40s, now 50 of our foremost writers have produced original pieces of reportage and memoir that capture the 50 states in our time, creating a fresh portrait of America as it lives and breathes today.
At turns poignant and funny, and always insightful, these 50 writers tell us something lasting and revealing about each state through personal memory or contemporary reporting that captures the essential qualities that make each state its own. With an array of revealing facts and figures comparing the 50 states in a range of surprising measures (toothlessness, military enlistment, suicide), State by State is more than an anthology: It is a classic American road movie in book form.
Featuring original writing on all fifty states
Alabama by George Packer
Alaska by Paul Greenberg
Arizona by Lydia Millet
Arkansas by Kevin Brockmeier
California by William T. Vollmann
Colorado by Benjamin Kunkel
Connecticut by Rick Moody
Delaware by Craig Taylor
Florida by Joshua Ferris
Georgia by Ha Jin
Hawaii by Tara Bray Smith
Idaho by Anthony Doerr
Illinois by Dave Eggers
Indiana by Susan Choi
Iowa by Dagoberto Gilb
Kansas by Jim Lewis
Kentucky by John Jeremiah Sullivan
Louisiana by Joshua Clark
Maine by Heidi Julavits
Maryland by Myla Goldberg
Massachusetts by John Hodgman
Michigan by Mohammed Naseehu Ali
Minnesota by Philip Connors
Mississippi by Barry Hannah
Missouri by Jacki Lyden
Montana by Sarah Vowell
Nebraska by Alexander Payne
Nevada by Charles Bock
New Hampshire by Will Blythe
New Jersey by Anthony Bourdain
New Mexico by Ellery Washington
New York by Jonathan Franzen
North Carolina by Randall Kenan
North Dakota by Louise Erdrich
Ohio by Susan Orlean
Oklahoma by S.E. Hinton
Oregon by Joe Sacco
Pennsylvania by Andrea Lee
Rhode Island by Jhumpa Lahiri
South Carolina by Jack Hitt
South Dakota by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
Tennessee by Ann Patchett
Texas by Cristina Henríquez
Utah by David Rakoff
Vermont by Alison Bechdel
Virginia by Tony Horwitz
Washington by Carrie Brownstein
West Virginia by Jayne Anne Phillips
Wisconsin by Daphne Beal
Wyoming by Alexandra Fuller
and an afterword on Washington, D.C.: A Conversation with Edward P. Jones
608 pages, Hardcover
First published September 16, 2008
225 people are currently reading
3041 people want to read
About the author
Matt Weiland
12 books10 followersMatt Weiland was formerly the Deputy Editor of The Paris Review. He has been an editor at Granta, The Baffler and The New Press, and he oversaw a documentary radio unit at NPR. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, New York Observer, The Nation and The New Republic. He is the co-editor, with Sean Wilsey, of The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup and, with Thomas Frank, of Commodify Your Dissent: The Business of Culture in the New Gilded Age. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 237 reviews
January 9, 2009
Someone reviewed this as being written by authors native to each state and that is not the case, which is perhaps the problem. Another problem is that you can't find 50 Dave Eggers or Susan Orleans, so you get some states with less-than-stellar (or lazy) writers. Of the states I read, Ohio and Illinois were lovely...well written, with genuine love for the state as well as facts and information. Iowa's essay (my native state) was written by someone who didn't seem to know anything about Iowa. I think he was just visiting. For instance, how could you be in Iowa and have to LEARN the difference between field corn and sweet corn? That's something Iowans are born knowing! (Just kidding, but really, come on.) Anyone at University of Iowa's writers' school surely could have written something much, much better. Michigan's essay was sweet but written by someone who had only lived there a few years of his life.
April 1, 2009
Y’all, this book is GREAT. I normally don’t read things like this, so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
As you may know, the book is a collection of 50 essays, each written by a different author and each focused on a different state. I chose to read the essays in the order they appear in the book (alphabetical by state), and I did so slowly and methodically, interspersing my reading with random fiction books as well. This is not a book that wants to be plowed through like a cheap paperback. It is to be savored.
If you don’t believe me when I say this is a great book, here are some facts to illustrate my point (I’m resorting to a list because I cannot seem to structure a well-crafted or hell, even a crappily-crafted paragraph today).
(1) About half of the essays read less like informative collections of facts or the history of the states and more like love stories to those states. I LOVE these essays. I LIKE the other ones, but these, I adore.
(2) I found myself surprised by which states’ essays I enjoyed and which I thought were just ho-hum. I mean, Idaho and Nebraska and North Dakota? Really? I’ve never thought much about those places, and now I totally want to go to them.
(3) I have been carrying this book around in my purse, despite the fact that it is a close-to-600-page hardback book.
(4) As I was digging around in my purse yesterday for my checkbook so that I could pay my therapist (a man in his late 50’s), I took the book out and he immediately said, “Oh! That’s a GREAT book!” We then chatted for a bit about which were our favorite essays and found that we preferred completely different ones. This tells me that (a) you don’t have to have the same taste as me to appreciate it and (b) it defies gender and age categorization.
(5) Few of us will actually get to know all 50 states in our lifetimes, and this book allows us to do a bit of armchair traveling.
(6) When I first received this book in the mail, I figured I’d read it and then offer to pass it along to the first person who wanted it. Now, though, I’ve realized that I don’t want to do this. I want this book on my shelf. I want to be able to pick it back up again and re-read it, or at least re-read certain parts. I want my kids to be able to refer to it while they’re learning about history and about this crazy gargantuan country of ours.
I cannot offer to mail this book to you, but I do hope you will pick it up on your own sometime. I can’t imagine you’ll be disappointed.
As you may know, the book is a collection of 50 essays, each written by a different author and each focused on a different state. I chose to read the essays in the order they appear in the book (alphabetical by state), and I did so slowly and methodically, interspersing my reading with random fiction books as well. This is not a book that wants to be plowed through like a cheap paperback. It is to be savored.
If you don’t believe me when I say this is a great book, here are some facts to illustrate my point (I’m resorting to a list because I cannot seem to structure a well-crafted or hell, even a crappily-crafted paragraph today).
(1) About half of the essays read less like informative collections of facts or the history of the states and more like love stories to those states. I LOVE these essays. I LIKE the other ones, but these, I adore.
(2) I found myself surprised by which states’ essays I enjoyed and which I thought were just ho-hum. I mean, Idaho and Nebraska and North Dakota? Really? I’ve never thought much about those places, and now I totally want to go to them.
(3) I have been carrying this book around in my purse, despite the fact that it is a close-to-600-page hardback book.
(4) As I was digging around in my purse yesterday for my checkbook so that I could pay my therapist (a man in his late 50’s), I took the book out and he immediately said, “Oh! That’s a GREAT book!” We then chatted for a bit about which were our favorite essays and found that we preferred completely different ones. This tells me that (a) you don’t have to have the same taste as me to appreciate it and (b) it defies gender and age categorization.
(5) Few of us will actually get to know all 50 states in our lifetimes, and this book allows us to do a bit of armchair traveling.
(6) When I first received this book in the mail, I figured I’d read it and then offer to pass it along to the first person who wanted it. Now, though, I’ve realized that I don’t want to do this. I want this book on my shelf. I want to be able to pick it back up again and re-read it, or at least re-read certain parts. I want my kids to be able to refer to it while they’re learning about history and about this crazy gargantuan country of ours.
I cannot offer to mail this book to you, but I do hope you will pick it up on your own sometime. I can’t imagine you’ll be disappointed.
April 11, 2019
"State By State" editors Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey had a neat idea here. Inspired by the state guides produced by the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s, Weiland and Wilsey set out to mimic that behemoth venture on a much smaller scale, giving 51 (Washington, D.C. rightly gets a chapter) different writers the opportunity to describe their personal experiences of a particular state.
The first thing that you need to know is that this isn't a travelogue in any real sense. Most of the authors here are striving to describe a sense of place, to give context to what each state means to them on a personal level. There are descriptions of geography to be found, of course, but the real landscape traveled here is of the mind and psyche, as the authors mine impressions and memories of past and present.
As you might expect with 51 different authors, the results are very much hit and miss. Some of the writing is exceptional, a good portion is average, and some is just downright confounding. The language in some of the sections can be coarse, and the chapter on California has a sexually explicit scene described in graphic detail, so this certainly isn't a book for youngsters.
It took me a long time to read this book. I found it difficult to digest more than one or two states per day. Part of my sloth-like pace was due to the personal nature of the memoirs presented here. I found it necessary to let the information soak in slowly, so that I could get the full set of impressions that each author wanted to convey. Sometimes, as with the aforementioned section on California, I just needed extra time to scratch my head and wonder, "what were they thinking?" I found some of the immigrant stories to be particularly powerful, but some of the others, like my home state of Texas for example, would have benefited by being written by a native.
I'll give editor Sean Wilsey bonus points for his introduction. He recounts stopping by my adopted hometown of Lockhart, Texas for some introspection and barbecue, and I can appreciate a man who likes to hit the backroads for some perspective and good eatin'. His book is physically handsome, and a challenging read. Not bad, but it could have been better.
CODA: This is another one of my older reviews that I brought out and dusted off in my effort to better chronicle the totality of my reading experiences through the years. I ended up keeping this volume around for a few years, then purging it when it came time to clear off some bookshelf space back when we were living smaller. I remember it being a handsome book, nice aesthetics. I also remember it being a kind of frustrating journey. The California chapter in particular sticks in my mind. I had no problem with the explicitness of the visit to an S&M club. My problem stemmed from the fact that the author seemed fixated on the performance aspect of what he was seeing, rather than trying to determine what was special about the scenes themselves, or the people who acted them out. The piece left me feeling like it was superficial, never really digging down deep into the phenomenon of S&M and certainly failing to cash in on how it related to the larger state of California. It was snappy, hip writing, tasty in parts, but as a reader I was kinda left with the empty wrapper afterwards.
I’d probably pick up this book again if I found it in a bargain bin or a library sale somewhere. It might be fun to revisit some of the articles and see how time has changed my impression of them. But I wouldn’t pay full price for the gig…..and that about sums up how I feel about the book as a whole.
CODA v. 2.0: The bit about Lockhart barbecue is the real deal by the way. We are indeed the Barbecue Capital of Texas, as described here on the Lockhart Chamber of Commerce webpage: On May 26, 1999 House Resolution #1024 was adopted by the 76th Texas Legislature naming Lockhart the 'Barbecue Capital of Texas,' then ratified by the Senate in the Fall of 2003. What that means is that we have some legendary ‘cue to be served in these here parts. I try to make a habit of grabbing some brisket and sausage at least once a month, and if you lived here you would, too. Yes, it really is that good. Yes, if you are ever here you need to sit down on a bench and eat straight off of that greasy butcher paper. No, I will not ship you some.
The first thing that you need to know is that this isn't a travelogue in any real sense. Most of the authors here are striving to describe a sense of place, to give context to what each state means to them on a personal level. There are descriptions of geography to be found, of course, but the real landscape traveled here is of the mind and psyche, as the authors mine impressions and memories of past and present.
As you might expect with 51 different authors, the results are very much hit and miss. Some of the writing is exceptional, a good portion is average, and some is just downright confounding. The language in some of the sections can be coarse, and the chapter on California has a sexually explicit scene described in graphic detail, so this certainly isn't a book for youngsters.
It took me a long time to read this book. I found it difficult to digest more than one or two states per day. Part of my sloth-like pace was due to the personal nature of the memoirs presented here. I found it necessary to let the information soak in slowly, so that I could get the full set of impressions that each author wanted to convey. Sometimes, as with the aforementioned section on California, I just needed extra time to scratch my head and wonder, "what were they thinking?" I found some of the immigrant stories to be particularly powerful, but some of the others, like my home state of Texas for example, would have benefited by being written by a native.
I'll give editor Sean Wilsey bonus points for his introduction. He recounts stopping by my adopted hometown of Lockhart, Texas for some introspection and barbecue, and I can appreciate a man who likes to hit the backroads for some perspective and good eatin'. His book is physically handsome, and a challenging read. Not bad, but it could have been better.
CODA: This is another one of my older reviews that I brought out and dusted off in my effort to better chronicle the totality of my reading experiences through the years. I ended up keeping this volume around for a few years, then purging it when it came time to clear off some bookshelf space back when we were living smaller. I remember it being a handsome book, nice aesthetics. I also remember it being a kind of frustrating journey. The California chapter in particular sticks in my mind. I had no problem with the explicitness of the visit to an S&M club. My problem stemmed from the fact that the author seemed fixated on the performance aspect of what he was seeing, rather than trying to determine what was special about the scenes themselves, or the people who acted them out. The piece left me feeling like it was superficial, never really digging down deep into the phenomenon of S&M and certainly failing to cash in on how it related to the larger state of California. It was snappy, hip writing, tasty in parts, but as a reader I was kinda left with the empty wrapper afterwards.
I’d probably pick up this book again if I found it in a bargain bin or a library sale somewhere. It might be fun to revisit some of the articles and see how time has changed my impression of them. But I wouldn’t pay full price for the gig…..and that about sums up how I feel about the book as a whole.
CODA v. 2.0: The bit about Lockhart barbecue is the real deal by the way. We are indeed the Barbecue Capital of Texas, as described here on the Lockhart Chamber of Commerce webpage: On May 26, 1999 House Resolution #1024 was adopted by the 76th Texas Legislature naming Lockhart the 'Barbecue Capital of Texas,' then ratified by the Senate in the Fall of 2003. What that means is that we have some legendary ‘cue to be served in these here parts. I try to make a habit of grabbing some brisket and sausage at least once a month, and if you lived here you would, too. Yes, it really is that good. Yes, if you are ever here you need to sit down on a bench and eat straight off of that greasy butcher paper. No, I will not ship you some.
July 7, 2025
I read this for a non-fiction book discussion group and it certainly made for a good discussion, as everyone talked about their favorite essays or how we would write about our favorite states. In the book, fifty writers were given assignments to write essays about the fifty states. The result is that we get fifty different perspectives on the states, some much more interesting than others.
One of the best essays is by Louise Erdrich on North Dakota; another good one is by Anne Patchett on Tennessee. Interestingly, author-chef Anthony Bourdain writes on New Jersey, baldly stating "we suck." Anyway, his essay is more about his growing up in the Garden State, which is interesting in itself, but offers no insight into the state.
Perhaps my favorite of all is Anthony Doerr on Idaho. He writes about the last of the Indian tribes in Idaho- the Tukudeka --and about their annihilation at the hands of the US Cavalry. He wonders what they felt as they faced their destruction and, looking into the future, leaves us with this thought- "some final band of humans will build signal fires among the rocks and look down at who or whatever has come to finish us off." Karma.
One of the best essays is by Louise Erdrich on North Dakota; another good one is by Anne Patchett on Tennessee. Interestingly, author-chef Anthony Bourdain writes on New Jersey, baldly stating "we suck." Anyway, his essay is more about his growing up in the Garden State, which is interesting in itself, but offers no insight into the state.
Perhaps my favorite of all is Anthony Doerr on Idaho. He writes about the last of the Indian tribes in Idaho- the Tukudeka --and about their annihilation at the hands of the US Cavalry. He wonders what they felt as they faced their destruction and, looking into the future, leaves us with this thought- "some final band of humans will build signal fires among the rocks and look down at who or whatever has come to finish us off." Karma.
May 13, 2024
Fifty states. Fifty essays. Fifty writers. Sew it all together, and you have a portrait of the United States, but it's not one that would be endorsed by any state chamber of commerce. This is an unvarnished, true-to-life, sometimes full of praise, sometimes denigrating, and occasionally disturbing portrait of each of the 50 states—and it's a must-read.
During the Great Depression, the WPA initiated the American Guide Series of the Federal Writers' Project. More than 6,000 writers and researchers wrote a 500-page book about each of the then-48 states. This is not that kind of book. The editors, Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, announce their intentions at the beginning, looking for something that is broad-minded and good-hearted, as well as bold, intimate, and funny. They wanted their writers to provide personal anecdotes and strange characters and hidden truths. It is to be a road trip in book form.
While they mostly succeeded, the essays for some states are far superior than others, primarily because the writers told personal stories that felt universal and included information and descriptions unique to that state, making it stand out.
Here are my state essay superlatives that, please note, describe the essay—not the state of the state:
• The top five best:
1. Louisiana
2. South Carolina
3. Florida
4. Pennsylvania
5. Rhode Island
• Most Humorous (as in LOL Funny!): Illinois (with South Carolina a close second)
• Most Ingenious: New York
• Most Poignant: New Mexico
• Most Interesting Facts: Michigan
• Most Poetically Lyrical Writing: Idaho
• Most Nostalgic: New Jersey
• Most Disturbing (Read with Caution): California
• The Weirdest: New Hampshire (with Oregon a close second)
• The Saddest: Mississippi
• Most Boring: Kentucky
The secret sauce is the list of writers. There are several Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award winners, an Academy Award-winning writer, journalists, playwrights, poets, musicians, college professors, and B-list actors. Some of the authors' names are easily recognizable: Anthony Bourdain, Susan Choi, Anthony Doerr, Dave Eggers, Louise Erdrich, Joshua Ferris, Jonathan Franzen, Cristina Henríquez, Tony Horwitz, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lydia Millet, Susan Orlean, George Packer, Ann Patchett, and Jayne Anne Phillips.
Each state essay begins with a list of facts and figures, including the capital, origin of the name, motto, state flower, and population by race and age. At the end of the book, look for a list of tables that will make geography geeks swoon: population shifts, mean time to commute to work, unemployment rate, military recruitment rate, gasoline consumption, breastfeeding rate, toothlessness rate, and many more.
Bonus: The "Afterword" is a conversation with novelist/short story writer Edward P. Jones about Washington, D.C.
The end of the book is an extensive glossary of the 50 states by numbers, including population statistics that will make your head spin—rates of bankruptcy filing, travel time to work, military recruitment rate, population claiming no religion, roller coasters and drive-in movie theaters, toothlessness, obesity, alcohol consumption, and lots more.
During the Great Depression, the WPA initiated the American Guide Series of the Federal Writers' Project. More than 6,000 writers and researchers wrote a 500-page book about each of the then-48 states. This is not that kind of book. The editors, Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey, announce their intentions at the beginning, looking for something that is broad-minded and good-hearted, as well as bold, intimate, and funny. They wanted their writers to provide personal anecdotes and strange characters and hidden truths. It is to be a road trip in book form.
While they mostly succeeded, the essays for some states are far superior than others, primarily because the writers told personal stories that felt universal and included information and descriptions unique to that state, making it stand out.
Here are my state essay superlatives that, please note, describe the essay—not the state of the state:
• The top five best:
1. Louisiana
2. South Carolina
3. Florida
4. Pennsylvania
5. Rhode Island
• Most Humorous (as in LOL Funny!): Illinois (with South Carolina a close second)
• Most Ingenious: New York
• Most Poignant: New Mexico
• Most Interesting Facts: Michigan
• Most Poetically Lyrical Writing: Idaho
• Most Nostalgic: New Jersey
• Most Disturbing (Read with Caution): California
• The Weirdest: New Hampshire (with Oregon a close second)
• The Saddest: Mississippi
• Most Boring: Kentucky
The secret sauce is the list of writers. There are several Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award winners, an Academy Award-winning writer, journalists, playwrights, poets, musicians, college professors, and B-list actors. Some of the authors' names are easily recognizable: Anthony Bourdain, Susan Choi, Anthony Doerr, Dave Eggers, Louise Erdrich, Joshua Ferris, Jonathan Franzen, Cristina Henríquez, Tony Horwitz, Jhumpa Lahiri, Lydia Millet, Susan Orlean, George Packer, Ann Patchett, and Jayne Anne Phillips.
Each state essay begins with a list of facts and figures, including the capital, origin of the name, motto, state flower, and population by race and age. At the end of the book, look for a list of tables that will make geography geeks swoon: population shifts, mean time to commute to work, unemployment rate, military recruitment rate, gasoline consumption, breastfeeding rate, toothlessness rate, and many more.
Bonus: The "Afterword" is a conversation with novelist/short story writer Edward P. Jones about Washington, D.C.
The end of the book is an extensive glossary of the 50 states by numbers, including population statistics that will make your head spin—rates of bankruptcy filing, travel time to work, military recruitment rate, population claiming no religion, roller coasters and drive-in movie theaters, toothlessness, obesity, alcohol consumption, and lots more.
February 3, 2010
This book is an anthology of 50 different writers, each writing a non fiction piece about thier impressions of one of the 50 states. Normally, this kind of book is right up my alley. i love travel writing- I get to visit intersting and exotic places w/o the horror of travelers diarrhea. haha But this book- not so much. On the plus side, the wirters were all very different, some were natives of the state, some just passing through, some (like oregon and vermont) were written in comic book format. it was interesting, it held my attention, BUT, I think every single one of them left me feeling depressed. not sure why. Maybe I'm just projecting, but it seemed the one thing the writers had in common was a rather bleak worldview. Instead of making me want to plan a road trip, I wound up thinking...maybe i'll just lay on the couch with the dog and watch a movie.
April 3, 2015
Definitely a mixed bag (as you can expect from an essay collection formed from the "do whatever you want" direction), but the concept and high points make the whole thing just awesome.
April 2, 2009
It's going to hard for me to assess this book without sounding too gushing, because it's probably my favorite book of the last year or two (favorite is not to be confused with the best, which it isn't). If you feel ahistorical and disconnected from America and what it means and used to mean, this book will change that (at least temporarily) and reintroduce you to the impossible America of literature. Reading it is like going on the Great American Road Trip you never took, with lots of wonderful, lyrical descriptions and telling details. It made me want to go pick up the old WPA guides to the states and dig through old issues of Life magazine and hop a boxcar to South Dakota, not necessarily in that order. Some other thoughts: (1) I wish that more of the essays were written by people who still lived in the states they wrote about. It seems like every third essay is written by someone who lives in New York City, and something feels wrong about a bunch of hip New York authors trying to capture the soul of the American heartland, even if it is where they grew up. (2) There is very little about the real population centers of the country in here. As in the Senate, the emptier states get disproportionate weight, and even the chapters about the populous states focus more on the emptier parts. I'm fine with this, because it's not as though LA or New York or Miami is suffering from a lack of attention, and most people reading this book are going to be coastal urbanite yuppies anyway. (3) This book reminded me for the first time in a long time of just how important and mythic the Mississippi River used to be. (4) The California, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, South Carolina chapters were my favorites.
Read
September 21, 2016I realized that I'm never going to finish this book. I read the states I care about and that's enough for me.
State-specific reviews:
State-specific reviews:
July 29, 2010
State by State is a collection of 50 essays each by a different author, each about a different state. The project was inspired by the WPA American guide series from the 1930s, and the essays range in style from memoir to travel essay to historical essay. Some of the writers have always lived in the state they write about, some have never lived there, and some have lived there for part of their lives, but they all have something to say about it. I was partial to the essays that were about a particular aspect of a state, like Joshua Ferris on playing in the water & working in diners as a kid in Key West, Florida, Tara Bray Smith on the island of Ni'ihau in Hawaii where only Native Hawaiians & the Robinson brothers live, and Charles Bock on growing up around his parent's pawn shop in downtown Las Vegas. I thought Dave Eggers' essay on Illinois was hilarious, and I really like the way Alison Bechdel draws, so her graphic treatment of Vermont was fun for me. But now that I'm making this list, I feel like there are so many others I'd like to mention, b/c really, there are so many interesting, funny, & sad things I learned about the Native Americans who used to live in the caves of Idaho, the bumper stickers of Arkansas, how to get a job picking corn in Iowa, ghost stories of Louisiana, and lightning & nuclear power in New Mexico, mountaintop mining in West Virginia, and a zillion other things that make each place unique. Not all of the essays were amazing, but the majority of them were at least pretty good.
Read
October 4, 2015Yes. Well. I didn't read the whole thing. I'll take the credit just the same. You wanna fight about it?
I was only interested in the little piece Vollmann has in here about California. And it's betitled "California", not "San Fransisco" as Hemmingson unfortunately mistitles it in William T. Vollmann: An Annotated Bibliography (Hemmingson's description is almost entirely wrong :: "WTV expounds on California and a San Francisco S/M brothel he visits, essaying on the nature of pain and sexual freedom" -- one section where he visits a performance at an S/M club and he essays on the right to consensual activities. The following section begins "SF, like other American cities, utilizes various invisibles--for instance, the Salvadoran day laborer Alex, who for ten dollars spoke to me in a mixture of English and Spanish..." Hemmingson's WTV bibliography needs to be thoroughly reworked, expanded, and reissued (the page=citation for the How You Are published excerpt is also ridiculously wrong)).
At any rate, this little thing (fourteen pages) will slip in very nicely among the pages of Imperial ; a few paragraphs even being familiar from that text.
I was only interested in the little piece Vollmann has in here about California. And it's betitled "California", not "San Fransisco" as Hemmingson unfortunately mistitles it in William T. Vollmann: An Annotated Bibliography (Hemmingson's description is almost entirely wrong :: "WTV expounds on California and a San Francisco S/M brothel he visits, essaying on the nature of pain and sexual freedom" -- one section where he visits a performance at an S/M club and he essays on the right to consensual activities. The following section begins "SF, like other American cities, utilizes various invisibles--for instance, the Salvadoran day laborer Alex, who for ten dollars spoke to me in a mixture of English and Spanish..." Hemmingson's WTV bibliography needs to be thoroughly reworked, expanded, and reissued (the page=citation for the How You Are published excerpt is also ridiculously wrong)).
At any rate, this little thing (fourteen pages) will slip in very nicely among the pages of Imperial ; a few paragraphs even being familiar from that text.
December 21, 2008
Skippable in my opinion. The chapter on Colorado was my favorite. The one on Indiana though, had little to nothing to do with the state at all. Not what I was looking for.
March 31, 2013
I was not aware of this book when it was published in 2008, but am really glad to have stumbled across it now, working back from the essay on New York contributed by Jonathan Franzen and republished in his 2012 collection, Farther Away. It's clever, but others in the book are equally good, or better. State by State was inspired by a Depression-era series; the Works Progress Administration hired unemployed authors to write volumes on each of the (then 48) states. This time, it's a private venture, in one volume, but it's a treasure trove of essays by a diverse crew of writers, including William T. Vollman (California), Dave Eggers (Illinois), Ha Jin (Georgia), Jacki Lyden (Missouri), Louise Erdrich (North Dakota), and Alison Bechdel (Vermont, one of two entries in the form of comics), just to name a few. The author list is overweighted with residents of New York City and contributors to This American Life, but any collection of 50-odd essays is likely be skewed somehow. Collectively, the essays do a good job of reflecting the experiences of long-term residents, immigrants, folks who grew up and moved away, and temporary visitors. In some cases, particularly for the most personal essays, I finished an essay thinking, 'well, they spent ten pages on this state and never got out of the main cities', or, 'well, that may be one slice of that state, but it doesn't match my experience there at all' - but that ended up making the essays more rather than less interesting. Other authors make a real effort to survey their states. Some of my favorite contributions included: Dagoberto Gilb (Iowa, with a particular focus on migrant workers in the corn fields); Jack Hitt (South Carolina, on the transformation of Charleston); Randall Kenan (North Carolina, a triptych on pigs); Jhumpa Lahiri (Rhode Island, one immigrant family's experience). Virtually all were worth the time.
December 10, 2009
This book was inspired by a WPA project of the 1930's. At that time, the government commissioned writers in each of the states to write a book about their state: factual, informational, guidebook type. The editors of State by State, instead chose writers of note to each write an essay/article about one of the 50 states, specifically not in guidebook form. Rather they were looking for an essential experience of any type that would give the reader a flavor of the modern day, rather than historical or geographical, view of the state. The result is an amazing collection of writings on each of the fifty states. Some are so sad: dispelling myths of our past or our imagination. The world is more crowded, the skies less blue, and the grass less green than it used to be. Others are really informative and hopeful. But all are interesting and unique. For example, the one about Georgia is not written by a white cracker or a black descendant of a former slave. Rather it is written by a Chinese immigrant who settled as an adult with his wife and son in Georgia where he had a teaching job at Emory University.
This is not a page-turner, burn the midnight oil type of book. But it's one I want to have around for returning to whenever I am in the mood for a piece of Americana from a modern day perspective. There is an interesting section of statistical information at the back of the book which I found delightful. It includes rankings of each state in a variety of interesting categories ranging from "most populated" to "highest rate of toothlessness". It's great for guessing games with your dinner guests.
This is not a page-turner, burn the midnight oil type of book. But it's one I want to have around for returning to whenever I am in the mood for a piece of Americana from a modern day perspective. There is an interesting section of statistical information at the back of the book which I found delightful. It includes rankings of each state in a variety of interesting categories ranging from "most populated" to "highest rate of toothlessness". It's great for guessing games with your dinner guests.
January 18, 2009
Love the concept of this book. Inspired by the WPA 1930's American Guide Series, editors commissioned 50 writers to write essays on 50 states. About 25% of these are amazing and these are worth the price of the book alone. Dave Eggers writes a genius essay on Illinois, John Hodgeman makes you laugh out loud as he writes about Massachusetts, and Anthony Bourdain writes of growing up in New Jersey in the shadow of NYC. New writers like Joshua Ferris (Florida) and Charles Bock (Nevada) show their up-and-coming talents, while more well-seasoned writers like Ann Pachett (Tennessee), S.E. Hinton (Oklahoma), and Rick Moody (Connecticut) more than hold their own as well.
Unfortunately, about 25% of these essays are boring and suffer by trying to paint too broad a picture of their state or conversely, focus too narrowly on a subject. At 500+ pages though, you can skip a few of these and still get your money's worth and learn plenty about the USA.
Unfortunately, about 25% of these essays are boring and suffer by trying to paint too broad a picture of their state or conversely, focus too narrowly on a subject. At 500+ pages though, you can skip a few of these and still get your money's worth and learn plenty about the USA.
July 24, 2016
Ha! I totally forgot I'd read this book!
It was nearly perfect. Short vignettes. A couple of writers were very irritating, but their sections were skip-able. The other writers were honest and reflective and sometimes very amusing. I only remember a couple of the pieces. Said Sayrafiezadeh's piece on one of the Dakotas, where he and his girlfriend realize they're fishing, and share a moment of "is that all there is?", and the really irritating one about California where the writer kept calling his wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/partner/whatever "my sweetheart." He did so to make some dumbassed literary point that I didn't bother to parse out, because I was busy being irritated at some other narrative unconventionality he was dragging around the playground. It's like he wouldn't leave until we all acknowledged him and said yes, you're unconventional and unblinking. But you're also kind of boring.
It was nearly perfect. Short vignettes. A couple of writers were very irritating, but their sections were skip-able. The other writers were honest and reflective and sometimes very amusing. I only remember a couple of the pieces. Said Sayrafiezadeh's piece on one of the Dakotas, where he and his girlfriend realize they're fishing, and share a moment of "is that all there is?", and the really irritating one about California where the writer kept calling his wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/partner/whatever "my sweetheart." He did so to make some dumbassed literary point that I didn't bother to parse out, because I was busy being irritated at some other narrative unconventionality he was dragging around the playground. It's like he wouldn't leave until we all acknowledged him and said yes, you're unconventional and unblinking. But you're also kind of boring.
October 28, 2010
This collection is a perfect match for William Least Heat Moon's "Blue Highway" if you want to capture the true spirit and history of America. One is essentially a travel journal while the other provides multiple perspectives on the individual personalities of states. The essays are varied but never disappointing. There was also the additional surprise of gaining exposure to a unique new author that you might otherwise have never heard from. In fact, as a result of several essays, I've noted authors that I intend to explore further.
The book it itself is an undertaking and I would imagine that there are few that would read it cover to cover. However it is the kind of book that remains on your shelf, being pulled out every now and then for a quick read on, say Wyoming or Alaska.
A nice find. Entertaining and informative.
The book it itself is an undertaking and I would imagine that there are few that would read it cover to cover. However it is the kind of book that remains on your shelf, being pulled out every now and then for a quick read on, say Wyoming or Alaska.
A nice find. Entertaining and informative.
December 2, 2008
I really wanted to like this book. The premise was promising: Native writers take on their home state. I expected something witty and clever about growing up/living/working/loving in each of the 50 entries. Unfortuantely, that was not the case. Many of the stories are not even written by natives, they're transplants or worse yet; journalists sent to "discover" the state for themselves.
If you are expecting a charming travelogue or memoire, look elsewhere. If you want to know about the population, average age, divorce rate, % of toothless citizens, etc, the appendixes in the back are interesting. Otherwise, save yourself some time and get a travel guide instead. It's about as entertaining.
If you are expecting a charming travelogue or memoire, look elsewhere. If you want to know about the population, average age, divorce rate, % of toothless citizens, etc, the appendixes in the back are interesting. Otherwise, save yourself some time and get a travel guide instead. It's about as entertaining.
March 16, 2009
my favorites were the throw-away states like Nebraska. I was semi-disappointed with the writers I was jazzed about being in the collection, pleasantly surprised by the unknown (to me) contributors. Some were more depressing than I was hoping, but it reminds us that there are blighted areas even within our own borders.
I want to read the WPA books now!
I want to read the WPA books now!
July 10, 2013
A few essays were fabulous, and these tended to be written by longterm residents. The essays written by visiting authors rarely seemed to capture the soul of the state.
An interesting anthology though, and worth reading for a few choice selections.
An interesting anthology though, and worth reading for a few choice selections.
February 4, 2009
I'm so excited to read this book, which is a compilation of essays by various authors - one per state. Have I mentioned I can't wait to read this?
December 22, 2010
It's wonderful to see comics included in a short story anthology!
February 24, 2013
Wonderful idea and marvelous execution. Truly makes me proud for my country. I wish they would put one of these out every 10 years or so...
January 15, 2016
The best essays go deep, deep, deep into the heart of modern America.
December 28, 2020
I'm not really sure how to shelve this beyond non-fiction (and even that is up for debate). Essays? Travel?
Back during The Great Depression, the government employed almost 6,000 writers via the WPA to create a collection of state guides that became known as The American Guide Series. Part history, part travel guide, part marketing campaign, the books have become collector's items. They were rich in photos, maps, interviews with locals, trivia, and observations about the people and places the writers observed. Weiland was inspired by them and thought it would be great to recreate them. Alas, he didn't quite have the same budget to work with as the Federal Workers Project, so he had to settle for one chapter per state rather than one book per state. It was a grand idea. Maybe too grand.
Each state begins with the trivia: the nickname, capitol, geographic center, bird, flower, etc. Then an author launches into an essay about his or her assigned state. In most cases, the stories are more about the author than the state. So it's really not at all like the WPA series, even in spirit. But maybe it reflects the modern US. After all, most people don't observe anymore. Takes time away from making it all about us and our navel gazing.
Collections often suffer in reviews because they can be such mixed bags. Different writing styles will appeal to different people. Personally, I enjoy John Hodgman, S. E. Hinton, and Susan Choi. I adore Anthony Bourdain, may he RIP. There were a few authors new to me that I might now look for more of their work. Myla Goldberg and Dave Eggers come to mind. Some of the other essays just tried too hard for a kind of jaded humor and sounded too much the same. Again, maybe that was because they were too intent on putting themselves in the middle of the essay instead of looking outward. And there were a couple that I just detested. I've never read anything by William T. Vollman, and his essay on California pretty much guarantees that I will go out of my way to avoid reading anything else by him. I have no idea WTF his deal is, but he sure sucked up a lot of space to say nothing of value about either the state or himself. Obviously, I've not missed anything there.
Perhaps the most telling thing I can say about the collection is this: I've lived in half a dozen states. Of the six corresponding essays, only one came close to capturing the feel and uniqueness of the place and people. I think it's no accident that essay was also one of the few in the book where the author didn't put him/her self in the middle of the essay.
Back during The Great Depression, the government employed almost 6,000 writers via the WPA to create a collection of state guides that became known as The American Guide Series. Part history, part travel guide, part marketing campaign, the books have become collector's items. They were rich in photos, maps, interviews with locals, trivia, and observations about the people and places the writers observed. Weiland was inspired by them and thought it would be great to recreate them. Alas, he didn't quite have the same budget to work with as the Federal Workers Project, so he had to settle for one chapter per state rather than one book per state. It was a grand idea. Maybe too grand.
Each state begins with the trivia: the nickname, capitol, geographic center, bird, flower, etc. Then an author launches into an essay about his or her assigned state. In most cases, the stories are more about the author than the state. So it's really not at all like the WPA series, even in spirit. But maybe it reflects the modern US. After all, most people don't observe anymore. Takes time away from making it all about us and our navel gazing.
Collections often suffer in reviews because they can be such mixed bags. Different writing styles will appeal to different people. Personally, I enjoy John Hodgman, S. E. Hinton, and Susan Choi. I adore Anthony Bourdain, may he RIP. There were a few authors new to me that I might now look for more of their work. Myla Goldberg and Dave Eggers come to mind. Some of the other essays just tried too hard for a kind of jaded humor and sounded too much the same. Again, maybe that was because they were too intent on putting themselves in the middle of the essay instead of looking outward. And there were a couple that I just detested. I've never read anything by William T. Vollman, and his essay on California pretty much guarantees that I will go out of my way to avoid reading anything else by him. I have no idea WTF his deal is, but he sure sucked up a lot of space to say nothing of value about either the state or himself. Obviously, I've not missed anything there.
Perhaps the most telling thing I can say about the collection is this: I've lived in half a dozen states. Of the six corresponding essays, only one came close to capturing the feel and uniqueness of the place and people. I think it's no accident that essay was also one of the few in the book where the author didn't put him/her self in the middle of the essay.
May 9, 2009
New Jersey was the most hotly contested state. Not in any election, but in the fight to see who would write about it in a new essay anthology "State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America," edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey (Ecco: 572 pp., $29.95). The victor was author-chef and TV traveler Anthony Bourdain, who writes: "New Jersey, even now when the whole country looks like Jersey, is still, anachronistically, a punch line."
Fifty states, 50 writers. Some, like Bourdain, are exasperated; a few -- like Dave Eggers, who includes Abraham Lincoln and "snack foods" as why Illinois is "Number One" -- lavish praise. Most fall somewhere in between, examining changing landscapes. Wilsey, in town visiting his mother who featured prominently in his 2005 memoir, "Oh the Glory of It All," says he and Weiland wanted the authors, while thinking about place, to make it personal. "Do something that only you can do," Wilsey recalls prompting the contributors.
Leaning forward, bubbling with excitement in a booth at Hollywood's Kitchen 24, Wilsey says he wanted the essayists to capture "how you see or understand this place and that can only really be in this place. Something that is so deeply about a place and couldn't really be anywhere else."
The editors were inspired, as was Alistair Cooke before them, by the Federal Writers' Project American Guide series. Those 48 volumes, published from 1935 to 1943, were commissioned by the Works Progress Administration. Hundreds of writers -- including Zora Neale Hurston and John Cheever -- were employed to write histories, detail commerce and industry, even map out driving tours. At 500-plus pages each, the guides were certainly thorough. Yet can descriptions of the legislature and agriculture convey the essence of a state?
That's where Weiland and Wilsey's advice came in. Joshua Ferris, whose debut novel, "Then We Came to the End," was a finalist for a National Book Award last year, was assigned Florida, where he spent part of his youth. (While many authors, like California's William T. Vollmann, are natives, others are transplants; a few visited their states explicitly for this collection.) Ferris skipped the statewide overview. "I'm afraid if I tried it, everyone would be asleep before I even had a chance to list all the state's counties," he writes in an e-mail. Instead, he describes his adolescence on Key West: "To give a rural boy his own body of water is to give him the grace necessary, at least in part, to forgive the adults responsible for relocating him. The canal was unwalled and tree lined, fifteen feet deep and sludge bottomed, the water amber colored and scummy with white flotsam, really ugly. I jumped in every day."
Relocation comes up often. Jhumpa Lahiri, whose award-winning fiction explores immigrants' experiences, writes about her family's move from tiny Kingston, R.I., to a nearby town. (I also grew up in Kingston, and Lahiri and I were classmates in elementary school.) "It was the first displacement that I was conscious of in my life," she says by phone. "Somehow, a mile away, a mile down the road, we were in a different territory."
Her migration, on its tiny scale, mirrored her India-born parents' larger one. In the new town -- ironically, Peace Dale -- her family's otherness became difficult. "I was much more conscious and self-conscious of who we were and where my parents were from," she says. "Partly it was that I was getting older, and I was noticing things in a different way."
Perhaps it is the perspective gained from these migrations that helps hone the talent for noticing things. "Mobility is a huge theme," Wilsey says. "Everybody moves around and is always from somewhere else and going back somewhere."
This raises some interesting questions: How do we define home? Is it the place you came from, or the place you chose? Is it the place where you felt free, like Ferris? Or where you no longer feel secure, like Lahiri? Does its absence make the sense of home more acute -- does leaving help us recognize what is essential and unique about the place we came from?
If "State by State" answers these questions, it does so in a patchwork. For some, like Charles Bock on his father's Las Vegas pawnshop and Rick Moody on the Connecticut parkway that stretched between his divorced parents' houses, home is defined, in part, by its destruction. Its essence exists only in memory.
But for others, who return to places that are surprisingly recognizable -- Susan Choi to Indiana, Ann Patchett to Tennessee, Susan Orlean to Ohio -- there is an essentialness that remains deeply affecting. How, Choi wonders here, could her old "house lurk there, unchanged apart from the trees, so that it could leap forth and bludgeon my heart?"
Neither is it your typical guidebook material. Instead, "the whole book is kind of a collective memoir," Wilsey says, "about what it means to be an American." What exactly an American is, or how each state is characterized, is a fascinating subject as the presidential election looms. Now is the time, he says, "to think about the states in a way that was deeper than the way that we're all being forced to." In its personalized way, "State by State" is an antidote to the oversimplifying red state/blue state rubric.
It is most successful when an author first comes to a state as a fully formed writer. The adult eyes and analytical skills -- even when tuned to the most personal of experiences -- bring a heartfelt understanding of the complexities of place. "I know my presence here is no boon to the place," Lydia Millet writes about her home in the Arizona desert. "It would be far better without all of us -- without me, self-conscious and trying to walk softly; without my harder-living compatriots; without the ugly hubbub of all of us bringing our litter and noise and concrete to paradise. But I can't help myself. This, to me, is the closest I've ever come to the eternal and the sublime."
Wilsey thinks of this as a road trip in book form, but it's more of a helicopter ride, touching down on life in each state, sometimes traveling back decades, even as far back as the Native Americans who first called these mountains and valleys home. The WPA guides drew literal paths for their readers, but this is more subtle: You will find your own connections between North Carolina and North Dakota. It starts to become clear that how where we come from defines who we are is both intensely personal and ineffable, that it is a thing of memory, and it may come from the place that we have no right to call home but that we come to love. And odds are, reading "State by State," that you'll fall for every state a little, even if they remain tremendously hard to explain.
by me for the LA Times
September 12, 2008
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/sep/...
Fifty states, 50 writers. Some, like Bourdain, are exasperated; a few -- like Dave Eggers, who includes Abraham Lincoln and "snack foods" as why Illinois is "Number One" -- lavish praise. Most fall somewhere in between, examining changing landscapes. Wilsey, in town visiting his mother who featured prominently in his 2005 memoir, "Oh the Glory of It All," says he and Weiland wanted the authors, while thinking about place, to make it personal. "Do something that only you can do," Wilsey recalls prompting the contributors.
Leaning forward, bubbling with excitement in a booth at Hollywood's Kitchen 24, Wilsey says he wanted the essayists to capture "how you see or understand this place and that can only really be in this place. Something that is so deeply about a place and couldn't really be anywhere else."
The editors were inspired, as was Alistair Cooke before them, by the Federal Writers' Project American Guide series. Those 48 volumes, published from 1935 to 1943, were commissioned by the Works Progress Administration. Hundreds of writers -- including Zora Neale Hurston and John Cheever -- were employed to write histories, detail commerce and industry, even map out driving tours. At 500-plus pages each, the guides were certainly thorough. Yet can descriptions of the legislature and agriculture convey the essence of a state?
That's where Weiland and Wilsey's advice came in. Joshua Ferris, whose debut novel, "Then We Came to the End," was a finalist for a National Book Award last year, was assigned Florida, where he spent part of his youth. (While many authors, like California's William T. Vollmann, are natives, others are transplants; a few visited their states explicitly for this collection.) Ferris skipped the statewide overview. "I'm afraid if I tried it, everyone would be asleep before I even had a chance to list all the state's counties," he writes in an e-mail. Instead, he describes his adolescence on Key West: "To give a rural boy his own body of water is to give him the grace necessary, at least in part, to forgive the adults responsible for relocating him. The canal was unwalled and tree lined, fifteen feet deep and sludge bottomed, the water amber colored and scummy with white flotsam, really ugly. I jumped in every day."
Relocation comes up often. Jhumpa Lahiri, whose award-winning fiction explores immigrants' experiences, writes about her family's move from tiny Kingston, R.I., to a nearby town. (I also grew up in Kingston, and Lahiri and I were classmates in elementary school.) "It was the first displacement that I was conscious of in my life," she says by phone. "Somehow, a mile away, a mile down the road, we were in a different territory."
Her migration, on its tiny scale, mirrored her India-born parents' larger one. In the new town -- ironically, Peace Dale -- her family's otherness became difficult. "I was much more conscious and self-conscious of who we were and where my parents were from," she says. "Partly it was that I was getting older, and I was noticing things in a different way."
Perhaps it is the perspective gained from these migrations that helps hone the talent for noticing things. "Mobility is a huge theme," Wilsey says. "Everybody moves around and is always from somewhere else and going back somewhere."
This raises some interesting questions: How do we define home? Is it the place you came from, or the place you chose? Is it the place where you felt free, like Ferris? Or where you no longer feel secure, like Lahiri? Does its absence make the sense of home more acute -- does leaving help us recognize what is essential and unique about the place we came from?
If "State by State" answers these questions, it does so in a patchwork. For some, like Charles Bock on his father's Las Vegas pawnshop and Rick Moody on the Connecticut parkway that stretched between his divorced parents' houses, home is defined, in part, by its destruction. Its essence exists only in memory.
But for others, who return to places that are surprisingly recognizable -- Susan Choi to Indiana, Ann Patchett to Tennessee, Susan Orlean to Ohio -- there is an essentialness that remains deeply affecting. How, Choi wonders here, could her old "house lurk there, unchanged apart from the trees, so that it could leap forth and bludgeon my heart?"
Neither is it your typical guidebook material. Instead, "the whole book is kind of a collective memoir," Wilsey says, "about what it means to be an American." What exactly an American is, or how each state is characterized, is a fascinating subject as the presidential election looms. Now is the time, he says, "to think about the states in a way that was deeper than the way that we're all being forced to." In its personalized way, "State by State" is an antidote to the oversimplifying red state/blue state rubric.
It is most successful when an author first comes to a state as a fully formed writer. The adult eyes and analytical skills -- even when tuned to the most personal of experiences -- bring a heartfelt understanding of the complexities of place. "I know my presence here is no boon to the place," Lydia Millet writes about her home in the Arizona desert. "It would be far better without all of us -- without me, self-conscious and trying to walk softly; without my harder-living compatriots; without the ugly hubbub of all of us bringing our litter and noise and concrete to paradise. But I can't help myself. This, to me, is the closest I've ever come to the eternal and the sublime."
Wilsey thinks of this as a road trip in book form, but it's more of a helicopter ride, touching down on life in each state, sometimes traveling back decades, even as far back as the Native Americans who first called these mountains and valleys home. The WPA guides drew literal paths for their readers, but this is more subtle: You will find your own connections between North Carolina and North Dakota. It starts to become clear that how where we come from defines who we are is both intensely personal and ineffable, that it is a thing of memory, and it may come from the place that we have no right to call home but that we come to love. And odds are, reading "State by State," that you'll fall for every state a little, even if they remain tremendously hard to explain.
by me for the LA Times
September 12, 2008
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/sep/...
April 2, 2023
In 2016, my wife and I are anticipating a great adventure, traveling to each of the United States. In preparation, we've been reading.
There is some good writing in Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey's collection of essays about the 50 states, "State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America" but much of it is written from a penthouse view from Park Avenue. The book itself is a good idea. In the thirties the WPA made a series of guidebooks, one about each of the states. (Obviously, Alaska and Hawaii were not written about in those volumes.) This book has one chapter, one essay about each state each written by a different author.
The problem with the book is that each author seems to have the same aesthetic, cultural and political sensibility. Obviously there are chapters about red state but all the chapters have a blue state sensibility. One would think with such a book it would be possible to find natives of states. But often there is instead a New York tourist in a state. Literally. Here is the opening from the chapter on South Dakota by Said Sayrafiezadeh:
"The idea of traveling to South Dakota for vacation had been all mine. I hit upon it one night in my apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan."
Or pieces by people who grew up a state in a red state and moved to a blue state, for example from Daphne Beal's essay about Wisconsin, when imagined Cheese Heads ask if she was really asked to write the chapter about the state, "'Yes, me,' I imagine myself saying, smiling, always smiling because that is the state-determined social contract among us, and perhaps adding that such a wedge (a cheddar-Swiss hybrid, if you've never seen it) took a precious amount of room in my New York City closet for a long time."
Admittedly, not all of the writers live in New York. Ha Jin, who writes about the nine years he lived in Georgia now lives in Massachusettes. Jim Lewis has lived in New York and London and to his credit he now lives in Texas (but Austin, of course) but he was assigned to write about Kansas. Lewis lived a short time in Kansas, not long enough to appear on his Wiki page. He writes about "the Kansas of the Mind", an imaginary place, because he can't write about the real one since, as he writes "The mind is a kind of Kansas, or mine is anyway. Or my memories are: For one thing I seldom go there, so however near they may be, they remain somehow far away." (Yeah, a real Thomas Guide to the state there.)
But with limited contact, many of the writers are still able to write about flyover country with these tools:
1) Bumper Stickers and Billboards. One essay after another points out the nutty stuff these hicks advertise on their cars and roadways. Can these people really believe that fetuses deserve to live, that ordinary people should be allowed to have guns and that God exists?
2) Historical accounts about how Native Americans were treated in the previous centuries, clear evidence of the current backward state of current Anglo populations.
3) Talking with the sometimes limited number of right thinking people the Republican wilds. Such as in this chapter by George Packer on a state captured by The Southern Strategy, "The tribe of surviving white liberals in Alabama today is so tiny and embattled that they all know one another personally...They suffer from a commingling of conscience, privilege and impotence. And a large fraction are members of my extended family...They are secularists in a state that at times seems to be run as a Christian theology." So like Abraham argued about Sodom and Gomorrah, even these states should be saved because there are at least 10 righteous, um liberal, men, um persons.
4) They can acknowledge the natural beauty of the states, while pointing out the residents want to destroy that beauty with pavement, fast food restaurants and fracking.
5) Heartfelt accounts about how they always will keep the state in their hearts (and perhaps occasionally visit it on holidays when Paris is out of the budget.)
6) Making visits to the Red Land at great risk. In the essay on South Dakota, the author goes to the state at great nutritional peril. After all, his girl-friend says, "All they eat is beef and not just beef but bison beef"
So, I admit, there were chapters I started, read 2 or 3 pages and moved on. But some of the chapters were very good. Dave Eggers writes a fine salute to Illinois opening with these lines, "The slogan on all license plates on Illinois, for as long as anyone can remember, has been the Land of Lincoln. Everyone in Illinois and all sensible people elsewhere believe it to be the best license-plate slogan of all the state of our union" And it keeps getting better.
Susan Choi writes a moving and funny account touring Indiana with her father who still lives in the state (she, not surprisingly lives now in Brooklyn.)
John Hodgman writes sardonically about Massachusetts, Jonathan Franzen interviews the State of New York herself, Joe Sacco and Alison Bechdel write about and also cartoon their states.
The book has wonderful things. It can best be enjoyed by skipping the writing that isn't always so wonderful (thought the states being written about are all, in fact, glorious.)
There is some good writing in Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey's collection of essays about the 50 states, "State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America" but much of it is written from a penthouse view from Park Avenue. The book itself is a good idea. In the thirties the WPA made a series of guidebooks, one about each of the states. (Obviously, Alaska and Hawaii were not written about in those volumes.) This book has one chapter, one essay about each state each written by a different author.
The problem with the book is that each author seems to have the same aesthetic, cultural and political sensibility. Obviously there are chapters about red state but all the chapters have a blue state sensibility. One would think with such a book it would be possible to find natives of states. But often there is instead a New York tourist in a state. Literally. Here is the opening from the chapter on South Dakota by Said Sayrafiezadeh:
"The idea of traveling to South Dakota for vacation had been all mine. I hit upon it one night in my apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan."
Or pieces by people who grew up a state in a red state and moved to a blue state, for example from Daphne Beal's essay about Wisconsin, when imagined Cheese Heads ask if she was really asked to write the chapter about the state, "'Yes, me,' I imagine myself saying, smiling, always smiling because that is the state-determined social contract among us, and perhaps adding that such a wedge (a cheddar-Swiss hybrid, if you've never seen it) took a precious amount of room in my New York City closet for a long time."
Admittedly, not all of the writers live in New York. Ha Jin, who writes about the nine years he lived in Georgia now lives in Massachusettes. Jim Lewis has lived in New York and London and to his credit he now lives in Texas (but Austin, of course) but he was assigned to write about Kansas. Lewis lived a short time in Kansas, not long enough to appear on his Wiki page. He writes about "the Kansas of the Mind", an imaginary place, because he can't write about the real one since, as he writes "The mind is a kind of Kansas, or mine is anyway. Or my memories are: For one thing I seldom go there, so however near they may be, they remain somehow far away." (Yeah, a real Thomas Guide to the state there.)
But with limited contact, many of the writers are still able to write about flyover country with these tools:
1) Bumper Stickers and Billboards. One essay after another points out the nutty stuff these hicks advertise on their cars and roadways. Can these people really believe that fetuses deserve to live, that ordinary people should be allowed to have guns and that God exists?
2) Historical accounts about how Native Americans were treated in the previous centuries, clear evidence of the current backward state of current Anglo populations.
3) Talking with the sometimes limited number of right thinking people the Republican wilds. Such as in this chapter by George Packer on a state captured by The Southern Strategy, "The tribe of surviving white liberals in Alabama today is so tiny and embattled that they all know one another personally...They suffer from a commingling of conscience, privilege and impotence. And a large fraction are members of my extended family...They are secularists in a state that at times seems to be run as a Christian theology." So like Abraham argued about Sodom and Gomorrah, even these states should be saved because there are at least 10 righteous, um liberal, men, um persons.
4) They can acknowledge the natural beauty of the states, while pointing out the residents want to destroy that beauty with pavement, fast food restaurants and fracking.
5) Heartfelt accounts about how they always will keep the state in their hearts (and perhaps occasionally visit it on holidays when Paris is out of the budget.)
6) Making visits to the Red Land at great risk. In the essay on South Dakota, the author goes to the state at great nutritional peril. After all, his girl-friend says, "All they eat is beef and not just beef but bison beef"
So, I admit, there were chapters I started, read 2 or 3 pages and moved on. But some of the chapters were very good. Dave Eggers writes a fine salute to Illinois opening with these lines, "The slogan on all license plates on Illinois, for as long as anyone can remember, has been the Land of Lincoln. Everyone in Illinois and all sensible people elsewhere believe it to be the best license-plate slogan of all the state of our union" And it keeps getting better.
Susan Choi writes a moving and funny account touring Indiana with her father who still lives in the state (she, not surprisingly lives now in Brooklyn.)
John Hodgman writes sardonically about Massachusetts, Jonathan Franzen interviews the State of New York herself, Joe Sacco and Alison Bechdel write about and also cartoon their states.
The book has wonderful things. It can best be enjoyed by skipping the writing that isn't always so wonderful (thought the states being written about are all, in fact, glorious.)
March 8, 2019
As with many anthologies, the quality of the essays varied widely. Most of my favorite essays were by writers I already knew, but there were some exceptions. Though I knew OF Susan Orlean, "Ohio," was the first thing of hers I've actually read, and I was quite impressed by it. Ditto Dave Eggers (Illinois) and, yes, Jonathan Franzen (New York). It was also nice to hear more from writers I'm super familiar with like David Rakoff, John Hodgman, Sarah Vowell, Heidi Julavitz, Jhumpa Lahiri, Allison Bechdel, and Anne Patchett (whose “Nashville” I’d already encountered in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage). But there were a couple of essays I had to quit partway through, and one (Kansas) I wish I'd quit.
What I learned: Maine is exactly what you think it is.
What I learned: Maine is exactly what you think it is.
March 1, 2019
Some were great and I discovered some new writers. But some states, like Kansas, got ripped off. There is no set form or prompt for the essays and some authors are only loosely connected to the state. There is some census data in the back, and lots of state facts. I really enjoyed New York and Illinois, they were funny.
What I learned: Pineapple Express is a tropical wind in the Pacific Northwest. “Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” A Will Rogers joke. Some states don’t have an official song, like Virginia.
What I learned: Pineapple Express is a tropical wind in the Pacific Northwest. “Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” A Will Rogers joke. Some states don’t have an official song, like Virginia.
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