IT TAKES A VILLAGE IDIOT: Complicating the Simple Life

Jim Mullen, IT TAKES A VILLAGE IDIOT: Complicating the Simple Life

Mullen, best known for his pithy, skewering "Hot Sheet" column in Entertainment Weekly, was once a New York City chauvinist, tethered to a trendy, glamorous lifestyle. Having reluctantly acceded to his wife's wish for a house in the Catskills, Mullen turns his gimlet eye on rural New York, deconstructing the local practice of exchanging waves with all passing drivers and the coercive function of the local newspaper's hyper-detailed police blotter. Mullen is funniest at his most acerbic, like when he verbally eviscerates some pretentious houseguests: "Bert is wearing what he thinks are country clothes—ostrich skin cowboy boots with silver tips... a skin-tight cowboy shirt.... He looks like Miss Kitty's pimp." Or in this description of "Walleye" 's town square: "A community college that looks as if it was designed by a cabal of the worst Soviet bloc architects... saves the town from being too cute for words." But he eventually goes native, respectfully acknowledging the locals' contempt of clueless, demanding weekend "flatlanders," and coming to appreciate the simpler life: "Why would... eating lunch at La Grenouille... be more important than watching the birds on the feeder?" he wonders. As the shticky title suggests, the book relies heavily on authorial invention; Mullen openly admits to "exaggerations, fictionalizations, and anachronisms." In the end, authors like Bill Bryson manage a more sustainable mix of solemnity and humor, but Mullen's readership and, yes, members of the trendy crowd looking for a little light weekend reading will find this rewarding enough. Agent, Lisa Bankoff, ICM. (May)

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Reviewed on: 04/02/2001

Genre: Nonfiction

Hardcover - 224 pages - 978-0-316-59045-7

Paperback - 224 pages - 978-0-7432-1879-5