ZapTown

Just a quick column this week–a lot of the publishing world, and those shrinking book sections in the back of major newspaper weekend editions, have been preoccupied this week with the release of Sarah Palin’s memoir ‘Going Rogue’.  That makes it a rough week for me to peruse the funnypages, as political memoirs are probably my least favorite type of book out there.

It’s not that surprising that the big political memoirs often get a lot of attention, but I’d argue that, even if you’re passionate about the individual who wrote the book, they’re still, as a genre, a bit of a drag. Why? Because they’re written for the moment, often by politicians and/or ghostwriters who are trying to get a certain message across in the moment, aimed at that figure’s base. As one gets further away from the moment of their publication, they become less and less relevant except as historical artifacts, what some famous person wanted to attach their name to when they were gathering money for a presidential run, or how they felt about their first term, or why they wanted to insert a plank for health care into their party platform, or why they were as shocked as anybody when they found out there were no WMD’s.

I’ve always kind of imagined books as a sort of time capsule of ideas. Open the cover, the story’s there. Close the cover, the story goes back to sleep, waiting for someone to come along and find it, down the road. Good stories transcend time and space. Don Quixote. Lord of the Rings. Watership Down. Cosmos. A Tale of Two Cities. Walden. They may be anchored in time, but they transmit someone’s ideas of what it was like, there for a moment, to readers who are separated by time and space, by fate and chance. A book that’s written, or co-written by a politician, aimed at a very specific audience has none of that power–and most of them have very short shelf lives.  That being said, the reviews that are popping up, both positive and negative, of Sarah Palin’s book are interesting, and provide a pretty wide spectrum of how people relate to her public figurehood.  I guess that’s the silver lining.

We all have our biases, after all (I even know a person who only reads cookbooks!) What’s your least favorite genre?