There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say

By Paula Poundstone

I listened to the audio version of this book on my commute. I got it from my father-in-law, which is strange: I wouldn't peg him as a Paula Poundstone fan. The book is read by Poundstone herself. I've never heard a book like this before, and I find it hard to classify. It's part autobiography, part stand-up routine and part history lesson. And it's not the history of comedy or any related field. It's interspersed with biographies of several historical figures.

Poundstone starts this book by talking about Joan of Arc and relating several events in her life with her own (Poundstone's). In chronological order, Poundstone relays some events of Joan of Arc's life and then breaks from the narrative to talk about something mildly parallel in her own life. Or not. Sometimes the segue is just a single word, which may be a homophone for what she was discussing in Joan's life. And the pattern continues throughout the whole book. She'll relate a few facts about the person's life, then launch into a discussion about something in her own life. While Poundstone's material is funny, I find the whole architecture of this book funny in itself. What do these historical figures have to do with Poundstone? Nothing. Is it funny? Yes. Sometimes the asides on her life are short—like a sentence. But sometimes they're long enough to take up an entire chapter. And while they're not always ROFLMAO funny (or ROFL funny, for that matter), they are always interesting and sometimes introspective.

I thought Poundstone was just going to discuss Joan or Arc throughout the whole book, but eventually she moves onto other historical figures, such as Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller Charles Dickens and others. And she doesn't present their mini-biographies in the dust-dry monotone manner your fourth-grade teacher. Instead, she intersperses her narratives with her own observations about their lives. I felt like she had just read the biography of this person and she was giving us her version of their lives. It's very odd and non-linear, but never jarring. She presents the material in such a way that it's easy to stay on top of it and keep pace with her.

Throughout the book, Poundstone talks about her childhood, her foster children, her lack of libido, her adopted children (two girls and one boy) and her now-infamous drunk-driving charge in which she was accused of endangering the lives of children. She's very frank about her legal history, admits her guilt, but doesn't ask for any sympathy. She just presents it matter-of-fact, that sucked, but now it's over and it won't happen again. She talks about her drinking problem, but doesn't dwell on it. I don't really know what I was supposed to take away from this book other than a few hours of entertainment (and some tidbits of history I didn't know).

Spoiler! This isn't a major spoiler, but here is only one problem with this book. It's a factual error, but one that may have been unavoidable at the time of the printing of the book. Poundstone states that no one knows what killed Beethoven. But now we know from foresic evidence that Beethoven died of lead poisoning. It's also what probably led to his deafness. It's an involved narrative, but I'll try to be brief. Beethoven was a heavy drinker. At the time, it wasn't patriotic to drink French wine, but drinking Port (from Portugal) was cool. But it didn't taste very good. So people would drop a lead shot (like from gun ammo) into the bottle. Somehow that would sweeten the port (is lead sweet? I have no idea). So, as a result of drinking so much lead-infused port, he eventually went deaf, maybe a little mad, and died. Small error, not a big deal and only recently known about for sure. End Spoiler

I have no idea why Poundstone decided to present her material in this way, but I enjoyed it immensely. If she comes out with another book costructed the same way, I'd like to listen to it.

External links

• Poundstone's page on the book