The Severed Cortex

Link: http://www.amazon.com/Truck-Love-Story-Michael-Perry/dp/0060571187/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-1514635-5264950?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192498412&sr=8-1

This is a nice little read. There's nothing really groundbreaking here and quite frankly people have been doing it for years. It's called a journal. Or diary, or memoir, or maybe in the new millenium a blog, but the result is the same, a tome about your life. Even though he's sort of your average everyday Joe, Perry is little different because he can write with a type of wit that appeals to both the common man and the well educated.

I can relate to this book in a lot of ways, but most obvious is that I'm from a small town like Perry's New Auburn, Wisconsin. However, I didn't really feel like I fit while I was living there. Hang on. I'm not saying I was some social misfit. Someone recently asked me what crowd I hung out with in high school and my response was that I hung out with pretty much everybody; jocks, geeks, burners, rednecks, etc. Yet, I never really fit in with any of them. I wasn't ostracized or anything like that. I think I was accepted by all of those groups. I just felt like you couldn't define me by any single one of those groups. I suspect Perry feels the same way and that's why I think I liked this book so much. For one, Perry is college educated. Not to say that no one who lives in the country is college educated, but it is rarer to find and those who do have college degrees are often viewed as pompous. Sometimes deservedly so. Even though one may not have a college degree, there's no denying it takes a fair amount of engineering know how to survive living in the country. One should not cast aspersions towards country folk just because they may not have spent a lot of time in a classroom. Let the world go to crap and make everyone rely on living off the land and I guarantee you'll want to cozy up to someone from the country. There's no shame in being humble.
Michael Perry understands this perspective and his writing style shows that. He knows there are things he can do well, and things that he is not so good at. In this respect I can also relate. Well, except there are few things I do well. Programming maybe. There are also some things that you know enough about that just make you dangerous. I've spent enough time on the farm and around boat engines to fix the basics on most stuff, but there's no way I could rebuild an engine. Perry has no problem admitting his myriad of shortcomings, usually with hilarious self deprecation.
There are also about 100 other things in this book that strike a chord with me too, from the restoration of old cars (or trucks in this case), to gardens my mother grew as a kid, to sketchy relationships I've been involved with long before meeting Nancy.

The book is written in memoir format and covers one year in the life of Michael Perry. As you would expect in any book discussing rebuilding an old car, growing a garden, hunting, and falling in love there's a lot of birth, growth, death, and rebirth themes. I know for most guys that's probably a little too deep, but rest assured Perry doesn't knock you over the head with it. In case you haven't noticed, that's what life is and Perry is really good about telling you about everyday life. He also manages to tell it with quite a bit of humor and I found his humor to be a nice mix between erudite and homespun. As the months rolled by, I found myself wanting to find out where he was with the restoration, or what sorts of things were growing in his garden, both physically and metaphorically. The only real complaint I have is that December seemed to be thrown together. For some reason it seemed like it was just a personal diatribe railing against the current administration. I really don't have a problem with that, but it seemed way out of place when compared with the rest of the book. Was he trying to pull off the bitter old man routine? Perhaps. If so, he missed the point with me.

I bet that Michael Perry is just the biggest thing in his hometown. He's managed to become a published author writing about small town life, yet he's also managed to do so without alienating any of the people in his life that he's written about. I know you can only write what you know, and I know a fair amount about small town life, but I couldn't write about it without pissing a bunch of people off though. I'm like that.