Sunday Books & Culture
This week’s reviews include a behind the scenes view of “Parks and Rec” in Jim O’Heir’s “Welcome to Pawnee," and one staff member's choice for Book of the Year.
The Books & Culture section is edited each week by Vanessa Sekinger
WELCOME TO PAWNEE
By Jim O’Heir
Published by William Morrow (November 19, 2024)
Hardcover $23.97
Audiobook $14.99
Reviewed by Drew Gallagher
I spent a lot of time confined to a hospital bed in 2024, and my entertainment was mostly limited to the cable offerings on the hospital television except when the wind blew; then there was no cable. Sports was a welcome diversion, but I also happened upon the television show “Parks and Recreation” on one of the channels.
I never watched “Parks and Rec” when it originally aired and only appreciated its comic genius after it reemerged on YouTube and welcomed it as hospital television fare. But I quickly realized that watching “Parks and Rec” after having a portion of my colon removed was not helping in my recovery. In this case, laughter was not the best medicine.
Fortunately, I can now watch “Parks and Rec” without the fear of ripping open the handiwork of my surgeon-led robot and felt confident that reading “Welcome to Pawnee” by Jim O’Heir would not require an increase in my life insurance policy.
O’Heir played Jerry on the sitcom and his book recounts his rise from bit part to becoming a regular with a full-blown opening credit in the later seasons. Anyone looking for a memoir with Cher-like revelations (Salvador Dali had an orgy right before Sonny and Cher showed up to his hotel room) won’t find those in this tame rendering, but fans of “Parks and Rec” are going to find much to enjoy.
And though not quite as hedonistic as a surrealist orgy in a hotel room (I’m guessing), O’Heir does reveal some moments that underscore the fact that most actors not named Rob Lowe are working from week to week never knowing if this is their last paycheck. O’Heir recounts one night when he went out to dinner with costar Chris Pratt and woke up the next morning with his tummy a little rumbly. Ever the professional, and worried that any absence from set would get his character less of an arc, he showed up to work.
“You might ask, rightly so, why I showed up in the first place. Don’t actors get sick days? Sure they do, but if you’re Jim O’Heir and on a week-to-week contract, you show up…Naturally, producers might decide to leave me out of an episode entirely, and that wasn’t a fate I wanted to test when I was on the so-called cutting board, as I thought at the time. In all our seasons, Amy (Poehler) didn’t miss a shoot. Not once. I wasn’t going to be that guy simply because I was awfully sick.”
O’Heir soldiered on and almost completed the day’s shoot without incident until a scene called for him to bend over and pick up a box.
“Sometimes you sh*t the bed and sometimes you sh*t your pants, but the show must go on.”
The book is filled with anecdotes that fans of the show will love and, of course, O’Heir devotes some space to everyone’s favorite miniature horse, Li’l Sebastian. (After the harvest festival where Li’l Sebastian first appeared, “Sebastian” became the number one boys’ name for the next few years in Pawnee and the number three girls’ name. As well it should have.)
Welcome to Pawnee is a sweet tribute to a show that was probably underappreciated at its inception and is only now getting its full due as one of the great comedies of the early 2000s. Just look at the cast and what they’ve gone on to accomplish. Almost as amazing as Li’l Sebastian.
Drew Gallagher is a freelance writer residing in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He is the second-most-prolific book reviewer and first video book reviewer in the 136-year history of the Free Lance-Star Newspaper. He aspires to be the second-most-prolific book reviewer in the history of FXBG Advance.
Editor-in-Chief’s Book of the Year
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
I have a confession to make. I start reading a lot of books every year; I don’t finish most of them.
There are lots of reasons — teaching is a drain on my free time, I write five or six columns a week, starting a media company is a serious drain on my free time, yadda, yadda, yadda — and yes, I’m making excuses.
The most-honest reason I don’t finish most of the books I read is that my attention span is more geared to magazine-length articles than book reading. Every week the Economist drops in my mailbox, and I read it cover-to-cover. The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Bulwark, and the New Yorker get similar attention. And then there are the dailies — WaPo, The New York Times.
You get the idea — I have the attention span of someone with too many passions and too little time.
So, it’s notable that there was one book this year that I simply couldn’t put down. The Bookshop by Evan Friss.
Part history, part mystery, part love affair, part frustration, The Bookshop carries readers through the history of bookshops in America beginning with the original American — Ben Franklin — and carrying us all the way through to the box stores and Amazon.
Interspersed with short 3- to 4-page anecdotes that serve as transitions from one chapter to the next, the book cleverly blends chapter-length history that allows for the in-depth explorations book readers expect, with the human-spiritual connections to the author’s topic that magazine readers appreciate.
I got through the book in about 5 hours — I know because I read it flying to and from Denver earlier this year.
But speed isn’t the attraction here. I keep going back to select chapters because the writing is so good, and the anecdotes charming.
When it comes to a good read, they don’t come much better than The Bookshop.
Runners up
The Once and Future Liberal — Mark Lilla is a professor at Columbia University who drew the ire of most everyone on the left in 2017 when The Once and Future Liberal dared question the orthodoxy of identity politics. But Lilla was on to something, and the results of the recent election bears that out. Democrats have struggled of late because they continue to define themselves only in terms of “not being Trump” but failing to define who and what they are (an equation for electoral defeat, I believe). There are notable exceptions to this — Abigail Spanberger may be the best example in our area. But rereading Lilla this year in the runup to November’s election reminded me how correct he was. Especially his observation that Reagan conservatism and liberal identity politics are cut from the same cloth. This is not to say the book is perfect. In fact, in some ways it’s deeply — possibly fatally — flawed. But that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t wrestle with what Lilla so expertly puts before the Democrats and their hope for crafting an America that again embraces progressivism.
The Path of Aliveness: A Contemporary Zen Approach to Awakening Body and Mind — Regular readers sometimes express their confusion about my personal religious beliefs (Agnostic on a good day) and the amount of reading and study I dedicate to religion. Full disclosure — My BA and MA are in Comparative Religious Studies, my doctoral work was in Medieval English Monastic history, and as I reporter I’ve written a great deal about the nexus of religion and politics. But on a personal level, the dualities required by each of the “religions of the Book” have never made much sense to me. Richer and more appealing is Buddhism. And Christian Dillo’s The Path of Aliveness is a great journey into the Buddhist approach that explains why I’ve come to embrace this tradition’s tenets. Dillo outlines what it means to “embody aliveness,” a radical idea in a society where we relentlessly focus on “happiness” and “mindfulness.” Aliveness, however, demands that we embrace all of life — the pain and the joy — to discover what it means to live a life fully alive. It’s as simple as what a Buddhist teacher once told Dillo: “If I have deceived you, please wash your ears with the clear sound of Boulder Creek.” One need not live in Boulder, Colorado, to embrace this. “The clear sound of Boulder Creek is wherever you are right now.” This book is not for everyone, to be sure, but for me, it proved to be a much-needed soul-cleanser this year.
Have a favorite book this year? Tell us! Email Vanessa Sekinger, and you may see your best book here!
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