The New York Review of Books is just getting around to reviewing Going Rogue in their January 14, 2010 issue, and it is amazing. Written by Jonathan Raban, it’s an exceedingly honest and downright devastating analysis of the Palin phenomenon that has swept America in the past year. Here’s an excerpt:

Her nasal voice, pitched in the upper register, with the upsy-downsy, singsong delivery of a kindergarten teacher, became, rather improbably, a great electoral asset. Her diction and accent were shaped more by class than region, and spiced with faux-genteel cuss words like “dang,” “heck,” “darn,” “geez,” “bullcrap,” and “bass-ackwards.” It was a voice unspoiled by overmuch formal education and boldly unafraid of truisms and clichés; a perfect foil for Obama’s polished law-school eloquence. In the narrative of the McCain campaign, she was the exemplary real American, Obama the phony one, and when people are now interviewed in the interminable lines for her book signings, by far their most common remark about her is “She’s real.”

Alaska, the particular reality from which Palin hails, is so little known by most Americans that she was able to freely mythicize her state as the utopian last refuge of the “hard work ethic,” “unpretentious living,” and proud self-sufficiency. Her anti-tax rhetoric (private citizens spend their money more wisely than government does) and disdain for “federal dollars” were unembarrassed by the fact that Alaska tops the tables of both per capita federal expenditure, on which one in three jobs in the state depends, and congressional earmarks, or “pork.” So, too, she mythicized the straggling eyesore of Wasilla (described by a current councilwoman there as “like a big ugly strip mall from one end to the other”) as the bucolic small town of sentimental American memory. Listening to Palin talk about it, one was invited to inspect not the string of oceanic parking lots attached to Fred Meyer, Lowe’s, Target, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot, or the town’s reputation among state troopers as the crystal meth capital of Alaska, but, rather, the imaginary barber shop, drugstore soda fountain, antique church, and raised boardwalks, seen in the rosy light of an Indian summer evening.

Yeah. So good. Go read the whole thing.

Ha! This may be the greatest thing in the history of the world, ever: The Nation is releasing a book of essays slamming Sarah Palin for being the rollicking jalopy of folksy horseshit that she is titled, Going Rouge, An American Nightmare, on the same day that Palin’s autobiography titled, Going Rogue, An American Life, hits the bookstores. The two covers are strikingly similar, featuring similar fonts and photographs, with the biggest differences between the two being that The Nation‘s book has dark storm clouds on it’s cover and won’t be filled with indecipherable gibberish capable of making a sane person want to stab themselves in the eye repeatedly with a rusty spoon. This is so amazing that I sincerely want to perform unspeakable acts of freakery upon Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, just to show my appreciation. |Newser|

Reports the AP:

“Governor Palin has been unbelievably conscientious and hands-on at every stage, investing herself deeply and passionately in this project,” said Jonathan Burnham, publisher of Harper. “It’s her words, her life, and it’s all there in full and fascinating detail.”

Palin’s book, her first, will be 400 pages, said Burnham, who called the fall “the best possible time for a major book of this kind.”

The book now has a title, one fitting for a public figure known for the unexpected — “Going Rogue: An American Life.”

Meanwhile, I’m still developing my cartoon superhero series loosely based on Palin titled, “Trixie Klondyke, Alaskan Warrior Princess.” It’s going to be amazing.

Image via Runner’s World