It Takes A Village Idiot

FINALIST FOR THE 2001 THURBER PRIZE FOR AMERICAN HUMOR A ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS (DENVER) BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Millions of people dream of abandoning the city routine for a simple country life. Jim Mullen was not one of them. He loved his Manhattan existence: parties, openings, movie screenings. He could walk to hundreds of restaurants, waste entire afternoons at the Film Forum, people-watch from his window. Then, one day, calamity. His wife quits smoking and buys a weekend house in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York – in a tiny town diametrically opposed to Manhattan in every way. Slowly, however, the man who once boasted, Life is just a cab away, begins to warm to the place – manure and compost and strangers who wave and all – and to embrace the kind of life that once gave him the shakes.