title: It Takes a Village Idiot: A Memoir of Life After the City
author:  Jim Mullen 
description: Mullen, best known for his pithy, skewering "Hot Sheet" column in Entertainment Weekly, was once a New York City chauvinist, tethered to a trendy, glamorous lifestyle. Having reluctantly acceded to his wife's wish for a house in the Catskills, Mullen turns his gimlet eye on rural New York, deconstructing the local practice of exchanging waves with all passing drivers and the coercive function of the local newspaper's hyper-detailed police blotter. Mullen is funniest at his most acerbic, like when he verbally eviscerates some pretentious houseguests: "Bert is wearing what he thinks are country clothes ostrich skin cowboy boots with silver tips... a skin-tight cowboy shirt.... He looks like Miss Kitty's pimp." Or in this description of "Walleye" 's town square: "A community college that looks as if it was designed by a cabal of the worst Soviet bloc architects... saves the town from being too cute for words." But he eventually goes native, respectfully acknowledging the locals' contempt of clueless, demanding weekend "flatlanders," and coming to appreciate the simpler life: "Why would... eating lunch at La Grenouille... be more important than watching the birds on the feeder?" he wonders. As the shticky title suggests, the book relies heavily on authorial invention; Mullen openly admits to "exaggerations, fictionalizations, and anachronisms." In the end, authors like Bill Bryson manage a more sustainable mix of solemnity and humor, but Mullen's readership and, yes, members of the trendy crowd looking for a little light weekend reading will find this rewarding enough. Agent, Lisa Bankoff, ICM.
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  With and Without
  
  
  Within and Without
  
  
  Euan McAllen
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Part One: Village Green
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The Village people maintained a delicate balance of harmony versus hurt, fury
  versus a focused frenzy, and shit versus survival. It was at the centre, but
  it had nothing to give and sought nothing. It was in essence, a pointless
  place, but it was a place to live. Its inhabitants were, in the main, nothing,
  and asked for nothing except the chance to survive, to never go hungry, and to
  never feel cold. They didn’t know it, but a change was coming, in the form of
  men and women, and new ideas. Change would split it, divide it, and destroy
  the fabric of its small, isolated community. The Village had been founded by a
  small group of devout believers fleeing a godless place. Their descendants had
  nowhere to flee to. They were stuck here, in the Maze, at its centre, at the
  centre of the storm.
  
  
  The Village Square was no longer a square. For some that rankled. 