Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 16, 1990 TAG: 9006160237
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E3 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
Author Susan Orlean hopes a lot of people will chose the latter and pick up her new book, "Saturday Night" (Alfred A. Knopf, $19.95).
Orlean, a former Boston Globe columnist, explores the magic of Saturday night in an episodic journey through the lives of such diverse people as Wellesley co-eds, Bowery drug addicts, a Park Avenue socialite and a suburban baby sitter.
The writer traveled to 16 spots across the country. She went cruising with car enthusiasts in Elkhart, Ind., watched diners at the nation's busiest restaurant in Saugus, Mass., and even spent a Saturday night locked in the bowels of an MX missile silo outside Cheyenne, Wyo.
"Fundamentally, it's a travel book that does travel through an idea rather than a landscape," Orlean said in an interview at her Manhattan apartment.
The sociological question of what makes Saturday night special is neatly folded into each chapter. Orlean cites Saturday night facts: It's the night the fewest long-distance phone calls are made, the fewest suicides occur, the fewest airplane flights are scheduled.
It also is the night when most murders occur, the most liquor is sold by the glass and the highest number of reported incidents of cow toppling in rural Pennsylvania occurs. Cow toppling involves pushing a cow over as it sleeps. Cows sleep standing up. Local college kids think this is a zany prank; cows do not.
But it is sociology offered in a non-academic way, thanks to Orlean's witty and descriptive writing.
In a chapter on polka dancing at Blob's Polka Park in Jessup, Md., Orlean highlights a sprightly, 82-year-old named Cecelia Kostler who has 350 polka outfits and lives for her Saturday night polka fix.
Orlean also conveys the frustration of jailed criminals, the expectations of recovering drug addicts, the merriment at a Texas zydeco social and the hopefulness of 15-year-old Hispanic debutantes.
"My theory . . . `Does Saturday night matter to people?' got proved fast. The answer was, yeah. So I decided to use Saturday night as my net," Orlean said, "and I think what I caught was interesting."
Orlean was amazed that none of her would-be subjects turned her down. "That really goes against my own premise that Saturday night is a very private time. Here I was asking total strangers to let me intrude, and they did."
One subject, a drug dealer who was supposed to take Orlean along on his Saturday night rounds, never panned out.
"We tried to get together about six different times and I finally gave up because he said he was just too busy. I later found out he got out of the drug business to sell aluminum siding."
The only normal Saturday night activities Orlean didn't get to explore were going on a first date and staying home watching television with a couple. "I just couldn't figure out a way to do that, insert myself in the situation without changing it," she said.
"Those are the private type of Saturday night moments that are just going to have to remain that way."
One of the most difficult tasks in researching the book was deciding what to wear at each stop.
"I guessed wrong a lot of times," Orlean said, like the time she went club hopping with a pair of Los Angeles teens, who had a different outfit for every stop. Orlean chose a simple black outfit. "They were horrified and told me to make sure I told everyone I was from out of town."
But without a doubt the hardest thing for Orlean was giving up three years of her own Saturday nights.
"I never got used to being away and working on the weekend," she says. "It mattered. I suffered. I hated it."
by CNB