Product Description

We all dream it.
Wade Rouse actually did it.

Finally fed up with the frenzy of city life and a job he hates, Wade Rouse decided to make either the bravest decision of his life or the worst mistake since his botched Ogilvie home perm: to uproot his life and try, as Thoreau did some 160 years earlier, to "live a plain, simple life in radically reduced conditions."

In this rollicking and hilarious memoir, Wade and his partner, Gary, leave culture, cable, and consumerism behind and strike out for rural Michigan–a place with fewer people than in their former spinning class. There, Wade discovers the simple life isn’t so simple. Battling blizzards, bloodthirsty critters, and nosy neighbors equipped with night-vision goggles, Wade and his spirit, sanity, relationship, and Kenneth Cole pointy-toed boots are sorely tested with humorous and humiliating frequency. And though he never does learn where his well water actually comes from or how to survive without Kashi cereal, he does discover some things in the woods outside his knotty-pine cottage in Saugatuck, Michigan, that he always dreamed of but never imagined he’d find–happiness and a home.

At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream is a sidesplitting and heartwarming look at taking a risk, fulfilling a dream, and finding a home–with very thick and very dark curtains.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10559 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-02
• Released on: 2009-06-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780307451903
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Having escaped the idiocy of rural life in his growing-up-gay-in-the-Ozarks memoir America's Boy, the author returns to it in this flamboyant fish-out-of-water saga. Inspired by Thoreau, Rouse and his partner moved to a cottage near the Michigan resort town of Saugatuck in order to simplify; wean himself from his addictions to shopping, tanning and cable; and resolve childhood traumas by being brashly gay in a nonurban setting. Saugatuck is actually quite gay-friendly, but trials abound: the eerie quiet of the countryside, the apocalyptic snows, a marauding raccoon fended off with lip balm and breath spray, the scarcity of gourmet yuppie-chow, the humiliation of wearing waders instead of Kenneth Cole boots, the slow, unfashionable locals who ask, rather perceptively, 'Don't you ever take anything seriously... things that don't affect only you?' Rouse's battle with his own narcissism is a losing one; indeed, it feels like the real point of offering his pink-outfitted self to the suspicious gazes of hunters and other yokels is simply to accentuate what a fascinating spectacle he is. Alas, Rouse's comically campy, but rarely truly funny, writing is so trite that few readers will share his self-involvement. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
As he turns 40, Rouse (Confessions of a Prep School Mommy Handler, 2007) admits to becoming “the ultimate cliché”: he’s mentally and physically exhausted, hates his job, and realizes there is a void in his life that the city is no longer filling. He and his partner, Gary, take a vacation in Saugatuck, Michigan, “a Midwestern Martha’s Vineyard,” and on the spot decide to sell their home in St. Louis and move to the woods. Rouse vows to become a “modern-day Thoreau” and sets out to follow 10 life goals, roughly along the tenets espoused by Thoreau in Walden, Rouse’s favorite book. Rouse chronicles the hilarious escapades of these “two neurotic urbanites” as they ensconce themselves in the woods without magazine subscriptions, malls, Trader Joe’s, HGTV, or lattes. Rouse feels like a Martian confronting the locals at the general store, and suffers extreme anxiety when attempting ice fishing and karaoke. Gay or straight, any reader who has tried to “fit in” somewhere outside his or her comfort zone will readily empathize with Rouse’s rousing and ultimately successful lifestyle change. --Deborah Donovan

Review
“This is David Sedaris meets Dave Barry….every page is good for a laugh.”
–Library Journal

"Rouse chronicles the hilarious escapades of these 'two neurotic urbanites' as they ensconce themselves in the woods without magazine subscriptions, malls, Trader Joe's, HGTV, or lattes. Rouse feels like a Martian confronting the locals at the general store, and suffers extreme anxiety when attempting ice fishing or karaoke. Gay or straight, any reader who has tried to 'fit in' somewhere outside his or her comfort zone will readily empathize with Rouse's rousing and ultimately successful lifestyle change."
–Booklist

"Wade Rouse is a true oddball: half Henry David Thoreau, half Oliver Wendell Douglas. AT LEAST IN THE CITY SOMEONE WOULD HEAR ME SCREAM is a funny, good-natured chronicle of a fish out of water, slowly learning to breathe."
–Tom Perrotta, bestselling author of Election, Little Children, and The Abstinence Teacher

“In AT LEAST IN THE CITY SOMEONE WOULD HEAR ME SCREAM, Wade Rouse’s inner Eddie Albert does battle with his inner Eva Gabor. I won’t tell you who wins, but the fight is immensely entertaining.”
–A.J. Jacobs, bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically

“Somewhere between Thoreau’s Walden Pond and Oliver Douglas’s Green Acres lies Wade Rouse. In AT LEAST IN THE CITY SOMEONE WOULD HEAR ME SCREAM, Rouse details his quest to shed the trappings of his fabulous life to live more simply… except no one told him how hard the simple life would be. Rouse is a master raconteur and his transition from city slicker to country mouse is filled with side-spitting humor, heart, and, of course, bands of marauding raccoons. This book has now taken its place at the top of my favorites list!”
—Jen Lancaster, bestselling author of Such a ...

Customer Reviews

A Memorable Story About Living Your Dreams
When was the last time you read a memoir that begins with an angry raccoon perched on the author's head? That's the opening scene of Wade Rouse's new book and one of many, both hilarious and wise, that make this a memorable story about living your dreams and in the process discovering a new life.

Despite the inspiration supplied by his grandmother's passion for Henry David Thoreau's WALDEN, Wade Rouse is an unlikely heir to the mantle of that nature-loving philosopher. Although he grew up in the Ozarks, the flamboyantly gay Rouse confesses that he had transformed himself "from a country rube into a sophisticated city boy, a Starbucks-swilling, pashmina-wearing, catch-a-Parker-Posey-independent-movie kind of guy." Frustrated in his day job as a public relations director at a St. Louis prep school, he yearns to become a full-time writer. So in 2005, he persuades his salesman partner Gary to abandon urban life for a small house they christen "Turkey Run" on three and one-half acres of land just outside the small town of Saugatuck, Michigan, a resort town and burgeoning artist community about a mile from Lake Michigan. Wade and Gary soon discover the chasm that separates life in the tourist season and the reality of a Michigan winter, and the fun begins.

Before embarking on his adventure, Rouse grabs a pile of coffeehouse napkins and compiles a list of "new life goals, one per napkin, that would match the tenets and principles that Thoreau set forth in WALDEN." The book's succeeding chapters end with a scorecard in which he judges his success by assigning a point to "Wade's Walden" or "Modern Society." Rouse's goals range from the mundane ("learn to love the snow") to the practical ("live off the land" and "nurture our country critters") to the profound ("rediscover religion" and "redefine the meaning of life and my relationship with Gary"). What gives his memoir its real zest are the sparks that fly when his wish to "eschew the latest entertainment and fashion for simpler pursuits" meets stiff resistance as he tries to "let go of my city cynicism."

For someone who is used to hanging out at Kenneth Cole and Banana Republic and is a devoted fan of "I Love Lucy" ("What would Lucy do?" is a frequent mantra) and Erma Bombeck, it's an understatement to describe Rouse's immersion into rural life as a culture shock. It isn't long before he has had to shed his normal haunts to frequent the local feed store on Saturday morning ("This is like replacing meth with Bubble Yum") or attend a potluck church supper that inspires a poignant recollection of the painful week he spent at church camp as a teenager. In one unsparing, often riotously funny self-portrait after another, Rouse tells of his grim battle with the relentless Michigan snow, his encounters with the local wildlife (the aforementioned raccoon gets a curtain call later in the book), his stab at ice fishing, and his attempt with Gary to plant a vegetable garden, among other adventures.

Like his predecessor Thoreau, Rouse is a keen, if initially reluctant, observer of natural life. He is able to write about it both lyrically ("Sometimes the fog rolls off the lake, heavy and thick, like a moving curtain, and the morning simply becomes stalled, the sunlight choked in darkness.") and with humor ("Spring arrives one day in Michigan like a forgotten castaway who manages to row his way onto the beach using two coconuts."). He is equally perceptive in the stories he tells of his neighbors, from the artists on whose farm he and Gary pick blueberries to the migrant workers who live, and eventually abandon, the decrepit single-wide trailer next door.

It's evident early in Wade Rouse's memoir that he's able to play a scene for laughs every bit as skillfully as David Sedaris, with whose work this book inevitably will be compared. Rouse's journey isn't an easy one, and for every step forward it seems he suffers a corresponding pratfall along the way. And yet, for all its biting wit, there's a rich, life-affirming message worthy of Thoreau at this story's core: "I have now learned that there is never a wrong time to do something meaningful and courageous in life," Rouse writes, "something that makes you deeply and achingly happy. There is only a right time: a moment to hold your breath, close your eyes and jump."

--- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg

Funniest Book of the Summer!
Side-splitting, hilarious, yet heartfelt and poignant "misadventures" of a man who hits 40 with a resounding thud and resolves to uproot his life, quit his job and leave the city, cable, culture and consumerism behind in order to move to a knotty-pine cottage in the middle of the Michigan woods to recreate a modern-day Walden. The memoir chronicles ultimate urbanite Wade and his partner, Gary, as they embrace 10 Life Lessons -- sort of a City/Country Smackdown -- based on trying to achieve a simpler life but also rooted in the tenets of Walden (think "Eschew Fashion and Entertainment for Simpler Pursuits," such as living w/o cable and magazines, a nearly impossible task for a man who considers Kenneth Cole to be on par with Gandhi for his contributions to the world, and Kathy Griffin to be his spiritual leader; think "live off the land," although his fave foods are Kashi and Morningstar Burgers; think "embrace your neighbors," though many seem to have night-vision goggles; think "embrace the Pixar-cute country critters, though Wade is attacked by a raccoon.) Yes, Wade buys waders, Wade ice-fishes, and survives blizzards and country stores and country karaoke with two tipsy trollops, but he also rediscovers -- as Thoreau did -- his spirituality, as well as happiness and a home in the last place he thought he'd ever find those things. I laughed out loud on nearly every page, but also was challenged to think about where I wanted my life to head in these tough times. Book is about taking risks, embracing life, getting lost in the woods, and finding yourself in the most unexpected of places. Wade reminds me of a gay Erma Bombeck, and I highly recommend this book as a must summer-read.

scream or laugh, your choice
"there's a raccoon on my head. and i don't particularly look good in hats. especially when they're still moving." and that is how wade rouse got me started on his memoir, laughing my you know what off. this is what it is all about. you can either feel sorry for the 40 year old gay men who is freaking out about life, or you can laugh about all the funny things we encounter in life that he so eloquently puts on the page. if you live in new york or los angeles, you might wonder what in god's name a guy in a midwestern city feels all that pressured about? but a gay man in any city is still a gay man! and as you follow his ten "life lessons," all written down on napkins while high on caffeine, you will realize that whether we live in a city of 300K or 30 million, a city is a city is a city. you still have to give up LOGO, and kenneth cole, and, yes, the boys. ok, so the last one is not part of the ten. the point is, by reading about his frustrations one rediscovers what is essential. at the end of the day, do we really need cable? maybe not. but for some us, a neighbor to hear our scream is nice.