At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life by Wade Rouse

The Barnes & Noble Review

Wade Rouse is an unlikely modern-day Thoreau. Sure, he's quit his high-powered job in St. Louis and struck out for the territory on the sparsely populated shores of Lake Michigan, with nothing more than his partner, their dog, a healthy dose of hope, and Walden in hand as a guidebook. But the self-professed neurotic urbanite's attempts to renounce big-city addictions -- Kenneth Cole shoes, Starbucks triple-shot-no-fat-no-whip white mochas, among others -- are not always successful. Take the first chapter of this chronicle on adjusting to life in the woods, in which he fends off a wily raccoon's assault on his trash can, and then his head, with the only two things he never leaves home without: lip shimmer and breath spray. Turns out the latter serves double duty as pepper spray, thwarting the beast long enough to release its toothy grip on Rouse. From there, Rouse ticks off the ten lessons he's determined to glean from his new life, such as "eschewing the latest entertainment and fashion for simpler pursuits" and "participating in country customs," both of which he tries desperately to embrace (the ice fishing scene is truly laugh-out-loud funny) and decidedly fails to achieve. His attempts to rediscover religion and redefine the meaning of life and love, however, produce poignant epiphanies. The true success in the book is how Rouse manages to toe the line (feet encased in stylish slides) between hilarity and philosophy, proving that enlightenment can be found in as unlikely a place as a karaoke contest, where he's reminded of his mother's teaching, "It's not where you choose to live; it's how you choose to live." --Lydia Dishman

From the Publisher

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.


From the Hardcover edition.

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)

Susan Belsky - Library Journal

What happens when a gay man leaves city life behind to embrace the rural lifestyle and philosophy of Thoreau? Rouse (America's Boy: A Memoir) said good-bye to his public relations job and, in an attempt to get serious about his writing, relocated with his partner to a cabin ten miles outside of a resort community in Michigan. Envision Green Acres for the 21st century. Most of the essays here offer variations on the theme of choosing the appropriate footwear for the job, as when Rouse discovers that Kenneth Cole boots are not the top choice for a day of ice fishing. Readers will encounter a dizzying assortment of brand names and references to cable television reality stars, so some of the humor may appeal only to those who appreciate a fabulous shopping spree or watching the beautiful people on the tube. This is David Sedaris meets Dave Barry-the humor is not subtle, but every page is good for a laugh.

Kirkus Reviews

Tongue-in-cheek memoir of a middle-aged gay man who, inspired by Thoreau, moved to rural Michigan to pursue his writing and the simple life. Rouse (Confessions of a Prep School Mommy Handler, 2007, etc.) jettisoned urban pleasures and set out with his partner to craft a new life in the woods. The narrative is organized around ironic "life lessons" drawn from his reading of Thoreau and supplemented by research from the Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia. Along the way, he was ravaged by a raccoon, shopped at a warehouse store, went ice fishing and built a snowman, "complete with a very impressive thick stick penis." His meandering text offers various observations on the differences between city and country life. Urbanites have fashion, credit-card debt and neighbors who never intrude. Country dwellers are so benighted they can't even deal with his tiny little list of 21 items his local grocery should carry-typical entry: "Silver Palate rough-cut oatmeal (must be the slow-cook kind, not the instant." When the clerk responded with mild mockery, he considered "pushing the bowling pencil into her jugular . . . [I] am convinced that if I explained all of this to a jury of my peers, I would be acquitted. But I know I have no ‘peers.' " Rouse apparently aspires to reconfirm tired stereotypes about backward country people and flamboyant gay men. He also indulges in occasional flurries of tepid misogyny (a comment about dull female birds, an encounter with a lesbian sewer expert). The author's attitude and tone, including his liberal use of uninspired profanity, is encapsulated in the opening description of himself as "a self-obsessed gay man who intentionally bedazzled himself in $1,000 worthof trendy clothing just to walk the trash out in the middle of fucking nowhere!"Inauthentic and overblown. Author events out of Michigan

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