Tag Archives: authors: david sedaris

Calypso

essays, memoir, non-fiction November 24, 2022 Leave a comment

Calypso is the latest of David Sedaris’ collections of essays that I listened to on audiobook. As always, I liked it, but some of these essay collections are becoming a bit repetitive? I don’t know if it’s because I’ve heard so many of Sedaris’ stories before or if it’s because they’re really repeating, but I felt like I knew several of these pretty well already, including ‘Now We Are Five,’ which Sedaris wrote after his youngest sister, Tiffany, committed suicide.

Anyway, in spite of the fact that I felt like I had heard some of these stories before, this is an excellent collection of stories. Sedaris’ observation of the world around us and his wit in interpreting them and sharing them, are not fading as he ages. And this book is very much about middle age and the stark reality that most of his future is now behind him.

Anyway, Calypso did not disappoint. I very much loved listening to Sedaris’ tell us about getting a stomach bug while on a book tour and his realization that his body will eventually betray him. It was a darkly funny book that offered belly laughs.

Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002

autobiography, essays, humor, memoir May 30, 2019 Leave a comment

Ah yes, Theft By Finding – my return to David Sedaris.

After 2016 I basically didn’t pay any attention to Sedaris again until last year when I borrowed this audiobook from the library. I actually went to one of his readings for this book, which was highly enjoyable. I had planned to get an autograph but it was Sunday night and I couldn’t wait on the line since I had to work the next day.

This book was essentially diary entries of Sedaris’s from 1977-2002, and he admits he went back and filled in some gaps and made sure everything made sense before putting them out.

I loved these stories. Whether they’re tales of his early work in construction or of his family at the beach, I enjoyed them thoroughly – although not the 9/11 entry so much. To me, that entry, while well written, felt lost to me. I guess we all felt lost then. It brought back too much of that feeling of waiting around with nothing to do, waiting for something to happen that never happens. I hated that feeling. I hated remembering that feeling.

I think what I like most about Sedaris, and maybe he’s done this on purpose, but maybe he hasn’t, is that feeling he invokes of being a passenger and observer in his own life. He is observing, but he also somehow gives the impression that he has zero control over what happens to him. He randomly ends up on the street buying pot in the middle of the night because his roommate was supposed to do it, but he went to go get laid instead, so David had to do it because his roommate talked him into coming. (This isn’t an actual example, but it’s just the kind of thing Sedaris does – things happen to him like he has no choice in it).

Maybe some people find this annoying. Even I do sometimes. But I think part of Sedaris’s appeal to me is that I often feel like a passenger/observer taking part in my own life. There’s all that “Oh, you’re the heroine of your own story” bullshit out there, but really, I’m not fully in control of my own circumstances 90% of the time, and a lot of the time, I feel like everyone else on the stage and I’m the only person in the audience.

I even managed to hook my husband on Sedaris with this book, because I made him listen to portions of it in the car with me when we went places. I’m looking forward to his next batch, which is supposedly a thing that’s happening (supposedly 2003 – present-ish).

Also, “theft by finding” is a real thing. According to Wikipedia:

Theft by finding occurs when someone chances upon an object which seems abandoned and takes possession of the object but fails to take steps to establish whether the object is genuinely abandoned and not merely lost or unattended.

I really like this phrase and idea for some reason.

Theft By Finding was a solid series of essays/diary entries. Any David Sedaris fan will enjoy it.

2016: The Year of David Sedaris

essays, humor, memoir, non-fiction March 20, 2017 Leave a comment

Some time in 2016 I decided that I needed to switch from history to something funny. I think it was around the time the New York Islanders were knocked out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

So! I decided to give David Sedaris another shot. I originally read When You Are Engulfed In Flames by Sedaris back in 2010. I didn’t find it that funny at the time, but I said, “Maybe I’m missing something,” and the comedy selection on Overdrive leaves a bit to be desired. Unless I’m a big Stephanie Plum fan, there wasn’t as much choice as I would have hoped, so I gave Sedaris another go.

I’m glad I did. Listening to Sedaris read his own stories made a huge difference to me. They were witty, sharp, dark, and that’s kind of my style, so I got a lot of mileage out of them.

I listened to five books by David Sedaris in 2016:

1. Holidays on Ice
2. When You Are Engulfed in Flames
3. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk
4. Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls
5. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

And one book edited by David Sedaris:

Children Playing Before A Statue of Hercules.

Forget about Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules. It was an abridged production, it wasn’t that funny, and I only remember one of the essays which featured a (strained?) relationship between two sisters that I related to a little too well.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Sedaris writes essays about things in his everyday life and they frequently feature his life partner, Hugh, and his family. The aforementioned essays are frequently humorous but sometimes serious and usually dark, which doesn’t always bother me until you realize these are real people he’s talking about and you hope that Sedaris is taking a bit of dramatic license.

Long story short, Sedaris writes essays. All the books had their particularly bright spots, but Holidays on Ice was probably my favorite of these books, and my favorite essay in it was “The SantaLand Diaries” where Sedaris chronicles his time playing an elf in SantaLand in Macy’s Department Store one Christmas season. Having worked in retail over Christmas, it was striking how similar Sedaris’s recollections were to my own, minus the elf costume. It seems people are awful everywhere, which is sort of a comfort. It’s not just happening to YOU, it’s happening to EVERYONE.

Other highlights from Holidays on Ice included “Season’s Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!” (chronicling Mrs. Dunbar’s descent into madness brought on by, among other things, her husband’s infidelity, the prostitute stepdaughter she is forced to take in, and her own drug addicted daughter’s pregnancy out of wedlock) and “Dinah The Christmas Whore” (in which Sedaris goes with his sister, Lisa, to rescue an abused prostitute from domestic violence on Christmas Eve).

My favorite essay, however, did not appear in Holidays on Ice but in Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim and was called “Six to Eight Black Men,” which was about Santa in the Dutch traditions (and other cultural differences).

I don’t really do it justice here because, well, I can’t. It made me laugh til I cried. So I’ll let Sedaris read you the story himself.