something about David Sedaris’s "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk"

Animals play all the parts in David Sedaris’s Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, published in 2010. The characters are skillfully anthropomorphized and often find themselves jammed up in ways most humans can recognize.

 

But these animals are not just substitutes for people. They are nameless as strays and stock, and the reader rarely forgets these characters face animal fates—the farmer’s axe, the researcher’s hypodermic needle, the law of the jungle.

 

I have read several Sedaris collections and had decided I much preferred his autobiographical pieces, so I was surprised at how much I liked these sixteen shorts of humor and heart worms—and the accompanying animal illustrations by Ian Falconer.

 

I enjoyed a 2010 Little, Brown, and Company hardcover copy with patient, spacious type and thick-stock pages.

 

something about David Sedaris’s "Barrel Fever"

David Sedaris debuted in 1994 with Barrel Fever. The book includes "Santaland Diaries"—the essay that made Sedaris famous. He read it on National Public Radio in December 1992, and now NPR plays it every Christmas.

In Barrel Fever's fictional essays, Sedaris writes in first person and assumes the voice of the fantastically oblivious, outrageous, and delusional. 

The essay "Barrel Fever" features the voice of Dolph. Dolph describes the reporter at crime scenes as an “emotional strip miner” because of how they interview the unfortunate. Then Dolph meets a friend for dinner and routine binge drinking at a BYOB restaurant, but the friend declines to drink. Dolph describes their dinner conversation:

Later in the restaurant, figuring he’d changed his mind, I offered Gill one of my beers. He grew quiet for a few moments, tapping his fork against the table before lowering his head and telling me in fits and starts that he couldn’t have anything to drink. “I am, Jesus, Dolph, I am, you know, I’m ... Well, the thing is that I’m ... I am an ... alcoholic.”

“Great,” I said. “Have eight beers.”

Later, Dolph meets his sisters at their late mother’s house after the memorial service.

During that time at our mother’s house my sisters were remote and mechanical, acting as though they were hotel maids, tidying up after a stranger. They spoke as if a terrible chapter of their lives had just ended, and I felt alone in my belief that a much more terrible chapter was about to begin. I overheard them gathered together in the kitchen or talking to their husbands on the telephone, saying, “She was a very sad and angry woman and there’s nothing more to say about it.” Sad? Maybe. Angry? Definitely. But there is always more to say about it. My mother made sure of that.

In the essay “Giantess,” a man flirting with the idea of writing niche erotica describes an episode of Oprah Winfrey’s talk show, in which people forgive people who have ruined their lives.

One woman had testified on behalf of the man who had stabbed her twenty times. Another had embraced the drunk driver who killed her only son. She invites this fellow over to her house for holidays and Sunday dinners.

“He’s like a second son to me now,” she said, reaching over to take his hand. “I wouldn’t trade Craig for anything.” The felon stared at his feet and shrugged his shoulders. I was thinking that a lengthy prison sentence would probably be a lot more comfortable than having to take the place of the person you had killed.

I liked Barrel Fever, especially the titular essay, but found it less compelling than the autobiographical collections, including Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and Calypso.

Notes:

• "Santaland Diaries" was fact-checked and—surprise, surprise—Sedaris exaggerated and even made up some stuff. So an NPR editor called for the essay to be accompanied by a reader alert. That seems stupid, but I guess NPR felt it necessary after some literary frauds were exposed. Still, anyone who has read a few of Sedaris’s autobiographical essays should be able to guess that these are embellished. All real things are.
  
• I—along with probably nearly every Sedaris fan—prefer the more autobiographical works.

 

something about “Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls” by David Sedaris

My David Sedaris read-a-thon continued with Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls, an essay collection released in 2013. I enjoy reading Sedaris. I had been reading him on my commute and sometimes before bed or when I wake in the middle of the night. Those times flew by.

An acquaintance said she thinks Sedaris really loves people. I think people interest him, but I do not think he loves them. In a previous post I noted that I find his moments of mockery conspicuous. But maybe you can mock and love people.

My favorite essay in Owls is not a funny or poignant one: it is "Day In, Day Out" because, in it, Sedaris describes how he developed his writing habit and subject matter choices by keeping journals. I enjoy reading good writers talk about writing, and this essay can help aspiring professional and hobbyist writers.

One of my favorite funny parts of Owls comes in “A Friend in the Ghetto,” Sedaris’s telling of his attempt in ninth grade to forge a relationship with an overweight black girl. In this telling, he calls her Delicia. He was using Delicia to relieve the peer pressure he felt to have a girlfriend and to score cheap social-justice points. At one point, Sedaris wants to bring Delicia with him to church; his mother objects, so David accuses his mother of objecting because she fears having half-black grandchildren. His mom replies:

“That’s right,” she said. “I want you to marry someone exactly like me, with a big beige purse and lots of veins in her legs. In fact, why don’t I just divorce your father so the two of us can run off together?”

“You’re disgusting,” I told her. “I’ll never marry you. Never!” I left the room in a great, dramatic huff, thinking, Did I just refuse to marry my mother? and then, secretly, I’m free! The part of my plan that made old people uncomfortable, that exposed them for the bigots they were—and on a Sunday!—still appealed to me. But the mechanics of it would have been a pain. Buses wouldn’t be running, so someone would have to drive to the south side, pick up Delicia, and then come back across town. After I’d finished shocking everyone, I’d have to somehow get her home. I didn’t imagine her aunt had a car. My mother wasn’t going to drive us, so that just left my dad, who would certainly be watching football and wouldn’t leave his spot in front of the TV even if my date was white and offered to chip in for the gas. Surely something could be arranged, but it seemed easier to take the out that had just been handed to me and to say that our date was forbidden.

Love seemed all the sweeter when it was misunderstood, condemned by the outside world.

Later, Sedaris breaks the news to Delicia that his parents are prejudiced, and she seems undisturbed, saying only that it was okay. To which Sedaris responds:

“Well, no, actually, it’s not okay,” I told her. “Actually, it stinks.” I laid my hand over hers on the desktop and then looked down at it, thinking what a great poster this would make. “Togetherness,” it might read. I’d expected electricity to pass mutually between us, but all I really felt was self-conscious, and disappointed that more people weren’t looking on.

I wonder if this is more fiction than truth.

My other favorite funny part in Owls comes in “The Happy Place,” an essay about Sedaris getting a colonoscopy. For the procedure, he is given propofol, which gives him a sleepy sense of euphoria. He writes of the experience:

Never had I experienced such an all-encompassing sense of well-being. Everything was soft-edged and lovely. Everyone was magnificent. Perhaps if I still drank and took drugs I might not have felt the effects so strongly, but except for some Dilaudid I’d been given for a kidney stone back in 2009, I had been cruelly sober for thirteen years.

After the procedure, Sedaris writes of waking and finding a woman in his room.

“I’m going to need for you to pass some gas,” said the woman putting papers into envelopes. She spoke as if she were a teacher, and I was a second-grade student. “Do you think you can do that for me?”

“For you, anything.” And as I did as I was instructed, I realized it was no different than playing a wind instrument. There were other musicians behind other curtains, and I swear I could hear them chiming in, the group of us forming God’s own horn section.

Reviews of books by Sedaris are not hard to find, and some of them trace changes in his writing. I have found Sedaris to be pretty consistent from one book to the next. And this is the fourth book of his that I have read, following Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Calypso, and When You AreEngulfed in Flames (and not counting The Best of Me, which a best-of rather than a stand-alone collection).

something about "When You Are Engulfed in Flames" by David Sedaris

The more David Sedaris I read, the more I find myself wincing at his judgy and selfish moments—even though his versions of these moments totally appeal to me. Everyone is judgmental and selfish sometimes, and Sedaris’s own descriptions of these times are so entertaining.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames, published in 2008, marks my third consecutive David Sedaris book. This collection of essays, like the others I have read, do not have an obvious theme. But smoking comes up a bit, and the book’s last section is an extended piece about Sedaris’s experience with quitting.

Here are some of my favorite passages from When You Are Engulfed in Flames. First, a moment dealing with a battle-axe of a neighbor named Helen:

While in France, I’d bought Helen some presents, nothing big or expensive, just little things a person could use and then throw away. I placed the bag of gifts n her kitchen table and she halfheartedly pawed through it, holding the objects upside down and sideways, the way a monkey might. A miniature roll of paper towels, disposable napkins with H’s printed on them, kitchen sponges tailored to fit the shape of the hand: “I don’t have any use for this crap,” she said. “Take it away. I don’t want it.”

And here is a passage from an essay about going to the doctor for his kidney stone. Sedaris undressed and found his way to a waiting room—but without having first put on the robe available to him:

It’s funny the things that run through your mind when you’re sitting in your underpants in front of a pair of strangers. Suicide comes up, but, just as you embrace it as a viable option, you remember that you don’t have the proper tools: no belt to wrap around your neck, no pen to drive through your nose or ear and up into your brain. I thought briefly of swallowing my watch, but there was no guarantee I’d choke on it. It’s embarrassing, but, given the way I normally eat, it would probably go down fairly easily, strap and all. A clock might be a challenge, but a Timex the size of a fifty-cent piece, no problem.

Then the conclusion of an essay about his affection for spiders (and disaffection with pet dogs and cats):

I suppose there’s a place in everyone’s heart that’s reserved for another species. My own is covered in cobwebs rather than dog or cat hair, and, because of this, people assume it doesn’t exist. It does, though, and I felt it ache when Katrina hit. The TV was on, the grandmother signaled from her rooftop, and I found myself wondering, with something akin to panic, if there were any spiders in her house.

I love this description of the anxiety he feels before his partner Hugh takes him out for a meal:

“A restaurant? But what will we talk about?”

“I don’t know,” he’ll say. “What does it matter?” 

 

Alone together, I enjoy our companionable silence, but it creeps me out to sit in public, propped in our chairs like a pair of mummies. At a nearby table there’s always a couple in their late seventies, blinking at their menus from behind thick glasses.

“Soup’s a good thing,” the wife will say, and the man will nod or grunt or fool with the stem of his wineglass. Eventually he’ll look my way, and I’ll catch in his eyes a look of grim recognition. “We are your future,” he seems to say. “Get used to it.”

I’m so afraid that Hugh and I won’t have anything to talk about that now, before leaving home, I’ll comb the papers and jot down a half dozen topics that might keep a conversation going at least through the entrées.

Here is a fun rundown of smokers and their brands:

It was in a little store a block from our hotel that I bought my first pack of cigarettes. The ones I'd smoked earlier had been Ronnie's—Pall Malls, I think—and though they tasted no better or worse than I thought they would, I felt that in the name of individuality I should find my own brand, something separate. Something me. Carltons, Kents, Alpines: it was like choosing a religion, for weren't Vantage people fundamentally different from those who'd taken to Larks or Newports? What I didn't realize was that you could convert, that you were allowed to. The Kent person could, with very little effort, become a Vantage person, though it was harder to go from menthol to regular, or from regular-sized to ultralong. All rules had their exceptions, but the way I came to see things, they generally went like this: Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were tor procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren't. One should never loan money to a Marlboro menthol smoker, though you could usually count on a regular Marlboro person to pay you back. The eventual subclasses of milds, lights, and ultralights would not only throw a wrench into the works, but make it nearly impossible for anyone to keep your brand straight, but that all came later, along with warning labels and American Spirits.

And, finally, Sedaris remembers the first time someone asked him for a cigarette:

Take this guy who approached me after I left the store, this guy with a long black braid. It wasn’t the gentle, ropy kind you’d have if you played the flute but something more akin to a bullwhip: a prison braid, I told myself. A month earlier, I might have simply cowered, but now I put a cigarette in my mouth—the way you might if you were about to be executed. This man was going to rob me, then lash me with his braid and set me on fire—but no. “Give me one of those,” he said, and he pointed to the pack I was holding. I handed him a Viceroy, and when he thanked me I smiled and thanked him back.

It was, I later thought, as if I’d been carrying a bouquet and he’d asked me for a single daisy. He loved flowers, I loved flowers, and wasn’t it beautiful that our mutual appreciation could transcend our various differences, and somehow bring us together? I must have thought, too, that had the situation been reversed he would have been happy to give me a cigarette, though my theory was never tested. I may have been a Boy Scout for only two years, but the motto stuck with me forever: “Be Prepared.” This does not mean “Be Prepared to Ask People for Shit”; it means “Think Ahead and Plan Accordingly, Especially in Regard to Your Vices.”

something about a David Sedaris best-of

The Best of Me is a David Sedaris best-of collection that was released in 2020—more than 25 years into his professional writing career. Sedaris supposedly picked out the essays himself. The publisher's copy claims Sedaris's "words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision." I think that is debatable. I probably should not have read this because doing so will lead me to skip ahead when I come across these essays in the other books.

Note: I've read and thoroughly enjoyed more Sedaris since drafting this.

something about the David Sedaris book “Calypso”

Calypso is one of many David Sedaris books I read last year. The first books I read were assembled essays and maintained a kind of consistency. But Calypso might have been the most thematic collection. The 21 essays trend toward Sedaris’s family and aging. The book was published in May 2018, and Sedaris has now reached his 60s.

The prose, as always, is fresh and funny. Sedaris tells stories (all semi-autobiographical), and he masterfully balances his thorny wit and criticisms with bits of cottony poignancy.

One of my favorite parts is in “The Silent Treatment.” Sedaris is telling a story about how, at some point in his pre-teen years, he supposedly started flushing empty toilet paper rolls just to be a lil' bastard. His dad, not knowing David was the cause, would then have to plunge or, failing that, pull the toilet and unclog the drainpipe by hand. But dad eventually realizes David is the culprit.

“You are going to reach down into this pipe and pick out that cardboard roll,” my father said. “Then you are never going to flush anything but toilet paper down this toilet again.”

As I backed away, he pounced. Then he wrestled me to the floor, grabbed my hand, and forced it deep into what amounted to my family’s asshole.

And there it was been ever since, sorting through our various shit. It’s like I froze in that moment: with the same interests as that eleven-year-old boy, the same maturity level, the same haircut. The same glasses, even.

“Why Aren’t You Laughing” also hits as Sedaris writes about his mother, who died of cancer in her 60s, and her drinking.

Maybe ours wasn’t the house I’d have chosen had I been in charge of things. It wasn’t as clean as I’d have liked. From the outside, it wasn’t remarkable. We had no view, but still it was the place I held in mind, and proudly, when I thought, Home. It had been a living organism, but by the time I hit my late twenties, it was rotting, a dead tooth in a row of seemingly healthy ones. When I was eleven, my father planted a line of olive bushes in front of the house. They were waist-high and formed a kind of fence. By the mid-eighties they were so overgrown that pedestrians had to quit the sidewalk and take to the street instead. People with trash to drop waited until they reached our yard to drop it, figuring the high grass would cover whatever beer can or plastic bag of dog shit they needed to discard. It was like the Adams Family house, which would have been fine had it still been merry, but it wasn’t anymore. Our mother became the living ghost that haunted it, gaunt now and rattling ice cubes instead of chains.

And then Sedaris writes about his dad, a widower, looking back on his wife’s condition.

“Do you think it was my fault that she drank?” my father asked not long ago. It’s the assumption of an amateur, someone who stops after his second vodka tonic and quits taking his pain medication before the prescription runs out. It’s almost laughable, this insistence on reason. I think my mother was lonely without her children—her fan club. But I think she drank because she was an alcoholic.

I think I was a little stunned by the parts related to his sister Tiffany’s suicide in 2013.

Note: Most of these essays were previously published in magazines.

 

something about first reading David Sedaris

I knew of David Sedaris because I, probably like most people, had heard him on National Public Radio (NPR), including the annual Christmastime rebroadcasts of his 1992 reading of "Santaland Diaries." It is a funny story perfectly written. Call him a humorist and NPR celebrity, but Sedaris is a writer.

Sedaris's stories draw from his own life. I suspect much of it is stretched and embellished. Some parts could be completely fictional. But almost all of it is good.

So far, I have read Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. Both are collections of essays. These essays spin off Sedaris's childhood, his family, drug use, on-the-job and education experiences, and his relationship with his partner Hugh, which led to a relocation to France.

Me Talk Pretty One Day, published in 2000, might be Sedaris's most popular. He read some of the essays on the public radio show, “This American Life.” The stories I enjoyed most include "Go Carolina," which describes a young David going to his elementary school speech therapist for his lisp; the story about his brother Paul, "You Can't Kill the Rooster" (I think the accounts of Paul’s swearing are almost entirely fictional); and "Today's Special," which makes fun of fancy restaurant menus.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is another collection of essays and was released in 2004. My favorites here include "The Change in Me,” in which Sedaris attempts to become a late-era hippie; “Slumus Lordicus," the story of working for his low-income-housing landlord-parents; and "The End of the Affair,” one I really enjoyed about Sedaris and Hugh disagreeing about a romantic movie.

Of the two books, my favorite Sedaris prose so far is in “Slumus Lordicus," when Sedaris is reflecting on the collection of low-income rental properties his parents now owned:

"So what do you think?" my father said. He wasn't talking about Lance or Minnie Edward's boyfriend, but all of it. Everything before us was technically ours—the lawns, the houses, the graveled driveways. This was what ingenuity had bought: a corner of the world that could, in time, expand, growing lot by lot until you could drive for some distance and never lose your feelings of guilt and uncertainty.

Note: Sedaris’s first collection of essays, Barrel Fever, was published in 1994. His sister is Amy Sedaris, who was Jerri Blank in Comedy Central’s “Strangers with Candy.”