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 Roger Ebert's autobiography "Life Itself"

Roger Ebert was a talented, Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic and writer who worked for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he and Gene Siskel, film critic for rival paper Chicago Tribune, began co-hosting a weekly movie review show in Chicago. The no-frills program was picked up for national syndication and eventually moved to commercial network television. The odd couple—plump, mop-haired Roger wearing glasses next to tall, thin Gene—having tense, insightful arguments and giving thumbs-up/thumbs-down movie reviews became a pop-culture phenomenon in the 1980s and 90s. After 53-year-old Siskel died in 1999, Ebert continued the show format with other critics.

Ebert was diagnosed with cancer of the thyroid and salivary glands in 2002, and his treatment and surgeries later led to the removal of his lower jaw. Ebert, disfigured and no longer able to speak, continued to write, and his blog attracted a loyal audience. He reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and was on TV for 31. Ebert was 70 when he died.

His patient, careful autobiography, Life Itself, is traditional and lovely. Ebert describes his parents, his childhood (including Catholic school), his career, his alcoholism (and then his pain-killer addition during cancer treatments), and his relationships, including the close, competitive relationship he had with Siskel. Ebert's writing about his disfigurement and condition is touching. I also enjoyed reading his views on the evolution of film promotion over the years and his descriptions of his interviewing habits.

 

Read some of his interviews:

• "Who's gonna get me a beer?" An interview with Lee Marvin by Roger Ebert, October 10, 1970
• Interview with George Peppard by Roger Ebert, February 18, 1968
• Interview with John Wayne (1969) by Roger Ebert, June 29, 1969

And one passage early in the autobiography sneaks in this gut-punch.

The optometrist had me read the charts and slowly straightened up. "Has Roger ever worn glasses?" he asked my mother. "No. He hasn't needed them." The doctor said: "He's probably always needed them. He's very shortsighted." He wrote me out a prescription. "Wasn't he ever tested?" It had never occurred to anyone. My parents and my aunt Martha the nurse monitored my health, which was good; I was in the hospital only twice, to have my tonsils and appendix removed, and had monthly radiation treatments for ear infections (they were probably responsible for the salivary cancer I developed in my sixties.) I'd never complained about eyesight, and no one noticed any problems.

Life Itself was published in 2011.

something about “Standoff: Race, Policing, and a Deadly Assault That Gripped a Nation,” a nonfiction book by Jamie Thompson

Standoff counts down the minutes of July 7, 2016, the punishing summer night when a lone gunman waged war on police amid a Black Lives Matter rally in downtown Dallas. That night, protesters, moved by the recent murders by police of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, marched in cities across the nation to demand policing reforms and accountability. Dallas police were monitoring the city’s peaceful protest when a black, young man in a bulletproof vest, armed for battle, murdered five officers and wounded eleven other people.

A chaotic gun battle in the streets moved into a downtown community college, where police cornered the shooter. As a negotiator tried to talk down the gunman, whose cause was sick vengeance for racial injustice in America, the SWAT team armed a robot with a bomb, directed it to the gunman, and blew him to bits.

The author of Standoff, Jamie Thompson, cycles chapters through perspectives—on events and on the issues—from the officers, from family, protesters, a doctor, and the police chief and mayor—people whose lives changed that night.

Aside from the negotiator, who is black, the officers, in Thompson’s telling, all have the colorless view that police decisions should not be questioned—and the officers’ views are the ones most frequently expressed in Standoff. The officers are also portrayed as heroic or tragic. They were.

Note: Jamie Thompson won an Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in writing for her coverage of the gunman’s ambush of Dallas police in July 2016. Thompson originally covered the shooting for The Washington Post and later wrote about it for The Dallas Morning News. She has also contributed to D Magazine, Texas Monthly, and the Tampa Bay Times.

something about "Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge," a nonfiction book by Jim Schutze

Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge, by Jim Schutze, was a best-selling true crime book in 1998. It was adapted into the 2001 film "Bully," directed by Larry Clark. The crime involves the brutal murder of Bobby Kent, a vicious kid in a comfortable, middle-class Ft. Lauderdale beach community. Kent's best friend and a group of peers lured Kent to his death. 

 

This is the story of a damaged and depraved community. Schutze, a local Dallas journalist, is pitiless and closes his book with a swipe at the adults loitering at the edges of the kids' lives. Reading this dissolves a little more faith in humanity. It's great.

something about "The Years with Ross" by James Thurber

James Thurber worked as a writer, editor, and cartoonist at high-brow American magazine The New Yorker. Harold Ross was the publication's founder and served as its managing editor from 1925 to 1951. In the role of managing editor, Ross let loose his perfectionist's drive, relentlessly scrutinizing each cartoon and bit of text (sometimes to the point of over-editing).

The Years with Ross was published in 1957. James Thurber wrote the book as an affectionate remembrance of the profane, temperamental, eccentric, anti-intellectual prude whose fickleness and editing genius wrought frustration on the staff and contributors. Despite the hair-pulling Ross caused, he had many devotees. Thurber, who was in his 60s when he wrote this, was chief among them.

James Thurber was an accomplished writer and cartoonist. This portrait of Ross is charming, and the prose chuckles and rolls off the page. I highly recommend The Years with Ross (especially if you know a good editor).