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.
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.
