Book 51 - Naked - David Sedaris

This is the first of two "three-peats" for the year - authors of whom I have read three books in this year's challenge.

Book 51 - Naked - David Sedaris

As I am in a hurry to finish my entries, and I have written about Sedaris' books twice before, I am going to refer you to my previous entries for Barrel Fever and When You Are Engulfed in Flames for any background information for this funny and entertaining author.

This is his second book, and all the essays seem to be autobiographical, dealing for the most part with his childhood and college days. However, with much of Sedaris' work it becomes difficult to tell where the weird and quirky truth ends and the weirder and quirkier exaggeration begins. For example in "A Plague of Tics," Sedaris describes a series of obsessive-compulsive tics he supposedly exhibited as a youngster that are so comically outlandish as to defy credulity. On the other hand the mystery of who is wiping their butt with the bath towels, related in the story "True Detective," is made more plausible by the presence of their strange greek grandmother, Ya-Ya. The mother of Sedaris' father, her strange habits are described in detail in "Get Your Ya-Ya's Out." Ya-ya barely speaks english, her hygiene is questionable, she boils expensive meats, kneads bread dough on the dirty kitchen floor, scavenges plants from the neighbor's yards and seeds from their bird feeders, and holds David's mother in scorn, refusing to call her by name and referring to her simply as "the girl." In light of her strange behaviors, why she seems to be dismissed as a suspect in the bath towel incident is inexplicable.

Sedaris' early family life is a rich source of weirdness. There's his father, who is so fanatical about golf that in the story "The Women's Open," he ignores the fact that his daughter is experiencing her first period. They are watching a live golf match with nationally known players, and he is so engrossed in the game that he foists the responsibility for making sure his daughter is OK off on a complete stranger in the crowd. In "Dinah, the Christmas Whore," David's sister drags him off on a mysterious mission on Christmas Eve to a seedy part of town to rescue a one of her coworkers, who also happens to be a prostitute, from an abusive boyfriend, and winds up bringing her home to meet the family. His mother seems to be the genetic source of David's sardonic wit, and she frequently uses her sharp tongue to cut her husband or his mother down to size.

As you must have gathered by now, I really like Sedaris' work. It exaggerates truth and finds truth in exaggeration, and is weird, quirky and funny. As I have warned before, his work is not for the prudish. His humor is dark and twisted, he talks openly about sex and bodily functions, and he is unabashedly gay. If any of this offends your delicate sensibilities, you might want to stay away from his work. However, if you can hang, you will find in him one of the most gifted comedic writers of our time.