Like blogging and using the overground trains in London, I am coming so late it cannot possibly be fashionable to the David Sedaris fan club. I mean, it's past last call and the only people left are the drunken ones hooking up in the corner because they both have roommates and have nowhere else to go.
I’m not sure why I avoided Sedaris. I think maybe I conflated him in my head with David Foster Wallace – I am not a fan of post-post-modernist work. Reading endless footnotes just reminds me of my junior year of high school, where we had an entire American history exam of questions based only on information that came from the photo captions (and of course, no advance warning that that’s what the exam would be based on). Or maybe “humorist” reminds me too much of Dave Barry, and although at one point I found him funny, at this point in my life I’m not really up for an entire book of booger, bodily function, and frat boy jokes. And it can't have helped that I remember reading an essay of Sedaris' in the New Yorker -- about a boil he had (I think possibly on his butt) -- that just didn’t thrill me.
Anyway.
I picked up Me Talk Pretty One Day while leaving the last hotel I was staying in in St. Tropez. The incredibly rude staff – you’d think 900 euros a night would get you something, but you’d be wrong, at least in France – was being incredibly unhelpful with any travel arrangements to Nice. As I’d been the one sorting out most of the logistics (hotel rooms, etc) for the previous six days, I was happy when one of the (French-speaking) freelancers I was working with took over. I plucked Me Talk Pretty One Day off a shelf in the hotel's library and, when it came time to go, took it with me. I figured I deserved it. (It didn't match their faux antique books on display, anyway.)
I didn’t get around to reading it for a week or so, but when I did, Oh. My. God. I was laughing out loud on the Tube. And when I wasn’t laughing out loud, I was admiring (and envying) the grace, the pacing, and the unbelievable powers of observation.
Plus, why can’t I have a sister as cool as Amy?
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ohhh you described that so perfectly... the simultaneous laughter/envy when you read his stuff. "Ha ha ha! Grrrrr!"
ReplyDeletei have an acquaintance who is obsessed with dave barry, so now that you've explained he's about boogers and frat boy jokes, well that goes a long way to explaining why this acquaintance bugs the SHIT outta me!
(and dude! i can't believe we blogged about david sedaris on the same day. spooky blog ESP ;)
Give David Rakoff a try. I think he's even funnier than Sedaris, and a way better writer in terms of the enviable elegance of his prose.
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