To say that David Sedaris is great because he’s so funny is to say that what makes Ben and Jerry’s Mint Chocolate Cookie so good is because it’s so creamy. It is creamy, for sure. Incredibly creamy. So creamy you might shoot it out your nose because the level of creaminess took you off guard. But that’s not really the point. The point is all the other stuff mixed in – the nuances, the subtleties – that swirl together to make the whole, a tiny carton of ice cream that you keep eating and eating, and the carton keeps getting lighter as you keep getting happier, and then the spoon hits the bottom and, buckling under the shame and embarrassment, refusing to admit that it’s gone, you wish there was more, more, more.
If you don’t know David Sedaris, you should. If you do know him – perhaps from old “Letterman” episodes or hearing him on the public radio megalith “This American Life” – and would like to see him in Durango and don’t have a ticket, well good luck. His show Tuesday at Fort Lewis College has been sold out for months. And if you already love Sedaris, welcome aboard. So do I.
In lieu of seeing Sedaris in person, you should pick up one of Sedaris’ essay collections. There are seven, and all of them are gems. I’ll tell you why.
I first came across Sedaris’ “Me Talk Pretty One Day” on a friend’s recommendation more than a decade ago. It took him all of two pages to become my favorite writer. To me, that collection remains his finest.
Since then, I’ve always read Sedaris for the same reason millions of others do: To laugh, to be entertained. There is something about his kooky upbringing, off-the-wall family, the absurd hijinks, his self-deprecation, sarcasm and dry wit. But Sedaris is more than a funny guy. The components of his writing, the things that make any writing good, are there. Funniness – incredible funniness – is almost a byproduct.
First are the small things, like his comic description and use of simile. Not enough simply to describe and compare, Sedaris takes the process further, punching up his stellar imagery with humor. In his collection, “When You Are Engulfed in Flames,” he describes how he was awoken by a neighbor buzzing his doorbell, then a knocking on his door as “frantic and relentless, the way you might rail against a coffin lid if you’d accidentally been buried alive.” After wearing a prosthetic butt (don’t ask), he describes how his rear became chaffed and bony, resembling “a rusted coin slot.” When describing the hair of a woman he rented a room from, he said it was white, streaked randomly with yellow, “like snow that had been peed on.”
I’ve discovered that the closer you read Sedaris, the more impressive he is. Every word on the page counts, nearly every sentence is funny (and if it isn’t funny, it is likely serving directly to set up an enormously funny punch line) and his descriptions are one of a kind.
For example, in the story “Big Boy,” from “Me Talk Pretty,” Sedaris probes his memory to offer only the most embarrassing and awkward from his past. He was at a party at a friend’s house and excused himself to go to the bathroom where he found sitting in the toilet “the absolute biggest turd I have ever seen in my life – no toilet paper or anything, just this long and coiled specimen, as thick as a burrito.
“I flushed the toilet, and the big turd trembled. It shifted position, but that was it. This thing wasn’t going anywhere.”
One thing that gives Sedaris his unique voice is the world view from which he writes. A slight, homosexual man with a high-pitched voice, Sedaris (in his writing at least) is never quite accepted, never fitting in exactly, always somewhat of an outsider. As with many things that formed the Sedaris his readers love, this could probably be blamed on his family.
In his essay, “You Can’t Kill the Rooster,” Sedaris shows how his 11-years-younger brother, Paul, who nicknamed himself “The Rooster,” grew up under wildly different treatment from the rest of the siblings, all having left home by the time Paul was in high school.
“When I was young,” Sedaris writes, “we weren’t allowed to say ‘shut up,’ but once the Rooster had hit puberty, it had become acceptable to shout ‘Shut your [expletive] hole.’ The drug laws had changed as well. ‘No smoking pot’ became ‘no smoking pot in the house,’ before it finally petered out to ‘please don’t smoke pot in the living room.’”
Joyously reading Sedaris over the years, I have come to notice that nearly every word, every sentence, every paragraph carries such literary zeal. I see his self-depreciation on every page, offering himself up for comedy more than anyone else, never writing in anger or arrogance but with soft outrage, unbridled curiosity, an ear for the absurd and deft but ferocious commentary.
Ultimately, Sedaris’ goes well beyond trying to be funny. He graciously shares his insecurities, his off-beat thoughts, his delusions, his fears. Conversely, Sedaris’ writing allows us a clearer picture of ourselves and of the human spirit and condition. And we laugh, laugh and laugh the whole way.
dholub@durangoherald.com. David Holub is the Arts & Entertainment editor for The Durango Herald.
