David Sedaris: Two Books

First, an announcement:  I had to stop taking my online Coursera course because between a book partnership, graduate school, working full time, being a rabbit mom, and being a wife-thing, something had to give.

Now, on to David Sedaris. 

For the last couple weeks of our book partnership, JennaRose and I have read a couple David Sedaris novels, mostly because she really really likes him a lot; almost as much as I like Billy Collins. 

We started out with the light collection of Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, which is a bunch of short stories in which animals have humanesque qualities--more so than typical fairy tales do.  In typical fairy tales, animals can think and talk and give life advice, but are generally either considered super evil because they want to cause harm/eat your grandmother, or they are very good-hearted and kind.  In Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, the animals bear human qualities ranging from preachy to racist, from adulterous to weight-conscious.  Like the classic Grimm's Fairy Tales, the stories in Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk tend to offer some sort of moral at the end of the tale, and (also like Grimm's) oftentimes it isn't quite what you expect.  Is having sex as a part of your job (breeding) with another woman the same as cheating?  Are we punished by some higher being for our faults and imperfections? 

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk was an easy read; I finished it in about a day.  It wasn't the book that changed my life, but it was a great introduction into David Sedaris' literature. 

The next book I read by him was Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, in which Sedaris presents a collection of nonfiction tales from his childhood and adult life.  What makes this collection great is the rawness of how straightforward Sedaris is with his audience: his is very gay, and has been since he was a boy, and he also has anxiety and OCD tendencies.  He presents the absurdities of life in the ordinary and extraordinary with a truthfulness about his family that most authors would shy away from. 

The baby raised a fist to her mouth, and Paul (Sedaris' brother) lowered his head into the crib.  "That's just your uncle Faggot and your raggedy-assed granddaddy talking some of their old stupid bullshit," he said.  

and

I looked at my father, a man in dirty shorts who drank his beer from the can rather than pouring it into his tumbler, and I thought, "You don't belong here."  ...The hokey Greek phrases, the how-to lectures on mixing your own concrete, the squabble over who would pay the stupid dentist bill--little by little, it had all seeped into my bloodstream, robbing me of my natural ability to please others.

He writes with a raw honesty and a humorous eye on the common (eating Halloween candy, giving directions, playing cards) and the uncommon (wanting to buy the Anne Frank House.  Drowing a mouse.  Being mistaken for an exotic house cleaner.) Like any good writer, life is not just about what you experience, but how you experience it.  And, like Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, the lessons aren't always kind and aren't always what you expect.