Naked & Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Naked by David Sedaris

and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm trying to figure out just why David Sedaris is so brilliant. I feel like I got to know him and his family, listening to him reading his essays in these two audio collections. I laughed, and then occasionally stopped what I was doing and paused while he spoke.

Sedaris is known as a humorist, but these are more than just funny stories about a quirky family. His words somehow delve deep into life. Character. Essence.

I think it's because he seems to know himself so well. He doesn't hide from his own incisiveness. We get fantastic glimpses of his most humiliating moments, and then access to the secret triumphs. Honesty isn't always self-deprecating (but Sedaris's usually is).

Whether cramming handfuls of candy into his mouth rather than give any to the weird neighbors, or shamelessly cheating at strip poker, this is a person we want to know -- his flaws are just so compelling.

As are those of his family. All of them -- the foul-mouthed mother, the tyrannical father, eccentric sisters and redneck brother... I'm glad they don't live above me, but life would be more interesting if they did.

In these mesmerising essays, David Sedaris magically pulls the bizarre out of the ordinary. At the end of the telescope that is his writing, there is an acutely sharp consciousness, focusing our gaze on all manner of things.

Sometimes the lens holds an exaggerated memory, an adolescent embarrassment. It's hard to believe that all these events really happened -- but then again, they are mostly ordinary stuff. Just gilded with weirdness. The summer camp... in Greece. The nervous tics. The terrible towel crimes.

At times the focus of his lens is so intense that the subject starts to smoulder. There's no perceptible shift, but suddenly his mother is dying of cancer, or his father is kicking him out of the house. Even the drugged out haze of his young adulthood is portrayed with startling clarity.

I treasure these two collections -- on audio, read by the author -- and I will certainly be looking up his other books.

I read these for the GLBT Reading Challenge.