I finished listening to Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. He came recommended--a former student told me some years ago I should make it a point to read his stuff. I knew it was a compilation of essays, and there's a funny story about an interview with Sedaris in the fantastic film Bad Writing (which I won't share here so that you can watch the movie and find out for yourself), so I kind of knew he was a good writer.
The man's great.
But I'm kind of unsure what to think about his work in general. I still have Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls on my reading queue, so I think I'll put him back on, but...I don't know. There's something about his topics that kind of got to me.
Here's the weird thing: His writing is top notch. The "David Sedaris" character is charming, a little naive, and a lot of fun to hear his wry observations and excellent points. And, since I listened to the audiobook, read by the author, it gave an even more intimate understanding of what he was talking about. The first essay of the book, "Go Carolina", is significantly more engaging when you're listening to the author, in his own voice, talk about the problems he had with his voice when he was younger.
But there were a couple of hangups I had about it, and I've been trying to understand why. There's a bit of jealousy thrown in there--his essays were significantly more interesting than mine ever are, and though he tackles topics of a more mundane variety, he does it with much more panache, wordplay, and consideration than I ever bother. So, yeah, I kind of hate him on principle.
More importantly, though, he details a couple of things about his life that didn't sit quite right with me. I guess it shows in my upbringing that the too-long-by-far section "Twelve Moments in the Life of an Artist" really got under my skin. I don't enjoy stories about drug use or drug culture. It's something that I struggle to understand. Drugs are bad* and I don't want to read stories about their use. I suffered through the only Philip K. Dick novel I've ever read, A Scanner Darkly, as well as much of Brave New World, all the while mightily disliking the whole thing. I may be for a decriminalization of pot, but I'm not for a mainstream acceptance of hard drugs. I could only handle about three episodes of Breaking Bad--lauded as one of the best written shows in television history--before it was too much. (Some of you may be like, "Wait, three episodes in and you thought that was too much? Pffsh. Yeah, good thing you didn't watch any more." To which I say, "Yeah, that's my point.")
So listening to the author talk about his bizarre speed trips with performance art was really much too strange for me to enjoy. (That he's gay and talks about that aspect of his life doesn't bother me at all, which is strange since I'm blaming my upbringing for the anti-drug sentiment that I harbor so tightly.)
The other problem? Some of the essays were read live. I listen to my audiobooks at 1.6x the normal speed--just fast enough to get through a book at a better rate, but not so fast that it starts feeling like Alvin and his chipmunk brothers are joining in. When the live essays were read (some of which, I believe, aren't in the book), the audience seemed primed to laugh at almost every period. Now, Sedaris is a funny guy, but he knows that not every sentence is a punchline. Jokes need to be set up. Timing is important. But the audience, which laughed at 1.6x the normal speed, pounced on every gag, chortling to themselves in an unnatural cadence that set my teeth on edge. Sedaris had to wait for the joke to land before he could go on, so his reading was a little less polished in the live stuff than the studio readings, and that became an irritation, too.
But, as I pointed out above, I'm not as good as David Sedaris. My writing doesn't have the snap, polish, or wit that his essays seemed to exude. I did learn a few tricks--particularly with the way he culled his memories to make the quasi-autobiographical approach of a lot of the essays feel familiar, even if you don't know anything about him or his family--and I hope to improve my writing to be as quality, though not the same quality, as Sedaris.
At this point, though? I'm pretty far from being David.
----
* I know that there are a lot of different benefits to drug use, but even setting legalities aside, they seem pretty heinous. I think it's a matter of disassociation from reality that drug use of any sort implies to me that I bristle at. I'm sure there's a hypocrisy somewhere in my belief, but it's there as a general rule.
The man's great.
But I'm kind of unsure what to think about his work in general. I still have Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls on my reading queue, so I think I'll put him back on, but...I don't know. There's something about his topics that kind of got to me.
Here's the weird thing: His writing is top notch. The "David Sedaris" character is charming, a little naive, and a lot of fun to hear his wry observations and excellent points. And, since I listened to the audiobook, read by the author, it gave an even more intimate understanding of what he was talking about. The first essay of the book, "Go Carolina", is significantly more engaging when you're listening to the author, in his own voice, talk about the problems he had with his voice when he was younger.
But there were a couple of hangups I had about it, and I've been trying to understand why. There's a bit of jealousy thrown in there--his essays were significantly more interesting than mine ever are, and though he tackles topics of a more mundane variety, he does it with much more panache, wordplay, and consideration than I ever bother. So, yeah, I kind of hate him on principle.
More importantly, though, he details a couple of things about his life that didn't sit quite right with me. I guess it shows in my upbringing that the too-long-by-far section "Twelve Moments in the Life of an Artist" really got under my skin. I don't enjoy stories about drug use or drug culture. It's something that I struggle to understand. Drugs are bad* and I don't want to read stories about their use. I suffered through the only Philip K. Dick novel I've ever read, A Scanner Darkly, as well as much of Brave New World, all the while mightily disliking the whole thing. I may be for a decriminalization of pot, but I'm not for a mainstream acceptance of hard drugs. I could only handle about three episodes of Breaking Bad--lauded as one of the best written shows in television history--before it was too much. (Some of you may be like, "Wait, three episodes in and you thought that was too much? Pffsh. Yeah, good thing you didn't watch any more." To which I say, "Yeah, that's my point.")
So listening to the author talk about his bizarre speed trips with performance art was really much too strange for me to enjoy. (That he's gay and talks about that aspect of his life doesn't bother me at all, which is strange since I'm blaming my upbringing for the anti-drug sentiment that I harbor so tightly.)
The other problem? Some of the essays were read live. I listen to my audiobooks at 1.6x the normal speed--just fast enough to get through a book at a better rate, but not so fast that it starts feeling like Alvin and his chipmunk brothers are joining in. When the live essays were read (some of which, I believe, aren't in the book), the audience seemed primed to laugh at almost every period. Now, Sedaris is a funny guy, but he knows that not every sentence is a punchline. Jokes need to be set up. Timing is important. But the audience, which laughed at 1.6x the normal speed, pounced on every gag, chortling to themselves in an unnatural cadence that set my teeth on edge. Sedaris had to wait for the joke to land before he could go on, so his reading was a little less polished in the live stuff than the studio readings, and that became an irritation, too.
But, as I pointed out above, I'm not as good as David Sedaris. My writing doesn't have the snap, polish, or wit that his essays seemed to exude. I did learn a few tricks--particularly with the way he culled his memories to make the quasi-autobiographical approach of a lot of the essays feel familiar, even if you don't know anything about him or his family--and I hope to improve my writing to be as quality, though not the same quality, as Sedaris.
At this point, though? I'm pretty far from being David.
----
* I know that there are a lot of different benefits to drug use, but even setting legalities aside, they seem pretty heinous. I think it's a matter of disassociation from reality that drug use of any sort implies to me that I bristle at. I'm sure there's a hypocrisy somewhere in my belief, but it's there as a general rule.