There was a period in 2011, not coincidentally not a great time in my personal life, when I read a lot of David Sedaris. And by a lot, I mean it all, and mostly in the early hours of the morning.
Recently I googled for authors ‘like Sedaris,’ and was surprised by how few options there were.. I gave the options a go (Crossley, Burroughs, Rakhoff) and can report that the options are even fewer than Google suggested, in fact essentially nil. No one is writing the comic personal essay like Sedaris. And by no one, I mean no one. Really, I find this remarkable. Everyone has a personal life. Most people have a sense of humour. It’s incredible that Sedaris has, at least in my opnion, not one truly viable competitor.
I started a re-read of him, to try and figure out what he is doing. My blog tells me this is the third time for FLAMES. And three times round, I still can’t tell exactly what it is he is doing so well. Here he is on glasses:
Today these frames sound ridiculous, but back then they were actually quite stylish. Time is cruel to everything but seems to have singled out eyeglasses for special punishment. What looks good now is guaranteed to embarrass you twenty years down the line, which is, of course, the whole problem with fashion.
And on smoking:
As with pot, it was astonishing how quickly I took to cigarettes. It was as if my life was a play, and the prop mistress had finally shown up. Suddenly there were packs to unwrap, matches to strike, ashtrays to fill, and then empty.
I tried to map out a couple of the essays, and my theory is the success is the apparent ease: conversational and yet so artful. In later years he has got a bit sappy, one has to hear about his feelings, and in particular his feelings about his father, but at his best: he’s quite alone in his medium.