Read Sedaris?

Went in to Big Star Books the other day, where I had about twenty bucks worth of credit, and decided to spend it all on three David Sedaris books. So I bought Barrel Fever, Naked, and Dress your Family in Corduroy and Denim. God damn, this dude is funny, but not funny in such a way that you start out laughing your head off. You start out just reading along, thinking hmm, a little story about someone's life, then some mostly ordinary situation is drawn out in the most fantastic hyperbole you have ever read and you just collapse laughing. It's also very brave. His humor is either about what a loser he is, and he does prove his point rather well, or about his fantasies of being something very different from the loser that he supposedly is.

For instance, as of the publication of these three books, he had never learned to drive and was going from job to job just doing stuff like being a housecleaner, or doing odd jobs. He managed to pull so much incredible humor from these tales of loserdom, that he is officially no longer a loser. I hope the success didn't harm his street cred. Barrel Fever is a series of short stories that immediately made me think of Mark Leyner, they're that kind of I'm-writing-about-my-fantasy-of-myself type thing, followed by a series of essays, which include the Santaland Diaries, which was his kind of break-out bit. And when you read it, you will see why. It's about working as an elf at Macy's Christmastime Santaland set-up. Here is an excerpt for your chuckling pleasure:

The woman in charge of costuming assigned us our outfits and gave us a lecture on keeping things clean. She held up a calendar and said, "Ladies, you know what this is. Use it. I have scraped enough blood out from the crotches of elf knickers to last me the rest of my life. And don't tell me, 'I don't wear underpants, I'm a dancer.' You're not a dancer. If you were a real dancer, you wouldn't be here. You're an elf and you're going to wear panties like an elf."

He just leaves you with that quote, "you are an elf and you will wear panties like an elf." No commentary needed. Later Sedaris describes his favorite Santa:

The parents and children enter the room, and if there is a girl in the party, Santa will look at her, hold his gloved hands to his chest and fake a massive heart attack—falling back against the cushion and moaning with a combination of pleasure and pain. Then he slowly comes out of it and says . . . "Elf, I just had a dream that I was standing before the most beautiful girl in the world. She was right here, in my house."

I say, "It wasn't a dream, Santa, open your eyes . . ."

Santa rubs his eyes and shakes his head as if he were a parish priest being visited by Christ. "Oh heavenly day!" he says, "You ARE the most beautiful girl in the world!" 

I just loved that bit about the parish priest. Anyway, if you haven't read Sedaris, go out and read him. I don't particularly recommend one of these books over the other. Get them all!