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Posted by Dain, Monday, January 21, 2008 4:02 AM (Eastern)
I rarely dip into contemporary writers, because most everything one needs to know is in those old books anyway, but everyone I know seems to have read David Sedaris, "in comedy, his own meteorological system", another writer once confided, so dull from purchasing clothes I picked up a copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day. I suffer from chronic insomnia, but I've been doing pretty well lately, waking up at sunrise every morning, and then this book derailed me because I've been up all night reading it. It's not highbrow artiste stuff, but privately, I think quite a lot of that is rot for academics to worry over. I reserve most of my venom for that sacred cow, James Joyce, whom very few people read in the first place and still intellectuals adore him. If you've really read it, you wouldn't. I've read it all, even Finnegans Wake, which just makes me want to swear, because it's not even word vomit, it's like he shat (there it is) a library onto a printing press*. People get so intimidated by these names, but it is my humble opinion that just because these people are extremely intelligent themselves doesn't mean the books are that great. Long before radio and television killed people's tastes for books, writers managed it by agonizing over their "artistic value".
Instead, Sedaris is just fun, hitting that rare balance between absurdity and poignancy that seems so easy when you read it but is really very difficult to attain. It's a bizarre world he lives in, but it really hits home. It's hugely entertaining. That is no deprecation, it's sincere admiration. Artistic rigor (an ugly term) might help in one respect, however: his rants get repetitive, though in part because they are essays—I wouldn't really be inclined to buy another of his books for that reason.
* I ought to clarify that I am rather fond Portrait. I remember once in Chaucer class the TA asked if there were any Joyce fans in the room, and there are very few moments in which I prefer to be seen as ignorant, but I just couldn't raise my hand. It's the intellectual equivalent to wearing Christian Louboutins (you think you are, but you're not). One of them had taken a Joyce class with me, and he shook his head at me in horror.
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