With Sedaris, nobody and nothing is off limits- no target too big, no story too small, no issue too personal. He is pathologically averse to sentimentality, and venom is his best friend. He doesn’t take hand-wringing to heart. “ If you’re writing satire, you have to swing hard,” he says. When his audience laughs at cruelty, he sees his job as a satirist to fix the problem. Sedaris is a collection of stories, a “thief by finding,” he rarely wastes time on the drivel or resolution. He’s allergic to morals, to fables and in this book THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE is whip-smart, honest and delightfully observant, worthy of revisiting often.
There’s a reason why the well earned sobriquet by this eminent author is so well deserved, due to him being regarded as a national treasure. This book, the fourteenth in his collection, is David Sedaris the premier comic essayist, doing what he does best, presenting 27 mostly unpublished pieces, which brings him back to the core of of his signature writing: his relationship with his husband, Hugh; the little quirks of living; the odd things people do and say; good and bad manners; travels and friendships. He certainly bundles crankiness with oodles of charm for a curmudgeon. This collection is wry, his take on being alive is weird and atrocious while a mite contradictory, unfair and funny-as-all-out.
He says, “ I’ve never sat down thinking I’m gonna write a book – never” in his typical Sedaris mode, he wanders through topics as disparate as meeting Pope Francis and maximising his Duolingo score at his junior-level best, how he married his partner-Hugh Hallrick in secret. He undersells the subtle links that bind the collection, its legacy, mortality and what the body can and cannot do over time. He says, “ if I’m awake, I’m judgie.”
He also sees his comedy being misread by audiences who latch on to the satire as reinforcing their world view, like watching political parties and thinking they are on their side. Reading Sedaris is a glitchy affair as his short pieces relay experiences harvested from the everyday, friends and vignettes while travelling New York and England.
Sedaris picks up kernels, gems and titbits from interactions with drivers, at airports and the countless, loony things his readers say at his book openings. He says, he is at the hard part of getting old, where everything pisses you off. There’s plenty of laugh-out-louf moments including his experience at a No Kings protest against Trump, where he wonders what focus his fellow protesters have. Some wag called it, low-hanging fruit but his juxtaposition of the vagaries and similarities between the Tea Party nutjobs during Obama’s first term and the No Kings is a satisfying, satirical masterpiece.
A few essays of his essays dig into his already well-drilled childhood and his cool mom, and one essay retells his volunteering stint in an asylum in North Carolina. Much of his humour is autobiographical and self-deprecating, his middle-class upbringing, his Greek heritage, homosexuality, jobs, drug use, but above all, his obsessive behaviour.
Sedaris at his best.
