Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris

Dammit Meagan, why would you post your review first just because I was too lazy to do it within a week of reading the book?

Well, I don't have much to add. This was the most fiction by David Sedaris that I've ever read, and I've gotta say that I prefer his memoir pieces. Most of his short stories are dark humor, and a wee bit twisted. I did really enjoy the reviews of elementary school Christmas plays by critic Thaddeus Bristol, who notes that "in the role of Mary, six-year-old Shannon Burke just barely manages to pass herself off as a virgin."

I think Meagan pointed out that the first story, "Santaland Diaries" (actually an anagram for "a Satan dines in lard") is now a play, but I can't imagine that it works very well. I like all of Sedaris's stories best over the radio, read either by him or someone else just as funny. Luckily most of them are online under NPR's archives, or This American Life's.

There are his non-fiction accounts of working as an elf, getting locked out of the house in the snow with his sisters, having Christmas drinks with his sister's friend who works at the K&W and is also a prostitute, and his visit to the morgue as an adult (just 'cause). The two that stand out are his fascination with the TV-less family in the neighborhood as a kid, and the retelling of the Dutch Christmas tradition. That last one, "Six to Eight Black Men," is one of my favorites of his.

While eight flying reindeer are a hard pill to swallow, our Christmas story remains relatively dull. Santa lives with his wife in a remote polar village and spends one night a year traveling around the world. If you're bad, he leaves you coal. If you're good and live in America, he'll give you just about anything you want. We tell our children to be good and send them off to bed, where they lie awake, anticipating their bounty. A Dutch parent has a decidedly harrier story to relate, telling his children, "Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before going to bed. The former bishop of Turkey will be coming tonight along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you in a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don't know for sure, but we want you to be prepared."

This is the reward for living in the Netherlands. As a child you get to hear this story, and as an adult you get to turn around and repeat it. As an added bonus, the government has thrown in legalized drugs and prostitution -- what's not to love about being Dutch?

Then there's the Christmas letter from the wife trying to deal with the arrival of her unknown Vietnamese step daughter, the family that outdoes each other in the spirit of Christmas, giving to the point of multiple organ donation, and a pretty good one about a selfish cow and a turkey and Secret Santa in a barn.

All in all, entertaining, especially if you're already a Sedaris fan. If not, I'd just listen to these, and start off with one of his other books, like Me Talk Pretty One Day.

You can hear "Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!," "Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol," and "Based on a True Story" all in one episode here. You can also listen to "The Monster Mash" (about the trip to the morgue; gruesome, be warned), "The Cow and the Turkey" and "Santaland Diaries." You're welcome for looking up all those links. You'd damn well better use them, especially you, Christopher.

Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris

I don't know that I could look someone in the eye and exclaim, "Oh, my goodness, I think I see Santa!" or "Can you close your eyes and make a very special Christmas wish!" Everything these elves said had an exclamation point at the end of it!!! It makes one's mouth hurt to speak with such forced merriment...I prefer being frank with children. I'm more likely to say, "You much be exhausted," or "I know a lot of people who would kill for that little waistline of yours."

I am afraid I won't be able to provide the grinding enthusiasm Santa is asking for. I think I'll be a low-key sort of elf.


Holidays on Ice was one of the few Sedaris books I hadn't gotten around to reading yet, so the new 2008 edition seemed like a good excuse to check it out. Well, that and the fact that both Nathan and Genie recommended it as a favorite over dinner on MLK weekend. In fact, I had already heard or read some of these stories before in other collections or on NPR recordings that I sneak-listen to at work when my office mate is away. If my other coworkers ever walk by my glass-fronted office and wonder why I am laughing to myself while presumably checking client emails or the day's financials, well, that's why.

My favorite story in this book was probably the first one, "The Santaland Diaries," excerpted above, wherein Sedaris recounts his early '90s experience of being an elf at the NYC Macy's. I actually read most of this story while sitting at a McDonald's early yesterday morning and every so often I would chuckle to myself. The other patrons would look over warily, and I would show them the cover. Their presumably limited understanding of English was probably what kept them from smiling in recognition of this literary comedy and thumbs-upping me.

In "Santaland," we hear of parents who nudge the nearest elf and whisper, "We would like a traditional Santa. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about." Sedaris-as-elf sends them gleefully to his black coworker Santa Jerome. We hear of parents who, nerves frayed by hours of waiting in line, scream at their exhausted and terrified toddlers to "get on that man's lap and smile or I'll give you something to cry about." And we learn about the people behind the costumes, a disturbing number of whom are painted as sex-crazed lunatics.

Not all the stories in Holidays on Ice are about Sedaris. His take on the annual family Christmas newsletter is funny but too long, and "Christmas Means Giving" is disturbing and a bit weird. My favorites were some of the ones about him: "Santaland," "Jesus Shaves," and "Six to Eight Black Men," an essay that Sedaris reads aloud. Find it on YouTube, it's worth it to hear it in Sedaris's voice.

Barrel Fever by David Sedaris

I have had a few people tell me that of Sedaris' books, this is their least favorite. Some described it as "not nearly as good as his other books," or stated that it "mostly sucks." That is very likely the reason that I waited so long to read it. After completing Barrel Fever, I can now say two things: 1.) I have read all of Sedaris' books, and 2.) the people who told me that this book was not good were just wrong.

Barrel Fever is split up into two parts. Short stories make up the first section, which is about three fourths of the book. The last fourth is essays, what have now become the standard fair of Sedaris. While the essays were good, I particularly enjoyed the short stories, especially "Glen's Homophobia Newletter Vol. 3, No. 2," "Don's Story," and "Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!"

Published in 1994, Barrel Fever was Sedaris' first book. Naked was the follow-up, and it contained no short stories. Since these stories were obviously completely fictional, they allowed Sedaris to create some interesting characters and situations that he isn't normally able to deal with. I would be interested in why he stopped including short stories in his books.

Barrel Fever did not disappoint in the slightest.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

I got this as an early birthday present. It was good that I received it early, because I would have purchased it on my own before my birthday (July 15, and if you are wondering, no, I still don't have an iPod Touch). I was super excited about this book and had to force myself to read it slowly, so as to not finished it in the first day. I think that I did a fairly good job, managing to spread it out over six days.

As with most of Sedaris's books, Flames covers a wide variety of topics, with essays that deal with various periods in Sedaris's life. It would be stupid for me to try and pick a favorite, but I really enjoyed "In the Waiting Room," in which Sedaris explains why it can be a problem to know so little French that you are reduced to saying yes in response to everything. The phrase Sedaris uses actually translates to, "I am in agreement." Due to his excessive use of this phrase, he finds himself in his underwear in a waiting room that slowly begins to fill with other people, all fully dressed of course.

Each essay is somewhere around fifteen pages in length with a few exceptions, chief among these is the final essay, "The Smoking Section," which was a little over eighty pages. Comprised of journal entries, this essay follows Sedaris all the way to Tokyo on his quest to quit smoking. At the same time that he is trying to break this 30-year habit, Sedaris is attempting to learn Japanese. In true Sedaris fashion, he does not allow his apparent inability to learn Japanese to stop him from pointing out all the English errors that are made by those around him and on local signage. I couldn't stop laughing at all the language-based snafus. One of my favorites was a label Sedaris found on pre-packaged sandwiches in a supermarket close to his apartment. "We have sandwiches which you can enjoy different tastes. So you can find your favorite one from our sandwiches. We hope you can choose the best one for yourself."

I have read everything by Sedaris except for Barrel Fever, which I started last night. His humor has a darkness to it that really appeals to me. One of the blurbs on the back of Flames describes Sedaris as a writer who is "revising our ideas about what's funny." This description is right on the money.

My thoughts on Sedaris's Naked and Barrel Fever

Naked by David Sedaris

A few years back I caught David Sedaris on The Late Show. Letterman asked him if he would like to read an excerpt from his then-current book, Me Talk Pretty One Day. It was the first ever reading on The Late Show. I forget the passage that Sedaris read, but I remember thinking that it was really funny and deciding that I would read the book. From there I hopped around his bibliography, with no particular design or order.

While I remember enjoying Me Talk Pretty One Day – it was good enough to make me want to read more by Sedaris – it is not my favorite of his. Naked and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim are vying for that position. Invariably, the essays that I find the most enjoyable are the ones that involve Sedaris childhood, and as a logical extension, his family. And essays of this nature are in abundance in both Naked and Dress Your Family. The interaction between young Sedaris and his siblings, especially Amy and Lisa, never fails to make me laugh.

In the essay “True Detective”, Sedaris describes how his mom and his older sister, Lisa, would watch detective shows on TV and then try to put what they had learned from these boobtube gumshoes to use, attempting to solve real crimes they came across in the local paper. “‘We know that the girl was held at knifepoint on the second floor of her house,’ Lisa said, tapping the pencil against her forehead. ‘So probably the person who robbed her was…not in a…wheelchair.’” Sedaris describes the fictional detective world that his sister and mother were so enamored with as, “a world of obvious suspects. Looking for the axe murderer? Try the emotionally disturbed lumberjack loitering near the tool shed behind the victim’s house. Who kidnapped the guidance counselor? Perhaps it’s the thirty-year-old tenth-grader with the gym bag full of bloody rope.”

Although I find Sedaris’ essays hilarious, I would not necessarily describe them as laugh-out-loud funny. There is a difference between Sedaris’ writing and that of Michael J. Nelson, and even Paul Feig. The humor in Sedaris’ essays builds slowly. Sedaris doesn’t rely on jokes or oneliners, but rather uses his cunning wit and vocabulary to describe the situations that he gets himself into. “Painfully humorous” is an apt way to describe his style. Sedaris mines humor in fairly serious situations such as, a horribly racist speech given by one of his grade school teachers when it was announced that their school would be integrated, a prostitute being beaten up a few days before Christmas, and even his mother’s death.

Sedaris is a excellent writer and a top-shelf humorist. I hope that he releases another book before I read Barrel Fever, thus exhausting his current oeuvre.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

Well, I read this book about a week before Kelly posted it, and seeing as it's a colection of essays, his review sums them up pretty well. I agree with him on pretty much every point, including that 'Six to Eight Black Men' is the funniest essay in the book. A close runner up is 'Blood Work,' wherein Sedaris the housecleaner is mistaken for Sedaris, the erotic housecleaner. Hilarity, of course, ensues.

Of all of Sedaris' books I've read (which is everything but Me Talk Pretty One Day), this one was the funniest and most consisent. So if you like David Sedaris, read it. If you don't, read something else.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

Hilarious. I liked this even more than Me Talk Pretty One Day. Sedaris' pours his dry, sarcastic sense of humor into every sentence of every story in this collection. He has a knack for storytelling as it is, but it doesn't hurt that his family - featured in most of the stories here - is a couple beers short of a six pack.

In this book, the stories range from childhood adventures to anecdotes from his life in rural France. My personal favorite is "Six to Eight Black Men." I don't know what else to say about this. If you haven't read/heard anything by this author, you need to. This is as good a starting point as any.