Listening to David Sedaris’s Calypso a few days after Anthony Bourdain’s suicide is a bit jarring. David talks about his sister’s suicide with the same cold disinterest that he talks about everything else in this small collection of personal essays. His sister’s problems are on a par with bickering with his husband, wasting money on odd clothes in Japan, and picking up trash as he walks around the English countryside. This is nothing new, David has always been a narcissistic sociopath. His lack of empathy just seemed to stand out a little clearer for me this time around.
I had this odd little fantasy that David Sedaris and Anthony Bourdain were guests on This American Life. Ira Glass talked to them about food and travel, and because Tony had just one more thing he had to do, he decided to have a couple of shots of Armagnac and get some shuteye instead of killing himself. This, of course, is the kind of idle fantasy that David Sedaris never allows himself. He’s very much a Worst Case Scenario kind of guy.
He talks about his sister Tiffany killing herself with another sister, Amy. The bit about her suicide that seems to fascinate both of them is that she took drugs and put a plastic bag over her head. David mentions how often he likes to Google things, so I was a bit surprised that he didn’t know this was the method recommended by The Hemlock Society in Finial Exit. Of course, David is a normal person baffled by the idea of suicide, so he would not have Finial Exit on his reading list as doubtlessly his sister Tiffany did.
Near the start if Calypso, Sedaris says that one of the nice things about being middle aged is that you can afford a house with two guest rooms. I think he should have said one of the nice things about being middle aged and a Best Selling Author is that you can afford a house with two guest rooms. Since David’s essays are little takes on his life, a number of tales deal with how much he travels, what it’s like to speak in front of twenty thousand people, how much time he spends on planes and in airports, and how many houses he owns. These are still usually fun stories, but the self deprecating voice lacks something when the author talks about the burdens of owning a house on the beach that looks like every other house or how annoying the service at The Four Seasons can be.
He spends a bit of time talking about snapping turtles, art made from plywood, and his total and complete shock at people who voted for Donald Trump. I have to admit that last one is a bit baffling. I also share his dislike of people who say have a blessed day. He doesn’t spent too much time on any one topic, but he does circle back from time to time. He talks about his dead sister, his dead mother, and his 92 year old father in several of the essays. A brother and another sister make cameos as well. The snapping turtle has a recurring role.
Anyone who wants to be a writer should listen to David Sedaris read one of his books. These little gems are well crafted, each one has a small setup and payoff, there are laughs and tears, and except when he uses the same material, they sound as if he just thought it up on the spot.
I like listening to David read his own books, since I first came to know him from his reading of The Santaland Diaries on NPR. He has a distinctive voice and he says he is often mistaken for a woman while on the phone. I somehow managed to go years without seeing him, and when I did see him on some late night talk show, I was shocked by how ordinary he looked. His voice, and his stories, had put something almost cartoonish in my mind. I have the same cognitive dissonance whenever I see anyone I listen to on the radio. I’m not sure what I expect them to look like, but their actual appearance is never it.
Calypso is often funny and I did find myself laughing out loud once or twice. While the Real Man Anthony Boudain and the not-so-real man David Sedaris seem worlds apart, they are both writers that make me feel like I know them better than I ever could. Here’s hoping that David follows in his father’s footsteps and lives into his nineties.
