It’s always hit or miss with David Sedaris. His most brilliant work often involves his family and always involves some personal flaw. His worst work, which can be offensive, belligerent, and nausea inducing, usually involves his views on politics. I don’t mind David Sedaris having political views or hating conservative-I just don’t want to find these tirades grouped together with his more traditional humor and nostalgia pieces. Like Squirrel Seeks Chipmonk, I’d like it better if he wrote this stuff under another name and collected them in separate books, perhaps only available in Iran or North Korea and then…
Tag: david sedaris
Running With Scissors
You know, memoir is not court stenography. Memoir is not a video on YouTube. Memoir has a narrative. Memoirs, a good memoir, is a person’s experience, their memory, and how that experience mattered to them, emotionally and psychologically. Augusten Burroughs I’ve always liked memoirs, though I didn’t always know that I was watching a memoir. A Christmas Story is a fairy tale memoir. Little Big Man was a fake memoir. Most of the brilliant writing of David Sedaris is in the form of memoirs. Oprah yelled at James Frey for making stuff up in his memoir A Million Little Pieces.…