What Rereading David Sedaris During Quarantine Has Taught Me: An (Inter)Personal Criticism

I first encountered David Sedaris from the mouth of my first love, a fourteen-year-old farmer’s son who made me weak in the knees and quick to adopt any doctrine. Trying to peek under his farmer’s tan, I remember him reciting a story about Sedaris’s foul-mouthed brother, self-named the Rooster, who you supposedly can’t kill. 

This was funny in the context of the story, the youngest sibling getting the most outrageous passes, but coming from the mouth of a fourteen-year-old without much else to go on than the punchline and some swears should not have amounted to much.

But I laughed and laughed, eager to please, eager to be as mediocre, as silly, as safe as these young men were allowed to be. I longed to be safe in my moments of mediocrity.

***

Fast forward ten years later, and I pick up Me Talk Pretty One Day as a palette cleanser to reading a biography of avant-garde cellist Charlotte Moorman, leftist theory about the Green New Deal, and Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. I needed to remember the value of laughter, of lightness—we will not survive the revolution without creating our own joy, damnit! And as I curled up to a familiar voice, one that filled the mouths of mentors, peers, and crushes, I felt some comfort, sure. But as I read on, a mild irritation began to set in.

It began around the story entitled The Learning Curve. The story revolves around his first teaching job, for a college level writing class for which he has no qualifications. We watch as Sedaris prepares for his tenure with a suit and a briefcase and not much else as the class crashes and burns. We are meant to laugh at his imbecility, and be slightly wowed by his tolerance for embarrassment and his un-deserved belief in himself. We are meant to admire the scam, just a little.

I set that book aside and pick up my copy of Americanah, settling in on a scene about Ifemelu, a Nigerian-American woman at university, losing money and desperate to find a job. After getting turned down upwards of a dozen times, she finally takes a train to help a man ‘relax’ for a hundred dollars (no shame to sex workers, but in this woman’s case, this was an act of desperation which she regretted and felt trapped by). 

Maybe it’s that these books aren’t meant to be read in tandem. Their goals are so distinct, it’s unfair to draw this comparison. Yet here they are, both on my bedside table. I’m loving reading Americanah, and I’m having my moments of joy with Sedaris. But as I reach the last thirty pages, where I witness a forty-year-old white man fester in his own shortcomings and small-minded hatred of others, I want to throw the book out the window. *deep breath* 

I recognize that this has little to do with Sedaris. His job is to make me laugh, to make me less scared of the cranky little child in me who just does not want to be pleasant. This reaction is fully about me and what I will no longer tolerate: I do not wish to bond over hatred, inadequacy, or jadedness. I will bond over injustice, I will bond over growth, I will bond over vulnerability, but I’m no longer interested in feeding my demons any further. It’s taken me over a decade to name my demons, to recognize them as something separate from myself, but they are no longer reigning unchecked.

I can recognize that what David Sedaris writes is separate from the man, even in memoir. But I see what his logic teaches: your jadedness will protect you. If you make fun of your pain, people will laugh, they will pay you and the pain will go away. All I can hear after that is Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette ringing in my ear:

“I put myself down in order to speak, in order to seek permission to speak, and I simply will not do that anymore, not to myself or anybody who identifies with me. If that means my comedy career is over, then so be it.” 

I feel like thanking Sedaris right now, and Adichie, and Gadsby too. Maybe the lesson from all this is I need to learn the conditions I need to properly consume Sedaris. Limit to two stories for a year or two. I came to all these things to widen my perspective, and it continues to widen. And if I can keep my sometimes-bitter heart open, its irritation, its knee jerk reactions, all its pain can be my teacher.