It's a shame that this class introduced to me David Sedaris.
His unique style and blatent criticisms about himself and his family are hilarious. I love how he is so open when he writes about himself, it truly results in a real genuine, funny product. The tape we listened to on Wednesday was a perfect example. He talked about how hard it was to take his clothes off even when he was inside his own trailer, and he even touched on his sexual excitements (tingling in his penis), and it was funny. His Letterman gig was similar in that he was talking about pissing while talking to people. And it all comes off so funny because you can think to yourself: "I would be thinking and saying the same shit he is in these situations.) His genuinity in his content as he writes about these awkward situations, and the fact that it comes out hilarious, and perhaps even relatable, is where his genius shines.
I thought "Rooster" was a great example of how Sedaris' genuinity comes out of his stories. Sedaris certaintly played up Rooster's raw and vulgar mannerisims in the story, and while funny, made me think of Rooster as rather unpleasant in the beginning of the story. But then Sedaris told us about his "fuck it" attitude . Sedaris spoke of The Rooster as resilient, and it seems like he could deal with a heavy load of adversity. The very end was appealing to me, when Rooster pats his Dad's back and tells him that he'll get through it. At the end of the story Rooster was incredibly admirable to me and it felt like I actually knew The Rooster, which is very hard to do in such a small story.
That is Sedaris's genius, his relatable and genuine style of his writing.
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Absolutely, Chris. I agree. We can identify with him. If we were in those same bizarre situations, how would we react? What would we do? We laugh because we can identify--and it's embarrassing to admit, but it's true. Life is a series of embarrassing moments. There isn't a day that goes by without me saying something inappropriate or tripping on something or spilling or dropping my coffee on somebody.
And yeah, you're right. There is something quite genuine and real about it all. Maybe it's because it is nonfiction. Yes, he exaggerates and dramatizes these situations, but they are based on real events and real people. His family is the most real. Again, we all have strange families. We all do. So we connect to that. We like to hear about strange families because it makes us feel better--like oh, our family isn't so bad. Or our families are that weird and then we relate to that.
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