Holidays on Ice
I feel like I could write a whole essay on things I’ve been told how much I would like and then the actual experience of reading or experiencing those things and how it’s not always let down, but something. I think that’s true about most of my experience with David Sedaris. I like a lot of his stuff, but haven’t read a single thing. What I mean by this is that I don’t think I could imagine sitting down and reading anything he’s written, but instead always and only listening to the audiobooks. Partly this is a testament to his ability to read his work. It’s certainly true about stories about his family, especially in North Carolina. I am thinking primarily about his essay “You Can’t Kill the Rooster” about his younger brother who has about the same voice as David Sedaris, but the high nasal twang of a North Carolinian redneck.
Here we have the same problem. This collection is a mixed bag. Some of these essays or stories are absolutely great, and some are almost troubling in their construction. This is not a 2019 book for certain, but there’s something about his ubiquity on NPR and in the NPR set (I am a 38 year bearded white guy with two Masters degrees, so I am pitching stones in a glass house for certain) that makes it weird that this beloved collection goes to town on the “r” word and Asian stereotypes. “Six to Eight Black Men” does a much much much better job of skirting that line. But the two previous examples ignore that a line even exits. I know he’s mostly creating characters, but jeesh it’s hard to listen to at times.
Squirrel Seek Chipmunk
I actually liked this book a lot more than I did Holidays on Ice. Maybe it’s just well curated and maybe it’s that it had a more broad cast of readers — David Sedaris, Elaine Stritch, Sian Phillips, and Dylan Baker. I think more so it’s just more charming.
If I had to sell anyone on this book, it’s like if Zootopia were written and directed by Nora Ephron. I don’t know if that does anything for you, but taking human frailty (in the modern condition sense) of neuroticisms, anxiety, self-confidence or lack thereof, and all the other 20th century conditions and transcribing them onto animals, but having the animals provide their own content to these anxieties it brilliant and often quite dark, but generally hilarious. Not every story is successful, and I think that the success of the whole collection is dependent on the audio talent more than any amount of the writing. That’s a limiting factor, but it does work for this one. Regardless the stakes are pretty low and the kinds of darkness and hilarity that this book manages to find within this limited collection is impressive, even if the writing isn’t generally so. I also have that sense that every single one of these stories has been on a broadcast of This American Life at some point, which adds to that sense of familiarity here.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Holidays-Ice-David-Sedaris/dp/0316078913/ref=sr_1_1?crid=17XQLZQ1S40QS&keywords=holidays+on+ice+by+david+sedaris&qid=1572817693&sprefix=holidays+on+%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-1)