These autobiographical essays, or snippets of memoir, are funny and human but there’s a missing piece at the core of the edifice, as though the only way to understand the world were by reading the scripts of sitcoms. I had started watching commercial TV before beginning this book, and one of the programs I tuned into on a channel I hadn’t visited before was a show named ‘Frasier’. It’s about a well-to-do Seattle resident who lives in an apartment in a high-rise building.
In the show, every now and then the doorbell rings and a friend or family member enters the living room. A conversation ensues that is by turns amusing and, even, witty. Full of repartee and hidden gems, like a collage made by a precocious 18-year-old. I didn’t make the connection to Sedaris’ book until I read it, but there you have it: a flawed jewel that gives off flashes of brilliance and that has many facets but that, in the end, only leaves you asking for more of the same.
There’s no end-point to the process of consuming these short sketches, regardless how appealing and how avantgard they seem. Sedaris predates Knausgaard, but the latter is a much better writer because he’s a good deal stranger. The failure of the last book in his series (which is titled ‘My Struggle’; I mean come on) is almost a guarantee for the quality of the other five. Sedaris can’t hold a candle to rival the bright sceptre of the Norwegian writer’s prose.
In the show, every now and then the doorbell rings and a friend or family member enters the living room. A conversation ensues that is by turns amusing and, even, witty. Full of repartee and hidden gems, like a collage made by a precocious 18-year-old. I didn’t make the connection to Sedaris’ book until I read it, but there you have it: a flawed jewel that gives off flashes of brilliance and that has many facets but that, in the end, only leaves you asking for more of the same.
There’s no end-point to the process of consuming these short sketches, regardless how appealing and how avantgard they seem. Sedaris predates Knausgaard, but the latter is a much better writer because he’s a good deal stranger. The failure of the last book in his series (which is titled ‘My Struggle’; I mean come on) is almost a guarantee for the quality of the other five. Sedaris can’t hold a candle to rival the bright sceptre of the Norwegian writer’s prose.
Strangely enough, after I put this book away on the shelf I took down the one next to it, which was Toni Morrison’s ‘Tar Baby’ (1981), and on page four of this book I found a passage that uses the words “corduroy” and “denim” near each other. So ‘Tar Baby’ was the inspiration for Sedaris’ title. The passage goes like this:
“I envy you,” said the second voice, but it was farther away now, floating upward and accompanied by footsteps on stairs and the swish of cloth – corduroy against corduroy, or denim against denim – the sound only a woman’s thighs could make.
In the end I finished about 30 pages of Morrison’s novel before putting it down in the pile of books next to the door that are destined for the op-shop. I was defeated by a long passage of dialogue, reading which I couldn’t follow the cues and so had, half-way through, no idea who was speaking to whom. It was a conversation between a husband and his wife and, coming right at the start of the book, seemed to serve an important function in the novel as it helps the reader get to know different characters, as well as situate the book in an historical period (sometime after WWII).
I did finish Sedaris’ effort, and enjoyed it. It represents the best of its time, a period when the rules (once again) were changing. But aren’t they always morphing? Aren’t we perennially faced with cues to novel ways of expressing ourselves? Sedaris’ book fits into the flow of stylistic innovation like a curious piece in a jigsaw puzzle that, when finished, makes a beautiful face appear.
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