David Sedaris - Naked

Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Author:     David Sedaris
Title:         Naked

Writing an autobiography can be both easy and hard. Here is a ready made story that you are privy to, your life. That is the easy part.  The hard part is being honest. Being honest about your own self may yet be easier but it is hard being honest about the people around you.  There are scores of relatives, parents, siblings who could be pissed off mightily by your depiction of them. This is the hardest part, in my opinion.

Naked contains memoirs of David Sedaris, narrated not as continuous story but in an episodic manner, picking up on a phase or a person in his life.  Hence, the chapter titled 'a plague of tics' deals with David's Tourette syndrome he had as a child, because of which he shook his head constantly and licked light switches or other objects. His teachers had no understanding of this and merely thought he was being difficult. 

His mother was a chain smoker and a heavy drinker.  His father was a penny pinching Greek.  His grandmother was a weird character who liked to crawl up the aisle in church. He read pornography as a little child and shared the books with his sisters. He went hitch hiking along with a quadriplegic girl. He spent summers picking apples and working in shady factories.

This is no story about whitewashed houses, sweet children, a mature father who imparts life wisdom to his children, a pretty mother who keeps the house spic and span and understands her children. This is a story of a dysfunctional family, which is pretty much the reality everywhere in the world. This is an account that invites you to look into a gaping wound.

If this makes you think this is an angst ridden work, no, it isn't. The narration is matter of fact and even funny. It is a parody of all the sweet autobiographies that you have read so far. There are several times that you will laugh out loud at the life of Sedaris children that is more Addams Family than Wonder Years.

Among the various blurbs about the book, I was struck by this accurate one.

Sedaris's prose is fierce and funny, full of feeling yet unsentimental. He brings people's flaws and foibles into a harsh and unforgiving light, often to delicious comic effect.

                                                                          ----Sam Hurwitt, San Francisco Examiner