Calypso by David Sedaris

read by the author

If you’ve never heard David Sedaris read, go google Santaland Diaries right now. You want an excerpt of him on NPR. Go ahead. I’ll wait. 

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All right, now that you’ve listened, you’re starting to get the picture. Sedaris is a memoirist and a performer of his memoirs, which are written in short… anecdotes? They’re more structured than that. Stage performances? You do definitely want to hear him read his work, but it also works very well in print. Stories? They are definitely that, but also highly personal and, to say the least, quirky as hell. Also deeply, sometimes shockingly, funny. You’re never sure how much of them to actually believe.

The term I see bandied about is “semi-autobiographical essays.” Which seems accurate enough, if a little pedantic. He collects these semi-autobiographical essays into books every so often, and Calypso is one of those collections.

It’s a bit of a departure from a lot of his previous work, because he was writing these stories/memories/anecdotes at a time in his life when he was dealing with the death of two family members. It’s still funny, because he’s a man who can see the humor in literally anything, and make you see it, too--and be a little shocked at yourself for laughing.

What you’ll be laughing about in this collection is a series of family vacations at a beach house on the Carolina coast, haunted by bickering, badgering, the arrival of middle age, and both the specter and the reality of mortality. There are snapping turtles and book signings, transatlantic travel and family dinners. Sedaris writes in lovingly, gleefully unsparing detail about everyone’s quirks and faults, his own most of all.

If that idea makes you squeamish, or really, if you’re squeamish at all, you should probably skip this one. But if you can handle a little tumor humor and a lot of blatant (but never gratiutous) oversharing, dive in. If he can laugh at his life, and make us laugh at it too, maybe you can start seeing the ridiculousness in yours.

Oh. And if possible, listen to the audiobook version, which he reads himself.