Humor Leads to Questions; Questions are Serious Business

[ink_ling]

I am supposed to be participating on a panel discussion very soon about non-fiction readers' advisory. I will cover very popular, humanities-related non-fiction genres. I am currently reading a couple of personal essay collections. I just finished Barbara Kingsolver's Small Wonder and am now a third of the way through David Sedaris' Dress Your

Comments

[ink_ling]

I've really not decided about his possible literary merit. I would definitely say his pacing, his psychological observation, his attention to detail are all highly skillful and crafted. I'm not sure I would say they're particularly artful, which to me implies, additionally, a high degree of attention to how those skills and the craft contribute to meaning.

But I was impressed this morning by his repeated, conscious concern with class and status. So, I'm not sure.

I've never heard him speak. Does he have an accent?

[bix02138]

sedaris has no accent.

well, he has kind of a sissy-boy accent, but it could be from anywhere.

but (yes, we all have big buts...)

the accent is but a marker. it doesn't define southernness (and here, invariably, we say southern to mean white southerner) any more than an affection for okra, sweet tea or lynching jews who get too close to young white presbyterian women does.

[ink_ling]

Wow! I didn't quite expect the issue of the South to be so volatile, but your comments here brought out some strong reactions from me, too ... not quite what I expected:

I would first say that I am most definitely not talking about a white South. I don't know if you have been exposed to it, but my current city is mostly black by population. Here, I've heard more black people speak about their Southern background than white, and there are uncountable times when that has been a way to identify across racial differences here.

I would also say that markers do contribute to identity and culture, especially in the whether and way we resist or embrace (or any other possible number of responses) those markers. And, as for me, the most note-worthy of these markers is the way that Southerners are scape-goated with violent and/or extreme discrimination. (It is no surprise to me you bring it up here.) For so long, the imaginative locus of hate crimes has been the South, even when you find just as many instances of it anywhere else. For

[clarkelane]

It's funny, but I've never thought of Sedaris as an essayist. I see his work in the genre of "creative non-fiction."

As a public queer, I think he's using satire as a means of deconstructing pre-conceived ideas about queers, but I've not thought of him as an ativist. It's a subtle distinction, but I think his work is important as satire, but he's not embraced the idea of being a public intellectual (as, for instance, was arguably Thoreau's intention).

As to being a Southerner, is he? I mean, I know he spent some of his formative years in North Carolina, but isn't his family from New York state? I've always read him as a Northerner living in the South.

Hope this is useful.

[faghatesgods]

Like Petey here, I don't see him as an essayist either. But I also don't see him as non-fiction. I see him as a writer of fiction who just writes from a first person perspective. Some of it may be based in truth, but I don't think any of it is true in an autobiographical journalistic sense

[clarkelane]

Did you refer to me as *Petey*? Are you suddenly my grandmother? :)

I agree with you, Dress Your Family... is far less edgy than his earlier work. Give me stories about a Christmas Whore anyday.

[faghatesgods]

Hey I just found out last week your name wasn't Clark Lane!

So 'Petey' is a step in the right direction.

[danielray]

a sideways answer: i like to hear sedaris read his stories, but i do not usually enjoy them in written form. i'm not sure i even think of his work as essays exactly, becuase they seem so well-suited, in terms of pacing, word choice and imagery, for hearing rather than reading...

[ink_ling]

I've heard this from other people, too, but I've never even heard a recording of Sedaris reading. What I've read, though, I've been very much impressed by, especially the areas you mention.

Do you find essays -- as opposed to, say maybe, poetry -- a written rather than an oral form?

[danielray]

you should definitely listen to sedaris reading--you can find a number of his essays among the archives of this american life (www.thislife.org). i first heard him reading his stories, and basically it ruined me for his work in writing--my inner ear doesn't have as good timing as he does

[ink_ling]

Thanks, D!

I love how you talk about your interests in Sedaris in terms of gender. We had a Faerie circle here once where everyone was asked to speak about their self-perceived gender and one fella said he'd never see himself as anything other than a pre-adolescent boy. This fascinated me. And I think I can see some overlaps with how he characterized himself and the self-portraiture Sedaris sometimes gives.

And I'll definitely go listen to Sedaris soon!

[fritterfae]

* How do you find him as (maybe) a literary essay writer

[bix02138]

yeah... the elf at macy's sticks with me and the "ripe little froggy" (or whatever) on the métro in paris sticks with me. the rest fades quickly to a pleasant blur.

[ink_ling]

I was actually reading this morning and thinking, "Oh, he's never going to mention his male-attraction outright. That'd negatively effect his broad audience base and maybe undermine his work of being seen as a queer who works primarily outside issues of sexuality." But then he said it. Right out. And I was "Wow."

He said it very plainly and naturally, like it was understood. Which made me re-think him some.

In this collection, he names the places so repeatedly: Raleigh this and Raleigh that. And then I started to think there was something drawn to making a monster outsider (the Southern grotesque), a sense of mild but understanding social critique, a familiarity with complex social status that made me think of traditional Southern writing.

And I also wondered if it were possible to see him as expanding a Southern kind of writing since, now, Southerners -- as different from the past -- are more likely to be well-travelled (even "from" different places) and, of course, deal with more contemporary issues.

[madknits]

Sedaris' family is from New York state. His father worked for IBM, and was transfered to the Carolinas. His persona is more Yankee than Southern.

My ex house mate used to date Sadaris' sister, Tiffany. She only gave him permission recently to write about her, and he did so in his latest book. She says that her brother starts with a grain of truth, something that really happened, but that the details are embroidered, exagerated, stretched. She said that in an interview in the Boston Globe a year or so ago, and when David was doing a reading at Symphony Hall, he didn't send her comp tickets (like he said he would), and instead sent her a vituperous letter in which he called her names.

I don't think Sedaris is a public Queer. I think he is a public gay man. For me, there is a difference. He is publicly gay, writes about it, much of his writing centres around the fact that he's gay, but he is not really an activist. He isn't challenging the status quo, he isn't deconstructing Queerness in a public forum.

[dakoopst]

Ditto on the Southern comment. Sedaris writes as an outsider thrown into the Southern life; he never truly adopts it as his own. He might be representative of the "New Southerner," though, because the South is now largely made up of transplants.

I don't think Sedaris AIMS to be an activist. I think his purpose in writing is entertainment. There are certain moments when he can twist a poignant tale, or make a point, but that doesn't seem to be the aim of his work.

As for his writing, well, my judgement of his value as an essayist is really moot. I enjoy reading his stuff. I tend not to evaluate the worth of literature beyond that. I leave that to others with higher literary educations and greater aspirations toward pretension.

[ink_ling]

I'm curious about what you say about the "New Southerner" -- which is more along the lines I was talking about. Have you ever seen any of John Sayles movies that are set in the South? (Passionfish, which is set in bayou Louisiana and focuses on blacks and whites, creoles and cajuns, English- and French-speakers; Matewan, set in mining country Kentucky and shows a history of radical politics as well as the immigrant cultures that worked there; or Lonestar, set in Texas, focusing on white, black, Native American, and Latino/Mexican characters as well as the border culture

[dakoopst]

LOL...yeah, I realized that last statement sounded a bit pretentious in and of itself after I wrote it. Consider me duly chastised. :)

I would agree that Sedaris might be very representative of what the "New South" has come to mean in urban centers; however, I'm not sure the same definition, or rather redefinition, of the South would necessarily extend to the more rural areas. As we all know, change comes most slowly to sleepy towns, since most of the migration comes to the cities, and new blood brings new ideas.

I haven't seen any of the John Sayles movies...but it sounds like I really should check them out.