This latest collection of essays from humorist David Sedaris features more than the requisite number of laugh-out-loud passages. "Solution To Saturday's Puzzle," for example, finds our hero on an airplane next to a young woman who turns angry and coarse when he will not trade seats with her husband. How to demonstrate to everyone around you that you are reasonable and your seatmate is the irrational one? What happens if you then sneeze your cough drop into her lap?
The story most often quoted, a passage from which Sedaris read on Letterman, is probably "Buddy, Can You Spare A Tie," a discussion of various clothing quirks and accessories. If you know how life in a bow tie presents challenges, imagine what happens when you attempt to employ a "Stadium Pal," a mechanism for public urination.
Some of the stories, like "Town And Country," are downright bizarre. Who would guess that there is so much casual vulgarity exchanged between strangers? "Aerial" describes how Kate Bush's last album drove birds in the French countryside to coordinate a Hitchcockian assault on Sedaris's home. The "home" stories with which his readers would be most familiar are those rooted in his childhood, like "The Understudy" and "This Old House," though those written about his domestic life with partner Hugh achieve the same insight: "Keeping Up," "All The Beauty You Will Ever Need," and "Old Faithful" are good examples. Sedaris is best, perhaps, when he highlights his own quirks. "In A Waiting Room" demonstrates how his poor French translates into misadventures abroad, and "April In Paris" chronicles his obsession with spiders. But most poignant are those stories, like "Road Trips," that hint at how it was to grow up gay in the American South.
The book ends strong with "The Smoking Section," a quarter of the text that chronicles Sedaris's quest to quit smoking in Tokyo. Unflinching and uncompromising, the story makes little apology for his habit. He quit, he claims, so he could stay in nice hotels on his travels. Sedaris is expert at showing his readers the exotic, and when combined with a critical eye that often turns the analysis inward, the prose is captivating. But my favorite story is "That's Amore," a longer treatment of Helen, his eccentric old neighbor in New York City. One could write a novel about Helen.
And this is the most interesting point about Sedaris. Some readers have begun to question the veracity of his "autobiographical" content, but such quibbling is fruitless. These stories represent his "truth," and there can be little doubt that they are rooted in fact. The stories emerge as finely crafted as fiction -- and even more true.
