NAKED (BY) DAVID SEDARIS

Published 1998, 224 pages
Characters: N/A

Writing: B-

Plot/Pacing: B

Poignancy: B

It's always an interesting experience re-reading something you enjoyed a great deal in the past.  I was a huge fan of David Sedaris in college, so I've already read every one of his books. Recently I needed a quick book to kill some time, and there was Naked, sitting on my shelf, untouched for probably six or seven years. I was curious to see how it fared, since I seem to be awfully jaded when it comes to comedy, of late.

Naked, like all of Sedaris' stuff, is a collection of autobiographical short stories, mostly detailing his childhood, family, wacky college adventures and difficulty coming to terms with his homosexuality.  The events in Naked are probably mostly true, but embellishment is part of Sedaris' authorial voice, so there's really no point in pondering how he could possibly remember a detailed conversation from 30 years ago. It's the events that matter, and the rest is clearly filled in by the author, writing retrospectively.  With that said — and having read his other books, which cover various other periods of his life — Sedaris has lived a remarkably tumultuous life that gave him plenty of material.  It's often difficult to believe that all these stories are about the same man, especially when the focus of one piece — his OCD, for example, which must have been a major part of his childhood — disappears entirely from the rest.  This is partly due to Sedaris' casual, flippant story construction.  He shapes each piece much like a sitcom, taking unrelated elements and weaving them into a purpose-driven plot, usually ending in some conclusion or retrospective revelation.  The fact that his OCD provided the basis for one story seems to have been enough, and he barely mentions it again — a sign of good focus and plot construction, I suppose, but it gives the collection a lightweight, surreal tone.  This is comedy, after all, and given the "PG-13"ish rating of some of the material, Sedaris plays it very tame.  Nothing really carries any weight — not his OCD, not his near-rape encounters with strangers while hitchhiking, not even his mother's death.  And that's fine; it fits his style.  Sedaris manages to produce tales that seem sharp and quick and enjoyable, regardless of their content.

If I can pinpoint one main reason that I failed to enjoy Naked as much as I did the first time around, it's that the stories are too tidy. Everything is so droll, skipping from one event to the next with little fanfare. Cleanly-presented material needs a bit of shock value to produce laughs.  Being older and more jaded, nothing in the collection was cringe-worthy or outrageous anymore, and most of the time it seemed like Sedaris was going out of his way to interact with the stupidest, most-ignorant people he could find.  He plays himself off as incredibly passive, a naive victim blundering from one bizarre event to the next with a sort of recklessness and ambivalence that eventually begins to raise flags.  How could someone so passive find himself in these situations again and again?  It's not that I don't believe him, but you start to see through his tone, and the authorial voice seems like just that — a style, something manufactured and deliberated upon. Since Sedaris mostly reacts as a narrator, and rarely as an in-the-action character, he seems to be merely drifting through life, prodding those around him in the hope that they'll produce material.  Despite this, there isn't a whole lot of comedy in the prose itself.  There are no jokes, per se, just funny situations.  It's entertaining, easily-digested, and little more.  I know I laughed the first time around.  But now, I honestly had a hard time trying to decide what was supposed to be funny about these stories. 

So perhaps its best to put aside expectations that this will be an outrageous laugh-fest, as most reviews would have it.  It's decently funny, in the way that a competent sitcom is decently funny, or at least entertaining.  And really, that's all it needs to be.  Considering that his material is far beyond anything you'd find in a sitcom, Sedaris doesn't take many risks with his narrative.  I suppose part of my disappointment is the contradiction in this — for everything that happened to him, for all the insanity he faced, Sedaris himself should be at least slightly unhinged, and yet he comes off as far too even-tempered.  He's condescending and snarky, but he never makes much effort to earn it, as if he's worried one of his victims might still find him out.  Still, by all means, read Naked at least once.  Just don't expect to die laughing.  Life is weird enough as it is, and it's all in what you make of it.