I will admit, I may have been a bit overzealous when I said you were getting a double-bill of owls as this book only has one chapter dedicated to birds of the owl variety (it also has a kookaburra to boost the avian factor), but with the staggering plethora of topics covered by David Sedaris in his book Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, I think I can be forgiven.
In just 275 pages, he runs the gamut from philosophical
French dentists and the euphoria of colonoscopies, to taxidermized human limbs
and the phlegm-covered streets of China, all bound up in the memories – and traumas
– of childhood, and delivered in his own absurd brand of exaggerated dark humour.
It’s enough to give you whiplash as you go from chapter to chapter! But I mean,
who else could see a baby in an Australian restaurant and think ‘Keep it away
from the chef’ because the menu seems to favour ‘younger’ ingredients, or
hypothesise that a man spontaneously needed a holiday while ‘washing shoe polish
off a pig’, and yet spike his stories with just enough relatability to prevent
you feeling lost? Delayed airline flights, queuing, the perils of gifting, and our
own internal rants are just some of the topics which help bring these stories
back into the realms of reality, for a short while at least.
My first read through of this book came as part of my English
degree’s Creative Non-Fiction module and the notes I sacrilegiously scrawled in
its margins, while almost as disjointed as Sedaris’ own diary-writing
techniques, have helped remind me of just how striking I found some of the
material. Sedaris recounts a youth spent relatively carefree but nonetheless bound
by the unforgiving standards of a 60s’ upbringing. His punishments, while
exaggerated, are no less draconian when compared to how modern children always
sound ‘vaguely presidential, and [the parent] tends to act accordingly’. Most
noticeable, however, is Sedaris’ striving for some semblance of paternal praise
– almost an echo of Kurt Cobain’s childhood from my last review. His father is
a figure who reappears throughout, often in just his pants and shirt ‘like a
bear dressed up for a job interview’; he is an unsympathetic presence and, at
times, is brutally apathetic of his son’s successes. Sedaris’ subsequent irritation
with his father’s tenacity extends to the belief that his dad will be the first
person to live to 200, if only to be a burden on him. And yet the most shocking
image is not courtesy of this prideless father, but a tank full of sea turtles
which, improperly cared for in the hands of a young Sedaris, begin to die,
emitting a smell ‘as if the turtles’ very souls were rotting’ until ‘they’d
just sort of melt away, like soap.’ It’s so visceral and cruel, but, in a feat
only this man could pull off, he links the fate of these turtles back to his
father who thought he’d be ‘better off at the football game’.
This linking of events is something Sedaris is noticeably skilled at, taking images and events from one part of the chapter and revisiting them at the end. A pet flying squirrel’s frantic bid for freedom becomes the perfect metaphor for two spooked gay men caught in a library toilet, while the sound of a kookaburra killing its food – ‘whap whap whap’ – morphs into his father beating him with a fraternity paddle. These links even exist from one chapter to another as ‘joint compound’ turns up on the imaginary menu of things to punish him with as a child, and then in the woods near his second home in West Sussex. And Sedaris delivers this interwoven hodge-podge of events in a style akin to observational stand-up comedy, allowing one story to spark another and making such bizarre remarks on people that you often wonder where his brain goes to find them.
These
strange descriptions, like his grandmother who was ‘the human equivalent of a
storm cloud’, are one of the reasons why I came back to this book, because I love
how unique yet fitting they are, like no other set of words could do the situation
justice. They also supplement my image of Sedaris because he is essentially the
main character in his own stories. I came to sympathise with and occasionally
hate him, but just when I thought I’d got him, he introduced a set of character
monologues which, at first, I mistook for more of his diary-style ramblings
until I sensed something wasn’t quite right. These characters are often naïve, self-centred,
or highly prejudiced, ranging from a homophobic husband who murders his family following
the announcement of gay marriage, to a racist mother who unwittingly allows her
son to dress her in offensive clothing for a rally. They’re all very tongue-in-cheek
but I was still met with a degree of uncertainty as to how far is too far; the
answer, with Sedaris it seems, is just far enough.
If you’re after a cynically humorous and exaggerated set of
snapshots of life, you can’t go too wrong with this book.
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