Naked
by David Sedaris
Maybe everybody else got acquainted with David Sedaris the same way I did, listening to his Yuletide stories on National Public Radio. He would later turn the anecdotes into a one-man play, The Santaland Diaries, now an annual highlight for many smaller theaters. This memoir dates back to an earlier period of his fame, the middle 1990s.
An "easygoing" person finds it natural to go along with whatever's going, do the job the company way, avoid making waves. Whatever you think is the opposite of an easygoing person (hard-liner, horse's ass, troublemaker, you name it) offers no concessions, stands ready to explain to the company why his own way is better, resists leading at all times. David Sedaris, or I should say rather the David Sedaris person who tells these stories, doesn't fit either category. He knows how to live, and it would suit him well enough to live that way, but in an insane spirit of experimentation he puts on a going-along mask in order to learn what it will do to you if you embrace the company way.
The title piece of this book puts the Sedaris in a North Carolina nudist camp. Popular ideas about nudism haven't prepared him for unclothed trailer park life: the stern injunction to carry your towel everywhere, the difficulty of getting major appliances repaired, the lament of the woman who brought her grandsons there every summer till her daughter got wind of it, the residents' alarm when the TV weatherman forecasts a cold front. The Sedaris goes back and forth, walk around naked or keep the T-shirt, join or don't join. Joining, of course, makes the story, but the inner monologue goes on as he tells himself it isn't his life, they aren't his people.
You won't find any objectivity in a David Sedaris telling. In "Naked" he gives up no ground to these nudists: They really are not his people, everything they do violates his ways, the ones he gets along with have no positive traits, and the others hate his cigarettes. It's hard to think of the Sedaris as winsome, indeed. He's inept physically and socially, he's neither brave nor bright, and if he puts himself out to get along with people he makes sure they know it's a pretense. He's Till Eulenspiegel as first-person narrator.
Like the Eulenspiegel stories, these are sometimes funny but often just appalling. Till made his jests because outrage amused him; it isn't so clear why the Sedaris person tries on other people's notions, but he exerts the same destructive power over those around him. Not that they notice it: The maker of souvenir clocks thinks it is the Sedaris who is vanquished at the flea market, and the teachers who poke fun at the Sedaris child's compulsions get their payback only in the story. The narrator is a keen evaluator but a reluctant announcer.
I may be giving the impression that Naked isn't as funny as the best-seller Me Talk Pretty One Day. It isn't. When the writer aims for comic he achieves it, but in much of the book he doesn't. What you'll get from this is the Sedaris technique applied to more somber material. It's quite good, and it reveals a good deal about the technique, but it may not be the thing to read if you need a chuckle in your life.
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Naked