Splinters

Looks like I'm another one to join the massed ranks of David Sedaris admirers. Reading the pages of praise that introduce Me Talk Pretty One Day, it's hard to argue with any of the comments - he is laugh-out-loud funny, bittersweet, acidly intolerant of others (perhaps the quality I like most about him). Most of all, he is unapologetic about who he is. One gets the sense that this is after a half-lifetime of feeling unsure of who he is, and writing lets him crystallise moments as he sees them, without interruption from others. (Yes, that was wild speculation, but I like the thought of that last sentence even if it's got nothing to do with Mr Sedaris anyway).

There is something remarkable about a bestselling book which is a collection of short stories about different aspects of his life, from childhood through to the present and mainly involving his family. It's such a simple plot thread but so hard to write well enough to hold the reader's attention throughout. There's a real lightness to Sedaris' prose which makes it effortless to read. And there's something liberating about it too - it's a genuinely pleasurable feeling to be reading anecdotes about ordinary life which are extraordinary, that the magic is all in the telling, not in the events themselves.

Certainly some of Sedaris' stories are better than others, but none are real clunkers - and certainly he has a formula for the construction of the stories themselves which is hard to ignore. There's a gag in every paragraph, usually through a turn of phrase - Sedaris loves language and the compressed lucidity of each line indicates someone who's retraced every word to ensure each sentence is just so. Becoming aware of the mechanism doesn't dampen my enjoyment of it: there is usually something about the story that Sedaris is telling that transcends being merely impressed with his prose styling.

There is a real honesty and openness in Sedaris' writing, which, I suspect, is why he is so popular. (Or, at least, he creates the artifice of appearing to be honest and open. Whatever). Sedaris' stories are easily understood and provoke an immediate, emotional response - the pleasure of self-recognition, perhaps - yet whilst their delivery is sometimes sit-com slick, they frequently veer into darker, more disturbed sides of the family psyche. If you were to read only a few pages of Sedaris, you might think him twee or sloppily sentimental. But the culmative effect of reading his stories produces something much more pleasurably complex and messy - like life.

More on David Sedaris:
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