Thurs
5/9 |
David Sedaris promoting book “Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls”
wikipedia
Davidsedarisbooks.com
previously at TDS
at The New Yorker
Amazon
goodreads
B&N has Kirkus
David Sedaris's new essay collection: big sales, mixed reviews
David Sedaris's Sorta-Secret Side Career as a Speech Writer for High Schoolers
AVClub:
The good news about Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls, the latest from David Sedaris, is that it’s not a collection of modern comic fables about talking animals. (Readers of Sedaris’ previous book, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, might be forgiven for taking the new book’s title as something between a taunt and a warning label.) Instead, it’s a mopping-up of all the New Yorker casuals and other magazine and newspaper essays that Sedaris has published in the last few years. The not-so-good news is that it’s the sixth time Sedaris has done this since 1994’s Barrel Fever...
Sedaris is still funny, but there’s a considerable difference between his early essays—which revealed the lengths to which an American who has sacrificed his credit rating to dedicate his life to art has to go just to make his rent—and this book’s many descriptions of the indignities and misunderstandings that Sedaris and his boyfriend, Hugh, have to endure in their former adopted home of Paris and their new adopted home of London. It’s nice that he’s made good, but Sedaris still insists on weighing in on the foibles of American life, something that he may no longer be especially qualified for. The most incisive observation about the changing state of the U.S. economy comes when he recalls that his domestic book tours used to find him visiting independent and chain bookstores, but that the most recent one “started and finished at a Costco.” (Sedaris hits a Costco at the start of his tour and loads up on condoms, so that he can dispense them as thank-you presents to fans who take the trouble to come to his readings. This adventure in contrived wackiness says a lot about how much harder he has to work these days to find his material.)..
...Aside from those monologues, most of Let’s Explore Diabetes isn’t bad. It’s about on the level of an early-’80s Ramones album—the work of an inspired beginner who’s now a professional, with enough craft to almost make up for the fact that he has to keep turning out new product, even if he’s no longer particularly inspired. It should probably be read by any Sedaris fan, at the right time—i.e., after they’ve already read all his earlier ones.
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