Sedaris Reflection

    This was my first experience reading David Sedaris and from the introduction l immediately could see why people have such mixed reactions to him and his work. (I have never seen someone spend that much time going on about how you can’t publish anything without offending someone these days without it being a major 🚩🚩🚩.) While I’ve only read what was selected for this class—I think at least with these works the primary target is himself. In the first essay we read, “The Incomplete Quad” it’s only natural to be disgusted by his behavior and treatment of Peg. He very obviously is using Peg because helping her makes him feel some kind of power: “Peg was my charge, my toy, I was the only one who knew how to turn her off and on” (38). He later recounts, after he takes her to visit his family and she is no longer of use to him, that he sees her as a hinderance and doesn’t want to help her fulfil her basic needs. Sedaris isn’t asking you to laugh at how poorly he treated Peg because it’s funny to see someone be abused, but to laugh at him for being a despicable person. His reflection at the end of his essay makes the irony between how one is supposed to act and how he acted more clear: “people aren’t foolish as much as they are kind, Peg understood that at a relatively early age. Me, it took years” (41).
    The general layout of his stories reminded me of the conversation we had in class (last week?) about television shows we watch about awful characters doing awful things. I recently binge watched all of Girls which generally follows the “awful people doing awful things” scenario and then (seemingly out of nowhere) will hit you with an episode about the fraught relationship of adult children dealing with the death of a parent or (in regard to mental health or substance abuse) how healing is not always linear. I felt similarly when he switched tones writing about his family and siblings. Sedaris uses his stories to talk about grief, loss, and regret in a way that I don’t think you would be able to accomplish as easily in a collection that wasn’t humorous. Getting your audience to laugh with you (or at you) makes everyone more vulnerable. That vulnerability is what allows him to write about the regret he feels in the wake of his sister’s suicide. Usually, when we talk about hard topics (especially substance abuse or mental health issues) there is a clear narrative that everyone expects you to follow. You are meant to act a certain way and be endlessly compassionate to those in your life who are suffering. There is no room in that narrative to talk about how you really feel, and I think the way Sedaris uses humor opens the opportunity to talk about the contradictions that exist in ourselves. We will all most likely be unforgivable to someone at some point in our life. Being alive is complicated and messy and we are not always kind. But pretending like it never happened, never talking about it, or getting stuck in your own regret isn’t helping anything.