Calypso - David Sedaris

David Sedaris is one of those guys whose books I’ve seen around for what seems ages without ever picking up one of them.  Don’t ask me why that is, because I don’t really have a good answer; it just seems to happen like that sometimes.  And then I spotted the strange little smiley-face on the dustjacket of Calypso in a bookstore one day, and I picked the book up to look inside.  Let’s just say, that I’m glad that I did because now I know what I’ve been missing.

Calypso is a collection of, if I counted correctly, twenty-one glimpses into the world and lifestyle of David Sedaris. Sedaris is known for his comedy, but these stories are as likely to bring a tear to the reader’s eye as they are to make him laugh – and there is a lot of both going on here.  I have no basis upon which to compare Calypso to any previous David Sedaris books, but I can tell you that this time around the man is looking at his life through the lens of middle age and he’s not particularly thrilled by what he sees. 

 But the real beauty of Calypso is the author’s willingness to reveal so much about his personal life, as well as those of his parents and siblings, that even a first-time reader like me comes away from the book feeling as if I’ve been reading Sedaris for years.  Right from the first page the reader is tipped that Sedaris may not look at life quite the way that the rest of us do when he says: “Though there’s an industry built on telling you otherwise, there are few real joys to middle age. The only perk I can see is that, with luck, you’ll acquire a guest room.” There was no way I could quit reading after that opening because I could not imagine the connection between “middle age perk” and “guest room.”

David Sedaris

Along the way, there are personal stories about the suicide of Sedaris’s youngest sister; about his total addiction to the Fit-Bit watch routine; not being able to talk comfortably with his father at any point in his life; his mixed reaction to the legalization of gay marriage; his mother’s alcoholism; and his father’s insistence at unnecessarily scrimping and saving even at age 94.  And if that were not already enough, there are also stories about the author’s really strange relationship with a huge, deformed snapping turtle, the shopping gene he shares with his sisters, and what can happen to a man suffering a severe stomach virus attack while on stage in front of a whole bunch of people.  And that’s not all.  In other words, nothing is off limits in Calypso- and it all works.

If you are already a David Sedaris fan, you already know all of this; but it you are not, it’s not too late to become one.  

Book Number 3,401