If you’ve ever laughed your way through David Sedaris’s cheerfully misanthropic stories, you might think you know what you’re getting with Calypso. You’d be wrong.
When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realization: it’s impossible to take a vacation from yourself.
Review
Like all of the David Sedaris books I’ve read before this one, this was such a human read.
If you’ve been reading the blog since the olden days (like 4 years ago, I think? I don’t keep track), you’ll know my brain can often be unneccessarily mean to me. It happens a lot less these days, but it still happens.
Reading David Sedaris remids me that it happens toother people too. And there is no shame in it. I still hold onto so much shame for my childhood and early career days, when I was expected to be nothing more than sweetness and light. I wasn’t supposed to have a negative thought, much less speak them aloud.
Even much less write them our on paper.
That’s what this books feels like to me. Word vomit, in the best way.
Sedaris has been a part of my life ever since Me Talk Pretty One Day came out. I think I read it for the first time in just over an hour. It was unlike anything I’d ever read before. I felt seen and represented even though on the surface we don’t have much in common.
Except I mean, a weirdly traumatic childhood that we didn’t quite recognize as traumatic while we were going through it?
I loved the first Sedaris book I read so much, I gifted it to a lot of people I loved. Inclduing the person I current live with have done so for the past 14 years. 14?! That seems fake.
If you’ve never read a David Sedaris book before, don’t expect a full story – this isn’t a novel. It’s a collection of short stories about his life. Observational humor, super quick, super fun and super satisfying.
Each story spoke to me in a different way, but one thought was persistent throughout this reading:
Was David Sedaris always this judgey? Did *I* used to be this judgey? Why are we so judgey about each other?
It doesn’t feel good.
I’ll probably go back and read an older Sedaris later this year to see how it hits for me.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved this book. I laughed out loud at every story at least one time and it really made me think, which is the most important thing for me.
Reading Journey
What I listened to:
Monday, January 20 Chapters:
- Company Man
- Now We Are Five
- Little Guy
- Stepping Out
- A House Divided
- The Perfect Fit
Thursday, January 23 Chapters:
- The Perfect Fit
- Leviathan
- Your English is So Good
- Calypso
- The Silent Treatment
- Untamed
- The One(s) Who Got Away
- Sorry
Friday, January 24 Chapters
- Boo-Hooey
- A Number of Reasons I’ve Been Depressed Lately
- Why Aren’t You Laughing?
- I’m Still Standing
- The Spirit World
- And While You’re Up There, Check on My Prostate
- The Comey Memo
Thoughts while reading (could be about the book, could not):
- The first gift I ever gave Mickey was a David Sedaris book, so, yeah, he’s one of my favorite authors.
- It’s been so long since I read a new one, I’m quite excited.
- The first story hadn’t even finished, and I’m crying. This is the best kind of familiar.
- David Sedaris’ writing is so incredibly human.
- I missed this.
- “In some of the early northern European paintings, Christ looks like you flushed him out from under a bridge, but in Sunday school books and the sorts of pictures they sell at Christian supply stores, he falls somewhere between Kenny Loggins and Jared Leto…”
- thursday
- It surprise snowed today. No one was expecting it. And it just kept coming, too!
- I have been having so much fun reading David Sedaris again. He loves words in the same playful way I love words. I forgot how good it felt to read them.
- It does make me a bit sad to see how much he looks down on poorer people? Was he always like this? Or is it something I’m only noticing in my older age?
- Maybe I am just not as judgemental as I used to be? I know I judge myself less harshly.
- David Sedaris is a bone-thrower!! When they finish a meal, the bones go in the yard.
- “For whoever wants it.”
- friday
- I’m working on so many fun projects right now:
- a logo for a board game bar in Colorado
- a website for the best CannaSexTech company in the world (I’m a little biased)
- a pitch deck for a movie
- a monthly lollipop subscription
- and other normal things
- This is what my life should have been after high school: figuring out what I’m good at, learning about it, and then pursuing it. It should not have taken me until my 40s!
- Or should it have? I mean, even when I was in school, when thinking about college, it wasn’t so much, “What do you love?” it was “What can you make the most money doing?”
- I’ve had jobs where I’ve made much more money but at half a percent of the happiness and freedom I feel now.
- I never knew what it was like to live just for me, ever. It’s neat. I do enjoy it, and it makes all the people around me glow brighter, too.
- I just wish I’d discovered this earlier… like decades earlier.
- Cause now, I have to wade through all the terrible shit I did before I knew better. I hate it. I hate the things my brain convinced me to think and feel and do so that people would like me, or I would fit in, or I would get a boyfriend.
- At least I can be loud as hell about it now.
- But also quiet while I read, which I am doing now. Sorry for the babbling.
- The way he is talking about visits from his mom and sister in his dreams, particularly the way they make him feel the next day sounds very similar to my place dreams. I have a couple (fictional, as far as I know) paces that I visit in my dreams that make me feel very calm and happy and centered the next day.
