The Cult Of Sedaris Part II [Review: Me Talk Pretty One Day]

Now read on...

Hurt by the callous and ungentlemanly behaviour of those bookstorians, I went on to perform a highly scientific survey of fellow coffee drinkers, armed with my new copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day. My census confirmed, thankfully, that there are plenty of other people out there who have also never heard of David Sedaris. The test subjects also showed an immediate interest in the book - Mr. Sedaris, if this leads to any sales then I want my cut.

Finally I ran out of displacement activities and had no choice but to actually read the damn thing.

Me Talk Pretty One Day is a collection of short, strongly themed autobiographical stories. David Sedaris as a writer has a love of language and word-play. He also manages both to embrace his identity (sexuality, nationality, tastes and so on) and to simultaneously use Woody Allen-style self-deprecating humour. Eccentric family members and habits are easy targets, and the shadow of Sedaris' father looms large in many of the stories. Although I've no doubt there is at least exaggeration, the stories do ring true and are often moving as well as funny. Themes are varied - this is definitely a short story collection, not a novel - and include Sedaris' childhood encounter with a speech therapist, the rise and fall of Sedaris as a performance artist, and the title story, one of many about living in France and learning French.

While the humour is often gentle, don't be fooled: firstly, it's funny enough to cause a major incident on the Tube, and secondly Sedaris can,suddenly and without warning, dip into much blacker stuff. The following passage, from "The Youth In Asia" follows on from a series of hilarious but mostly harmless anecdotes about Sedaris' parents' pets:

"When my mother died and was cremated herself, we worried that, acting on instinct, our father might run out and immediately replace her. Returning from the funeral, my brother, sisters, and I half expected to find some vaguely familiar Sharon Two standing at the kitchen counter and working the puzzle in the TV Guide. 'Sharon One would have gotten five across' our father would have scolded. 'Come on, baby, get with it.' "

How does Sedaris fare with the Terry Pratchett comparison? It's hard to judge as they write such different material: giggling on Underground trains is probably the only common ground. Personally I would describe Sedaris as two parts Woody Allen, one part Garrison Keillor and one part Natalie Tran. And if that isn't either a recommendation or the best episode of "Come Dine With Me" ever, then I don't know what is.

With thanks to Lovy Boheme for the original recommendation.

[Edit 5.9.10: Oops! removed highly embarrassing mistake. I think I got away with it :o ]

The Cult of Sedaris Part I

A friend and recent visitor to this blog introduced me to the name David Sedaris. The commenter juxtaposed Sedaris' humorous writing with that of Terry Pratchett and the comment was phrased in such a way as to create a challenge: for review blogging, as for Street Countdown, once the gauntlet is thrown there is no option but to accept the joust.

Over recent years my own appreciation of David Sedaris, America's Finest Humorous Writing Source, has been only slightly muted by the fact that I'd never heard of the guy. Was this The Emperor's New Clothes all over again? (that first day at the office was so embarrassing.) Worse, the First David Sedaris Conspiracy quickly became apparent - Other People (TM) have been reading books by this author all over the internets. Shamed by my ignorance but not deterred, I resolved to find out more.

I searched a number of large high street coffee-and-bookstores. In every one, I hit a blank when looking under author in the A-Z shelves, or on the Short Story shelf, so had to engage the shop assistants. This is how I came across the Second David Sedaris Conspiracy: all bookshop assistants have been reading David Sedaris books for some time, they would all recommend the same one - Me Talk Pretty One Day - and they have all conspired to hide these books under a different definition in each store: Biography, Humour, Travel Writing and so on.

To be continued...

Emo Horror [Review: Just After Sunset]

"Just After Sunset" is a new collection of short stories by Stephen King. While they are undeniably still horror stories, they strike more of a melancholy note than King's earlier writings: more emo than gothic horror. The tone is struck in the opening novella "Willa" when a woman running to escape a serial killer still manages to take in the solemn beauty of a sunset. Many of the stories focus on horrors that have already happened and deal with the grief and denial that follows. A common theme for many of the stories is a magical portal connecting places, times or universes.

"N." is a particularly interesting story: the descriptions of Ackerman's Field, a location dripping with evil, the conjunction of pan-dimensional horror and mental illness, and the multi-layered narrative of journal entries and unearthed letters, even the name of the horror point to H.P. Lovecraft as the inspiration - but in his footnotes King credits the earlier, Welsh horror writer Arthur Machen, also an alchemist and contemporary of Aleister Crowley, as well as the inspiration for many of Lovecraft's tales.

Not all the stories are as gripping as "N." - this is a readable collection but by no means King's strongest writing. Other highlights for me were the surreal and colourful "Stationary Bike" and the finale "A Very Tight Place" - a hilarious and nightmarish non-paranormal horror which could have been written by Gordie LaChance, the narrator of "The Body/Stand By Me."

What do science fiction writers do for a break?

They write science fiction, it seems. Ben Bova is best known for his novels following humanity's colonization of the Solar System - hard sci-fi featuring hard characters. The collection "Laugh Lines" shows a different side of Bova altogether. The novella "The Starcrossed" is the A-side of the collection.

Starcrossed is sci-fi only in the use of a three-dimensional TV tech as a plot device, allowing its inventor Bill Oxnard to develop a new, clearer version which is his route into the world of TV production. It's actually a satire about the production of sci-fi TV series, based on Bova's past experience as a science advisor, and much of it rings true. Each character in the production hierarchy is given their own chapter, and Oxnard is both the stand-in for Bova and the eyes and ears of the reader, allowed to see every crazy aspect of the production.

Bova is mostly successful in hitting his satirical targets and in raising laughs. The ending was too happy for my liking, and the cast list too male-dominated, with some (thankfully not all) female characters present purely as sexual reward or distraction for the males - Bova may be deliberately sending himself up here though. The novella is backed up by some inventive and equally satirical media-focussed short stories - I particularly enjoyed "Crisis of the Month" about journalists vying to find the best disaster stories.

Web 3.0

Two short stories in Interzone #220 both look at the future of Web 2.0. and the 'net in general.

A lot of what happens on Web 2.0 can be described either as trying to get attention or trying to promote something. In "Monetized" by Jason Stoddard, these two processes are multiplied so that every interaction between two people is now an opportunity to promote something - everyone has an agenda, we're all scrambling after referral fees and there's no longer any such thing as innocent conversation - and this constant promotion is the basis of the new economy. Stoddard's novella is serious (although often humorous) and set in a well fleshed-out and very believable future. Meanwhile "Spy vs Spy" by Neal Williamson explores, albeit in a much lighter way, the more paranoid aspects of social networking - by laying out so much of your life in the open, you might be making enemies as well as friends, and of course the net makes it very easy to indulge in this kind of paranoia. In both stories, with the exception of Stoddard's hero, the majority of people seem to be buying into these trends rather than challenging them and I think this rings true - if so then far from empowering the user, Web 2.0 could be directing his or her movements.

Interzone 220 opens with two very strong and very different stories - the Jason Stoddard, and (deep breath) "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest: Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast" by Eugie Foster. This surreal story of people living in a beehive society and changing their identity and personality each day with the masks they wear, contrasts with the cynical realism of Monetized completely, and while it starts like an adult, medieval re-imagining of Mr. Benn, it opens out into something dark, powerful and moving. It's hard to describe this as original when this kind of plot, about choosing to become aware that the world is a dystopia rather than the utopia you've been led to believe, is so widely used elsewhere, but there are other forms of originality here, including an ending that successfully avoids cliche and reminds the reader that freedom and self-discovery can lead to a great deal of pain.

This month Adam Tredowski's cover, left, and Daniel Bristow-Bailey's retro sci-fi drawing for Memory Dust are both excellent. In general though I was disappointed by the relative lack of striking illustrations elsewhere in 220, perhaps because I've been spoiled by previous issues - Interzone's often about the illustration as much as the stories.

New Interzone!

Highlights from issue 219:

Butterfly, Falling At Dawn - a short story by Aliette de Bodard, set in an alternative history where Aztec culture survived the European invaders becoming Greater Mexica. The plot here is a fairly straightforward whodunnit set in the near future - it's the characters and the setting that make this story stand out.

The editorial takes issue with "positive sf's cheerleaders" and makes it clear that, at least in Interzone, sf shouldn't ignore crises, or focus on technological fixes. Not sure if I agree or not. A change to the universe, say the introduction of a new tech, creates moral implications and potentials for accident or misuse - but the potential for good, particularly the most imaginative extrapolations, is also there to be explored. And there's a lot of negative sf that just seems to rehash the same 1984 scenario with minor variations. From a literary point of view I do accept there's a need for a certain amount of angst or discomfort to make a plot interesting. I just think sci-fi still has the potential to inspire as well as scare, and should be a place to find new and exotic ideas of any kind.

Tony Lee reviews the Colour of Magic DVD. Some quotes: "This is not an objective review...," "I have developed a numbingly phobic, debilitatingly allergic reaction to gurning wizards in floppy hats," "A pox on it's rancid cheesy cliches, lame sightseeing gags, telegraphed Tolkien twists, desperately overworked bits of aimless busyness, solipsistic remarks and throwaway pantomime blathering."