{"id":35278,"date":"2014-02-04T08:39:21","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T13:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?post_type=feature&p=35278"},"modified":"2016-01-10T05:35:14","modified_gmt":"2016-01-10T10:35:14","slug":"lets-explore-diabetes-with-owls-by-david-sedaris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=35278","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Let\u2019s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n

Owls, Dental Implants, and a Colonoscopy\u2026 but No Diabetes<\/h2>\n

We make jokes about our lives to lighten them. Psychic pain may be too acute or daily burdens too wearying to address them straight on.\u00a0 Once, in a conversation with my husband, in which I was fruitlessly claiming that I should be let off the hook for every adult responsibility, I blurted: \u201cI have diabetes, and I\u2019m pregnant, and, and\u2026 I wear glasses!\u201d<\/p>\n

The laugh often arrives on the third beat, and I knew in the middle of making that statement that the pressure I was feeling needed defusing. That I wear glasses is no reason to be excused from washing dishes or sorting the bills or (eventually) giving birth, and I knew it. But I was also feeling despair, and instead of climbing down into that hole I wanted to climb out. So I exaggerated my desperation deliberately. We laughed. I felt better. I climbed out.<\/p>\n

Humor is also a made thing, a construction, and this we do for an audience. Our listeners may be the people we share a dinner table with, or, if writers or bloggers or comedians, for people who read or listen to us. Sometimes on A Sweet Life<\/strong> we are utterly serious. Other times a blogger may look diabetes in the eye and say, \u201cThis is absurd.\u201d Paradoxically, by making light of crazy behavior during a hypoglycemic episode<\/a>, the writer simultaneously calls up the gravity of the event and offers us some relief. When I read a piece like troubles with an insertion site<\/a>, I feel both affirmed and released.<\/p>\n

This is what David Sedaris<\/a> does. He is known as a comic writer and performer, and yet the themes of his essays \u2013 identity and self-actualization, the search for love, disappointments of the body, family dysfunction, and adult regret — are of great existential seriousness. I read his work for its humor, certainly, but also because I want to enjoy the consciousness of someone carefully studying his own life and, by extension, our lives.<\/p>\n

When his most recent collection, Let\u2019s Explore Diabetes with Owls<\/em><\/a> (Little, Brown: 2013), was published last spring, the title made me wonder if Sedaris, who is over 50, was newly diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes or if it was his boyfriend Hugh or father or siblings \u2013 all people who make frequent appearances in his work \u2013 with a diagnosis. Alas, no. While owls are the subject of one essay, \u201cUnderstanding Understanding Owls\u201d [sic], diabetes is not. I heard Sedaris give an explanation for the title<\/a> \u2013 it\u2019s a senseless riff on a suggestion a fan made during a book signing \u2013 and, frankly, I was disappointed that there was a missed opportunity for a comic master to make diabetes funny. Diabetes is explicitly missing from this book.<\/p>\n

But Sedaris\u2019s insecurities about his health and body resonate. He holds up a mirror to himself, not liking the features he sees and wondering if they affect either his attractiveness or lovability. In a 2004 essay, \u201cOld Faithful,\u201d<\/a> he wrote disgustingly and movingly about a cyst. In this collection, about his first colonoscopy. In all of his work, minute observation paired with exaggeration is a hallmark of his style. Here is a description of an encounter with his French periodontist in \u201cDentists Without Borders\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u00a0“I have nothing but good things to say about Dr. Guig, who, gumwise, has really brought me back from the abyss. Twice in the course of our decadelong relationship, he\u2019s performed surgical interventions. Then, last year, he removed four of my lower incisors, drilled down into my jawbone, and cemented in place two posts. First, though, he sat me down and explained the procedure, using lots of big words that allowed me to feel tragic and important.”<\/em><\/p>\n

There is truth to this passage \u2013 Sedaris fans know that he has a history of bad teeth and chronic dental problems \u2013 and in one sentence he straightforwardly describes the method of dental implants. The humor is in the conversational invention of \u201cgumwise,\u201d and the self-awareness of how the burden of his dental problems \u201callows\u201d him to feel \u201ctragic.\u201d The immensity of the feeling, and the absurdity of that immensity, is expressed in one stroke.<\/p>\n

Sedaris is aware also that his choice of subject matter is limited to himself and his field of vision. In the \u201cOwls\u201d essay, he sustains attention on a collection of owl paraphernalia that he and his boyfriend started accumulating when Hugh, a decorative painter, created a mural of birds on the domed ceiling of a client\u2019s entryway. This entailed some research on birds, which included the purchase of a book from the Museum of Natural History<\/a> called Understanding Owls<\/em>. For a short time, Hugh became fascinated by owls, which prompted others to search for unusual owl-themed gifts, like owl cocktail napkins. The centerpiece of the essay is Sedaris\u2019s visit to a London taxidermist for a stuffed owl, which he tells Hugh will be \u201cthe best Valentine\u2019s Day gift ever<\/em>.\u201d The taxidermist shows him the skeleton of a Pygmy, the arm of a sailor, and the 400-year-old head of a teenage girl, all preserved, before he shows him the owl. \u00a0Later, on the train home, with a stuffed owl in a box on the seat next to him, Sedaris reflects on the encounter with the taxidermist:<\/p>\n

“What is rare is not to be misread. The taxidermist knew me for less time than it took to wipe my feet on his mat, and, with no effort whatsoever, he looked into my soul and recognized me for the person I really am: the type who\u2019d actually love a Pygmy and could easily get over the fact that he\u2019d been murdered for sport, thinking breezily, Well, it was a long time ago.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s weird and it\u2019s funny that Sedaris is curious about the world\u2019s hidden oddities. Sedaris captures a more urgent human concern in this quirky story, though, and that is the human desire to be known. Later in the essay Sedaris writes, \u201cA person doesn\u2019t consciously choose what he focuses on. Those things choose you, and, once they do, nothing, it seems, can shake them.\u201d While his book does not overtly argue for self-acceptance, I really like how, by craftily exposing himself and making art from that exposure, Sedaris argues for authenticity. There\u2019s nothing sentimental about this. He writes more honestly about family \u2013 with both toughness and humor — than any writer I know.<\/p>\n

His humor can also be a shield, defending him from claims of softness or political correctness. (He is neither.) \u00a0In \u201cFriend in the Ghetto,\u201d he explores a claim, once made by his mother, that he needs people in his life who are different\/diverse\/other \u201cso you can feel better about yourself.\u201d He describes his middle-school attempts to befriend Delicia, a black girl who joined his school after the system was desegregated, and his parents\u2019 attempts to thwart it:<\/p>\n

“On the Monday after the social, I broke it to Delicia that I\u2019d wanted to take her somewhere special but that my parents hadn\u2019t allowed it. \u201cI hate them,\u201d I told her. \u201cThey\u2019re so prejudiced you wouldn\u2019t believe it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what response I expected, but a show of disappointment would have been a good start. If this relationship was going to take off, we needed a common cause, but that, it seemed, was not going to happen. All she said was, \u201cThat\u2019s okay.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, no, actually, it\u2019s not okay, I told her. \u201cActually it stinks.\u201d I laid my hand over hers on the desktop and then looked down at it, thinking what a great poster this would make. \u201cTogetherness,\u201d it might read.”<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019re all starring in our own made-for-TV movie, and Sedaris writes knowingly about his own gambits at exceeding one\u2019s limits, especially the limits of one\u2019s understanding, in this case the complexity of race relations. In \u201cLoggerheads,\u201d he dramatizes his struggles at trying to figure out how to be a boy and \u201cfeeling like someone forever trying to pass.\u201d This is one of the strongest and most subtle essays in the collection, along with \u201cLaugh, Kookaburra,\u201d which is about not being able to escape one\u2019s family or one\u2019s self and realizing that not being able to escape is, in part, what makes a person who he is. \u00a0Sedaris shows us the humor, and the pathos, in the conflict between our attempts to escape and our acceptance that we cannot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When his most recent collection, Let\u2019s Explore Diabetes with Owls, was published last spring, the title made me wonder if Sedaris, who is over 50, was newly diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes or if it was his boyfriend Hugh or father or siblings \u2013 all people who make frequent appearances in his work \u2013 with a diagnosis. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":41922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1432],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nBook Review: Let\u2019s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When his collection, Let\u2019s Explore Diabetes with Owls, was published last spring, the title made me wonder if Sedaris was newly diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=35278\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jane Kokernak\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=35278\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=35278\",\"name\":\"Book Review: Let\u2019s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=35278#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=35278#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/iStock_Owl.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-02-04T13:39:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-01-10T10:35:14+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/9d40892bd58d8398b649f913860636f8\"},\"description\":\"When his collection, Let\u2019s Explore Diabetes with Owls, was published last spring, the title made me wonder if Sedaris was newly diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=35278#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=35278\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=35278#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/iStock_Owl.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/iStock_Owl.jpg\",\"width\":849,\"height\":565},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?p=35278#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Book Review: Let\u2019s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/\",\"name\":\"ASweetLife\",\"description\":\"The Diabetes Magazine\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/9d40892bd58d8398b649f913860636f8\",\"name\":\"Jane Kokernak\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/asweetlife.org\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ca9a61cbd1e6ab69df622082d9aae997?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ca9a61cbd1e6ab69df622082d9aae997?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Jane Kokernak\"},\"description\":\"Jane Kokernak teaches in Northeastern University\u2019s College of Computer and Information Science as communications specialist, working with graduate students and faculty on writing and speaking to different audiences. 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