Calypso

Title:

Calypso

Author:

Sedaris, David, author.

Personal Author:

Sedaris, David, author.

ISBN:

9780316392389

9781408707821

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

viii, 259 pages ; 22 cm

Contents:

Company man -- Now we are five -- Little guy -- Stepping out -- house divided -- perfect fit -- Leviathan -- Your English is so good -- Calypso -- modest proposal -- silent treatment -- Untamed -- one(s) who got away -- Sorry -- Boo-hooey -- number of the reasons I've been depressed lately -- Why aren't you laughing? -- I'm still standing -- spirit world -- And while you're up there, check on my prostate -- Comey memo.

Abstract:

Personal essays share the author's adventures after buying a vacation house on the Carolina coast and his reflections on middle age and mortality.

Personal Subject:

Sedaris, David-Anecdotes.

Subject Term:

Aging -- Anecdotes.

American wit and humor.

Mortality.

Genre:

Essays.

Humor.

Summary:

Personal essays share the author's adventures after buying a vacation house on the Carolina coast and his reflections on middle age and mortality.

Holds:

Available:*

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Summary

David Sedaris returns with his most deeply personal and darkly hilarious book.

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.

With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very funny--it's a book that can make you laugh 'til you snort, the way only family can. Sedaris's powers of observation have never been sharper, and his ability to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future.

This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumor joke. Calypso is simultaneously Sedaris's darkest and warmest book yet--and it just might be his very best.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers' jokes "as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind." A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn't keep it once it was removed. "But it's my tumor," he insisted. "I made it." (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author's mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother's death, and his cantankerous father's erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother's drinking--and his family's denial of it--makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded "like a trigger being cocked." Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn't lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say "have a blessed day" make him feel "like you've been sprayed against your will with God cologne." But bad news has sharpened the author's humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it's increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.Sedaris at his darkest--and his best.