Redheaded Reviews: Calypso by David Sedaris

Sedaris and his boyfriend Hugh buy a beach house on Emerald Isle off the coast of North Carolina named the Sea Section in this book. While he hopes to recreate family vacations from his childhood things are different as they are missing one of them: Tiffany, who killed herself by taking Klonopin and then placing a plastic bag over her head and suffocating to death. His family's relationship with Tiffany was complicated as she was a difficult person to know and likely had a mental illness. Sedaris had not seen her in four years. This book explores how Sedaris and his brother and sisters and Dad deal with her death among other things.

But the book is still a funny book as evidenced by the chapter on when David gets a Fitbit and starts out with 10,000 steps which are four miles for someone his size, but soon is upping the ante and going 15,000 steps which is seven miles. He keeps upping the ante until he hits 60,000 which is twenty-five miles. But he isn't just walking. He takes a grabber with him and a bag and picks up trash on his route. The local garbage company let him name a garbage truck. He named it Roamin'. When his Fitbit died he lasted a couple of days before ordering a new one and heading back out there.

While on the road in America doing a book tour he learned that he had a harmless fatty tumor on his right side by his rib cage. He decided to get it taken off, but he wanted to keep it and feed it to the large snapping turtle back at the Sea Section that looked like he had a tumor on his head. However, the doctor refused to let him have it so he decided to not have the operation. He mentioned this at one of his talks and book signings and a woman who was a doctor told him she could remove it for him. So he later that night he went to her house and let her remove the tumor from his chest and packed it in ice and mailed it to his sister Lisa in Raleigh who put it in her fridge and when they went down to the beach at Thanksgiving he went to feed the turtle but found that he was hibernating. Then that Spring found that he had died. So he found another snapping turtle to give his tumor that was just as odd as the one with a tumor on his head.

Sedaris who doesn't drive decided to explore the things different drivers in other countries say to bad drivers. The Dutch call people a cancer whore. The Germans tell people to find a spot on my ass you would like to lick and lick it. Or if the driver is female, a blood sausage. But the real cursers of the world are the Romanians. They say things like: I shit in your mother's mouth, I fuck your mother's dead, I fuck your mother's Christ, I fuck your mother's onion, I will make skis out of your mother's cross, and the worst for them, I fuck your mother's memorial cake. A memorial cake is something you bake when a loved one dies. Of course, he got a really creative one from a Viennese woman: Shove your hand up my ass and jerk my shit. We Americans are purely amateurs compared to some in the world.

This book is funny as all of his books are funny in that darkly misanthropic way of his. But this one was also a bit more serious than his other books due to the fact that it was dealing with the tragic death of his sister and how the family comes to terms with it in their family's unique way. This is an excellently written book that delves into Sedaris's life with stories that examine his connection with his father, being sick on the road, five reasons he's depressed which was written around the election time, whether ghosts are real and can you communicate with the dead, and life with Hugh. I really loved this book as much as other Sedaris books I have read. I highly recommend it.

Quotes

At what point had I realized that class couldn’t save you, that addiction or mental illness didn’t care whether you’d taken piano lessons or spent a summer in Europe? Which drunk or junkie or unmedicated schizophrenic was I crossing the street to avoid when I put it all together?

-David Sedaris (Calypso p 56)

Is it my fault that the good times fade to nothing while the bad ones burn forever bright? Memory aside, the negative just makes for a better story: the plane was delayed, an infection set in, outlaws arrived and reduced the schoolhouse to ashes. Happiness is harder to put into words. It’s also harder to source, much more mysterious than anger or sorrow, which come to me promptly, whenever I summon them, and remain long after I’ve begged them to leave.

-David Sedaris (Calypso p 91-2)

Dad was discussing someone who goes to his gym. The guy is in his forties and apparently stands too close in the locker room. “He undresses me with his eyes, and it makes me uncomfortable,” my father said. “How does someone undress you with his eyes when you’re already undressed?” I asked. “By that point what’s he looking at, your soul?”