Naked

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. This isn't a typical read for me; this selection was governed by my Book Club. I'm not used to fiction without at least a few elements of wizardry, dragons, or gratuitous sex and violence.

Naked is a collection of short autobiographical stories following a young man and his atypical experiences with his family, friends, and coworkers. While it may sound banal, the stories were over-the-top enough to be thoroughly entertaining but somehow did not strain credulity. Characters were vivid; I could HEAR the senile angry grandmother, the resentful clockmaker, the wise nudist. The narrator was especially genuine. David captured the thought process of a teenager perfectly: The martyr complex, the show more daydreaming, the insight, the boldness, and the terrible, terrible decision-making skills. He is not a perfect person, or even a great person, but he tries. I feel compelled to point out that the main character is gay. This plays, understandably, a huge part in his life stories, but is not the focus of the novel.

I struggled for a long time with the meaning of the text. While its a short story collection, it follows a timeline and there is some overlap between tales. However, it still lacks a goal, an arc. Reading fantasy, a genre defined by epic quests and comprised nearly entirely of allegory and metaphor, has trained me altogether wrongly to interpret this novel. Despite this, I was able to appreciate the themes on judging and evaluating people and found them refreshingly deep for a novel that is this humorous.

The novel breezed along, sporting both a short length and a light style befitting its facetious nature.

TL;DR: Surprisingly good and short enough its no big loss if you hate it. show less

Bueno, esto es técnicamente no ficción, pero la diferencia entre esta realidad y la ficción es prácticamente insignificante. Los personajes que aparecen en la vida de Sedaris, empezando por su sarcástica e hilarante madre y pasando por su compañero de la fábrica con una colección de consoladores, o los inquietantes conductores que le recogen haciendo autostop, son todo menos cotidianos. Y por supuesto David tampoco lo es: su infancia lamiendo interruptores aquejado de un descontrolado trastorno obsesivo-compulsivo que parece que va amainando con la edad es un punto álgido, pero no deja de ser un bicho raro en ningún momento.

La colección de ensayos es cronológica, lo que aporta más al hecho de que esto se pueda leer como una show more narrativa normal, aunque no vaya unida por un hilo narrativo (tampoco es tan diferente a un Bukowski, en el fondo). Es entretenido, divertido y gamberro, una buena y ágil lectura. show less

This book covers a lot of Sedaris's life, including his extreme OCD as a youth, which was cured by taking up smoking, something in his case I can totally support. We hear all about his miserly father and mother's alcoholism--after which she gets terminal cancer. The book concludes with the author's visit to a nudist camp. What makes Sedaris readable (or listenable in the case of this audiobook ready by him and his sister Amy) is not just that he finds the humor and irony in every situation, but that he also finds the truth.

I listened to this one, and I strongly urge anyone reading this book to do the same. Mr Sedaris' tone and cadence bring to life some very difficult situations from his childhood. They are for the most part universal to a degree, yet from a deeply personal point of view. From his OCD, to the death of his YaYa and on- I enjoy his writing, but listening to him embody the child who is terrified of being found out- about almost anything- is priceless.

A review printed on the back cover of David Sedaris' collection "Naked" calls it 'Side-splitting'. I 'd sooner call it 'Heart-breaking'. The stories do have their humor, sometimes quite a bit of it, and overall the book probably is much funnier when read aloud by the author, but underneath it all one finds a strong current of heartache, loneliness and pain. "Naked" is Sedaris' biography from childhood to adulthood. His gift is that he can see the humor in some truly awful situations: his childhood tics, nervousness,fears, road trips, horrible jobs he takes on and the twisted people he encounters, coming to grips with his sexuality, the death of mother--one wonders, even as Sedaris' admits in one essay his utter lack of courage, how he show more survives with such a sense of humor. show less

Just the right mix of brazen, touching, ascerbic, scary, and observant to be hilarious. Sedarius is living proof that you can write an amazing book about ANYTHING if you are just brave and talented enough--that is, IF you survive the roadtrip. I'd stay away from this book if you have a child hitchhiking across country or you're a homophobe, but other than those niches, I'd recommend it to any adult looking for a good belly laugh.

David Sedaris may be 'a smart ass born and raised' but he's also insightful, self-depreciating, appalling, and downright funny. In the last of the 15 essays in this book, also titled 'Naked', David chronicles his week in a nudist - no, not a colony - in a nudist trailer park. Of course, he makes lots of (various body parts) jokes but at the same time he convincingly portrays the nudists' lifestyle as a relaxed alternative to the clothed world around them.