Naked

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.

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.

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.

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

I've been interested in sampling Sedaris's work for some time now, but since nonfiction is not my typical genre of reading, he has remained lurking in the background. Fortunately, my friends decided to pick this collection of essays for our book club, and I finally read an author that has received much positive buzz in the reading world. The book is a collection of autobiographical essays, and they are arranged in relative chronological order, starting when he is a young boy and moving forward through high school, college, and adulthood. Each essay has a focus, such as David's OCD ticks and how he handled them, or the Christmas when his sister took him to help her coworker, Dinah, who was a whore not altogether trying to put her life to show more rights. One essay examined his struggle to accept his own homosexuality, built around a summer trip he and his sister took to Greece. Another featured his grandmother, an austere Greek immigrant who hated and was hated by his mother, was misunderstood by her grandchildren, and lived out a lonely old age shuffled between his house and various nursing homes. The penultimate essay is about his mother's death, and feels raw. I found it to be the most powerful essay in the collection. The final piece is the namesake for the book, "Naked", and it explores the time Sedaris spent a week in a nudist colony, making the title of the book both literal and figurative.

As the descriptions indicate, the essays frequently deal with heavy or tragic issues, but the author relies on a wry voice to deliver humor in each case. Also, many of the characters Sedaris encounters are so quirky and odd, and the situations equally bizarre, that the comedy is inherent in the story. Sometimes, we just have to laugh at the odd and possibly cruel vagaries of our world, and Sedaris can really make his readers laugh. Lest you think that he is too flippant about everything, the author includes commentary that shows these events affected him deeply, occasional self-criticism, and an understanding of himself and an obvious desire to be honest with his own flaws. The majority of his essays deal directly with himself or his family; the humor and intended laughter is therapeutic.

I enjoyed reading this book. Sedaris has a smooth prose style that is easy to read and very personal. I felt as if we were having a conversation at times. The descriptions are evocative and powerful, albeit frequently comic. Yet, this is not just a collection of essays intended to make a person laugh. It's not a joke book. As I mentioned above, the subject matter is serious, and the writing feels cathartic. Sedaris opens up the deeper meaning in his odd encounters, and there are multiple levels of interpretation for each essay. For instance, being naked is an actual occurrence in the final piece of the book, but ideas of vulnerability and how we try to cover ourselves recur throughout every essay. Another common theme is the marginalized person, who we encounter in a large array of different misfortunes, from the mentally insane to the handicapped to the hitch hiker. Sedaris frequently relates to these folk who are cut off from mainstream society, and reacts with alternate empathy and revulsion to their plight. His interactions with them force the reader to reevaluate how she responds to others that don't conform to societal expectations. These are but a couple illustrations of the deeper meaning Sedaris delivers, in a book that doesn't let a relish towards entertainment detract from weightier meditations. Sedaris's humor is his avenue to pursuing truth about life and humanity and death. show less

Many of us know David Sedaris from the radio, perhaps reading each Christmas season from his Santaland Diaries. We know he has a high pitched voice, is droll, and has had some strange jobs. But Sedaris, is first and foremost a writer, not just a radio personality. In fact, when he appears on stage he is not telling a monologue, like Eric Bogosian, but rather, reading word from word from his books. Naked is a series of biographical sketches. David the boy, teenager, and adult, is at the center of a constellation featuring his mom, dad, grandmother, and to a lesser extent siblings. Reading this book you realize that David's adventures in Santaland is typical of his uncanny ability to find and brilliantly describe the bizarre. His final show more titular essay, Naked, about his stint in a nudist colony is as funny as anything in the book. And it aptly describes a collection of essays that are brilliantly astute, observant, at times hilarious, but always brutally honest and self-aware. show less