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Books and Cooks Ithaca -- November 2000

Barrel Fever

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 Barrel Fever by David Sedaris

Discussion date: November

Discussion place: Steve and Stephanie's Place

Menu: Thanksgiving Feast

Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 1994
NPR storyteller Sedaris chronicles a society slightly removed from the mainstream and characters who don't quite fit in with the masses. Deadpan exaggeration gives this first collection a satirical edge. The narrator of ``Parade'' discusses his homosexual relationships with stars whose straightness has never been questioned (Bruce Springsteen, Mike Tyson, and Peter Jennings), using the same matter-of-fact tone to describe the torrid affair of Elizabeth Dole and Pat Buckley. In ``We Get Along,'' Dale lives with his mother, who is full of anger against her deceased, womanizing husband and every night spitefully calls a woman she suspects had an affair with him. Distancing himself from both parents, Dale tries not to rock the boat while keeping some secrets to himself. ``Glen's Homophobia Newsletter, Vol. 3, No. 2'' is a parody of the persecuted in which any minority group could be substituted to replace the whining homosexual who bemoans his suffering at the oppressive hands of society in a style so over- the-top as to be laughable. These and nine other stories are followed by four essays. ``Diary of a Smoker'' is also an account of persecution (by nonsmokers); ``Giantess'' relates Sedaris's experiences with a magazine of erotica about enormous women. Far exceeding them in wit is ``SantaLand Diaries,'' previously read on NPR's ``Morning Edition,'' which describes his seasonal stint as a Macy's elf. Four days of rigorous training on the eighth floor barely prepared him for the crowds, the Santas, and the unending barrage of questions. Throughout the collection, without slapping the reader in the face with a political diatribe, the author skewers our ridiculous fascination with other people's tedious everyday lives. Life may be banal here, but Sedaris's take on it is vastly entertaining.

Amazon.com
"Poor, chubby Annette Kelper, who desperately tries to pretend that nobody notices the fact that she's balding--balding just like a man. It's [her] fault I'm dead. The Bible says it's all right to cast the first stone if someone dead is telling you to do it and I'm telling you now..." 

To call this collection of stories and essays from NPR commentator David Sedaris "dark" would be a serious understatement. Barrel Fever goes beyond dark into bitter, past squalid and deep into disturbing. Mercifully, Barrel Fever is also very funny. The premises are richly outlandish: the above quote comes from a melodramatic suicide note, filled to the brim with payback as only a teenaged girl could define it. Sedaris writes some of the most audacious humor, and he has the nerve as well as the ear to back it up. By Barrel Fever's end, you may be a little weary of cruising America's broken families and trailer parks, but the book's final piece, "SantaLand Diaries," is a gem of absurdity that is worth the price alone. 

A collection of stories and essays by humorist and NPR commentator David Sedaris based upon his own experiences and the hidden perversity that can be found in Anytown, U.S.A. Here are images and blasphemies that nice people don't dare look at--blatantly exposed and told with the clear, casual voice of intimate knowledge. Sedaris' humor is born of compassion and his tales range from the sharing of cheery Christmas letters featuring infanticide, to experiences of the Gay and Famous (Charlton Heston and Elizabeth Dole, for example), to the lives of siblings named Hope, Faith, Charity and Adolph and to alcoholics and chain smokers you can laugh with.

The Books and Cooks The Daughter of Time Informal Reading Guide
(member-generated questions in no particular order)

  • Why is this book called "Barrel Fever"?

  • Could Sedaris write a full-length novel or does his style work just for short stories?

  • Did you like the stories or the essays better? How were they different?

  • David Sedaris is fictionalizing his own childhood for short stories and we seem to think that this is not successful! Garrison Keller also does the same thing and I think hs is successful. What is the difference?

  • What differences do you see between these pieces and others Sedaris has written (e.g. thos in Naked which seemed much more enjoyable)?

  • Would the stories be better heard rather than read?

  • Does the violence and/or the sexual explicitness in some of these stories play a useful role or do they shock for no reason?

  • While there was a recurring theme of homosexual encounters to varying degrees of explicitness, do you think there was actually more sexual content than in that of other writers or just that it seemed more glaring because it was less familiar?

  • What would David Sedaris' parents think if they read this?

  • Did you read the stories in order? If you read the stories before the essays, how did they influence your view of the essays?

  • The narrators in most (if not all) stories seem to be losers. What is it in their plight that is humorous? What am I missing?

This Page Last Revised: February 18, 2001.