David Sedaris: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Before this book, I found it a little difficult to put a finger on the exact source of Sedaris' charm.  Unforgiving sarcasm is always appealing, as long as one is not the target, and there is a certain twist in his figurative language that always surprises and unnerves.  These alone could not explain his unrivaled success, however, or his appeal to me in particular.  Plenty of writers have a similar talent with words, after all, without catching the mind quite like Sedaris does.

What must be relegated to a je ne sais quois in his other collections, however, finds another voice in this one.  In addition to the usual poignant and vibrant retellings of simple episodes in his life, where he teases out meaning and humor from the tiniest of details, as usual, there are two additional items.  Firstly, included here are a few dramatic monologues, ostensibly for forensic performance, that take great pains to be as far from Sedaris' own character as possible.  The wide variety in ages, genders, and beliefs scarcely bothers to conceal the common thread: these are the worst possible people you could imagine existing.  Each of the monologues begins innocently enough, but ramps up quickly to such heights of misanthropy that caricature is not a strong enough word. Giving free rein to his imagination, and freed from the bounds of the personal essay, Sedaris reveals what he has been after all along--not just in the book, but in all the previous ones.

The characters in the monologues are comically horrid, but we are only allowed to realize the depths of their sociopathy because these are monologues, and we have access to their deepest, most sinister thoughts.  Furthermore, each of them is oblivious to their portrayal, and convinced that they are the hero of whatever episode they are recounting.  If we were encountering them on the street, or, say, in a story where they were only bit players, they might seem almost human.  In fact, with such third-person armor, each of them could easily have found a home in one of Sedaris' other stories.  

This is the world that Sedaris has created, one where everyone is horrible--but managing for the most part to conceal it from each other and from the reader.  The author's father, notably, receives the closest attention in the essay sections, and very nearly reaches the depravity of the monologue characters.  If he were given his own monologue, all doubt of his detestability would be removed.  

It is also noteworthy that the author himself comes across as less varnished in this volume.  Perhaps at this age, Sedaris has simply grown comfortable with his depravity, and is less interested in assuming a persona.  In a way, the book is itself a monologue of sociopathy, nestled within with are smaller monologues that highlight his point: we are all terrible, you and me included.