Calypso by David Sedaris; Little, Brown & Co., $28
Whoever said that 60 is the new 40 hasn't met writer David Sedaris. The popular satirist's latest collection of tragicomic essays "Calypso" finds the pithy, prolific wordsmith at his finest. Having now surpassed middle age, he's most emphatic and chatty about aging, mortality, family matters, and how a turtle and a tumor changed his life.
Sedaris, 61, has his hands full these days with concerns over his health, as evidenced in an essay on his purchase of a Fitbit. There are pages of gleeful reading about the absurdities of growing older in a world preoccupied with distracted youth, overbearing store employees, political imposters, and Instagram feeds. While the subject matter hovers around age and familial histrionics, sometimes to a gloomy extent, there are also moments of levity.
There is a hilarious chapter on touring Tokyo with his sister, the multi-talented Amy Sedaris, to partake in a weeklong consumerist extravaganza while rationalizing that "shopping has nothing to do with money."
Memories of family vacations to Emerald Isle off the coast of North Carolina bleed into an anecdote involving a lumpy turtle whom Sedaris "befriends" and likens to himself. The likeness is mostly due to the benign fatty skin tumor that Sedaris has removed. When he asks if he can keep the excised tumor, the doctor cites a "federal law" restricting him from giving away anything removed from his body. "But it's my tumor," Sedaris argues. "I made it." He finds another physician to remove the lump who allows him to keep it, which he then proceeds to feed to the turtle. More than a little bizarre, but it's the kind of narrative that will keep the reader's eyes glued to the page.
Sometimes Sedaris finds himself perplexed by the behavior of those around him. "As I grow older, I find that the people I know become crazy in one of two ways," he writes: amassing rescue pets in their home, or becoming obsessive about their "disease prevention" miracle diets. He can never seem to anticipate which extreme his friends will gravitate to until it's too late.
He also reveals frustrations about road-raged drivers, quizzical conversations with strangers in public venues, and the loving, convoluted banter shared with his longtime partner Hugh Hamrick.
Elsewhere loom the dark clouds of his family life. Sedaris writes poignantly about his relationship with his conservative father. He also details the life and sad decline of the matriarch of his family, Sharon, saddled with a cancer diagnosis and alcohol consumption. He ponders the unexpected suicide of his baby sister Tiffany just before her 50th birthday, leaving a will behind that forbade any family member from having her body or attending her memorial service.
"Calypso" is a precarious mixture of the bright and the overcast. While many of these 21 entries have appeared elsewhere, Sedaris's genius is worth multiple readings. This dark, delicious, savory food for thought dazzles and delights.