This book kept me from running amok while I was stranded for 3 hours in that massive traffic jam last Friday.
Theft by Finding*, David Sedaris’s diaries from 1977 – 2002, is the funniest book I’ve read in years. Every other page I had to stop and cackle to myself, and then take a picture of a page that made me laugh and send it to a friend. That’s how I survived being stuck in BGC for three hours on Friday the 30th, when the conditions for the perfect traffic jam—Friday, payday, and rain—combined to open a hellmouth where time moved at 1/20th its usual speed.**
Sedaris started keeping a diary in 1977 when he had no direction and no prospects, was dirt poor, took drugs, had sex with strangers, and lived in horrific crime-ridden neighborhoods where non-whites were routinely abused and beaten, women were routinely abused and beaten, and gays were routinely abused and beaten. (Sedaris got extra abuse because he was mistaken for a Jew.) And yet the book is hilarious! The author doesn’t try to be funny, he just recounts his daily humiliations in a deadpan tone that heightens their absurdity. He doesn’t complain about his lot. He doesn’t judge the scum of the earth (I did, by typing this sentence). He is kind to everyone: the mean, scary, ugly, filthy and stupid. We’re all just trapped in this hell, trying to make it out alive.
In the later entries you can see the genesis of his famous essays. However, I am especially fond of the accounts from the bleak years, when he didn’t know that his writing would take him anywhere, and he was just writing because he had nothing else. If you think your life is going absolutely nowhere and you feel like a great big loser, this book will give you perspective.
* Apparently there’s a law in England that says if you pick up something valuable and you don’t report it, you’ve committed theft by finding. It’s the opposite of “Finders, keepers”.
** There were no Grab or Uber cars available, and I could’ve walked home except that there was no sidewalk.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
July 6th, 2017 at 16:11
This got me at, “If you think your life is going absolutely nowhere and you feel like a great big loser, this book will give you perspective.” I think I am supremely depressed.
July 6th, 2017 at 21:35
this is a compliment: when boredom almost succeeds in killing me, i go to this blog and i read the latest entry to wake me up and most likely check out what you just reviewed. additional adrenalin bonus: sitting where my screen is visible to bosses two levels above me and having non-work-related things on my screen haha :)
i will at least try to watch spiderman this weekend.