Translucent Humor

 David Sedaris takes a deliberate approach in the first half of The Best of Me. In placing “Glen’s Homophobia Newsletter Vol. 3 No. 2” as the first story after the Introduction, Sedaris brings the reader into his world of stories that he foreshadowed in the Introduction. In the Introduction he writes, “The pieces in this book – both fiction and nonfiction – are the sort I hoped to produce back when I first started writing, at the age of twenty”  (6). Furthermore, he also points out that it’s impossible for everyone to like his work, so that forces the reader into a state of accountability if they themselves do not like his work or approach. So, the style and humor of the first story sets the tone for what follows.  

The chapters increasingly become more cruel. For example, in “The Incomplete Quad” Sedaris describes living with students with disabilities because Kent State would pay for his room and board in return. There are moments in this chapter that feel uncomfortable or even offensive, which mostly stems from Sedaris’s own identity of being a person without a disability. However, it seems clear that Sedaris’s intentions are not cruel but rather he uses this sardonic type of humor to introduce the reader to his writing. In the chapter called “Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol” Sedaris takes the position of critically judging children starring in school Christmas productions. He writes, “In the role of Mary, six-year-old Sharron Burke just barely manages to pass herself off as a virgin” (20). Obviously, this is a specific humor that Sedaris wants the reader to be familiar with before he gets into more “real” or translucent stories that come later on.  

In later chapters, Sedaris writes about his family. For example, in “Repeat After Me” Sedaris stays at his sister Lisa’s house. Personally, this was my favorite chapter because I like how observant Sedaris is of other people, specifically of his family dynamics. He describes Lisa’s habits, behaviors, and lifestyle in such a way that makes their relationship rich and relatable. He is able to balance the humor of her parrot and her paranoia surrounding tragic accidents with the seriousness of their lives. In the end of the chapter he writes, “I’d worried that, in making the movie, the director might get me and my family wrong, but now a worse thought occurred to me: What if he got us right?” (126) This question that Sedaris poses relates to the idea of translucent laughter/ humor that we talked about in class. It seems that he attempts to use it in his writing and was wary of giving someone else the autonomy over this translucence.