Book 4: "Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls"

This is what you'll find if you do Google Image search for "diabetic owl." I agree, Mr. Owl...the book wasn't the greatest collection of essays ever compiled.

David Sedaris's Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls: Essays, etc. was rated positively by nearly every review I could find. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+, Amazon.com (and goodreads.com and Barnes & Noble) reviewers are averaging 4/5 stars, while David Carr and Janet Maslin from the The New York Times: Books haven't rated the book but, based on their review, seem to be in the B range. It is because of those solid ratings that I decided to pick it up on my first run through Barnes & Noble a couple of weeks ago. It was fresh out of a Matson shipping container and given top-shelf billing next to And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini (also on my summer book list).  

At first glance, one cannot deny that the book is inviting. The cover art is whimsical, and no doubt the familiarity of the author's name alone carries enough weight for some to splurge on the hardcover version. In the end (halfway through the book, to be more precise), I could not help but regret putting down $18 for material I later found out is mostly recycled, nor could I identify with the person Sedaris portrayed himself to be, that is, shallow, sarcastic, cowardly and at times, mean.

Rather than waste my time flipping through pulling quotes, I'd rather let the reviews listed above show you what to expect:

Thom Geier: Entertainment Weekly

"After two decades of raiding his journals for essay fodder, though, the well of humiliation may be, if not dry, then verging on merely moist. There's a lot more filler here, with pieces underscoring that Sedaris' days as a struggling artist are far behind him: riffs about his vacation homes in France and England and his reluctance to pose for photos on increasingly well-attended book tours."

Janet Maslin: The New York Times

"His best-seller-dom has more to do with his entertaining public persona and better, earlier work than with the wit or subject matter on the page."

"This book’s longer pieces, like one on the elaborate consequences of Mr. Sedaris’s losing his passport, are its draggiest. "

"Why is this book called “Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls”? Not for any good reason. It includes a creepily unfunny piece that links taxidermy with Valentine’s Day, but that doesn’t count for much. All the title is really about is attracting attention. In his workmanlike way, Mr. Sedaris is still pretty good at that."

David Carr: The New York Times

"But as the experiences related in the book become less common — he has lived in rural England, London and France in between perpetual book tours to promote his very popular collections of essays — I found myself listening with less joy and acuity. Not because of the fabulousness of his life — it is and it isn’t depending on his state — but because the emotional resonance of personal autobiography often gives way to social satire on politics, travel and literary folkways."

"I listened most closely when Sedaris was not bringing the funny...the laughs are ones of recognition. He grew up in a way that left marks, and listening to him rip the bandage off an ancient wound is a singular, thrilling experience."

"I am straight and am also hardly impulse averse, yet the disgust with the self’s failure of nerve and that sudden evaporation of possibility that follows rings dead-bang true. We are, he often suggests, perpetual children, stumbling past opportunity and then frantically looking for it elsewhere through the eyes of regret. On another train trip in this essay, this one in the United States after a breakup, he deliberately mistakes proximity for intimacy during a long night of drinking with a man named Johnny."

I tend to agree with the average tone of the critics above. Sedaris threw me off-guard because there is hardly anything relatable in the essays he presented. A few times I felt transported, but I never got any closer than a "close proximity" away from each experience. Perhaps I joined the Sedaris party too late, or maybe never having heard him read aloud live leaves me at a disadvantage, but in any case, I never really connected with him, and there wasn't anything in the material that will bring me back. In other words, 10 years from now, when I rediscover the book crammed in the back of my bookcase, I'll read the title, smell the pages and put it away, probably for a more memorable classic, or at least something consistently entertaining.

Rating: 3/5 stars