“Am I . . . real to you kids?”
February 27, 2020 6:52 AM Subscribe
Woof. This resonates for me. My father more or less dropped dead one day and pretty soon after that we lost my mother to dementia, so there were no real opportunities for goodbyes or saying any of those things you always think there will be time to say later. It sounds as though Sedaris had a complicated relationship with his father, although probably most of us have complicated relationships with our parents.
posted by slkinsey at 7:21 AM on February 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by slkinsey at 7:21 AM on February 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
Thanks for posting this. I used to read and enjoy a lot of his stuff but the essay he wrote a few years ago about a sister who committed suicide turned me off pretty badly. I'm glad I gave this one a chance.
posted by jquinby at 7:30 AM on February 27, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by jquinby at 7:30 AM on February 27, 2020 [5 favorites]
.
I've thought it before: it must be hard to be a Sedaris. They have each other, but they have a lot else, too.
It really struck me that Hugo, who for whatever reason his father had taken against, was willing to clean the filth out of David's dad's house with his bare hands.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:31 AM on February 27, 2020 [6 favorites]
I've thought it before: it must be hard to be a Sedaris. They have each other, but they have a lot else, too.
It really struck me that Hugo, who for whatever reason his father had taken against, was willing to clean the filth out of David's dad's house with his bare hands.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:31 AM on February 27, 2020 [6 favorites]
Whichever way he intended those two faint words, I will take them, and, in doing so, throw down this lance I’ve been hoisting for the past sixty years. For I am old myself now, and it is so very, very heavy.
I keep waiting for my own father to say similar words but I don't think he ever will, even though he is also at the end of his life. I'd like him to say them so I, too, can throw down the lance. It really is very heavy.
posted by cooker girl at 7:44 AM on February 27, 2020 [15 favorites]
I keep waiting for my own father to say similar words but I don't think he ever will, even though he is also at the end of his life. I'd like him to say them so I, too, can throw down the lance. It really is very heavy.
posted by cooker girl at 7:44 AM on February 27, 2020 [15 favorites]
Sedaris can be a rough read, because he sounds so unfiltered in reporting on how he thinks about things and people, and not in the most flattering way to anybody, but this really struck me. How do we deal with the family members who steadfastly disappoint us at all times, and yet, we need to create closure? Just a punch in the gut to me, whose father died when I was 17, and we never really understood each other at all.
posted by xingcat at 8:26 AM on February 27, 2020 [13 favorites]
posted by xingcat at 8:26 AM on February 27, 2020 [13 favorites]
I keep waiting for my own father to say similar words
See, now, my own parents have already said similar words, quite likely a dozen times by now, but contradict themselves in the same breath, or if I'm really lucky, in the same week. I would be a fool to pay any attention to what they say. Perhaps the gift David Sedaris got is not so much the words themselves but that his dad is on his deathbed as he says them. One can hope that he was sincere.
posted by MiraK at 10:38 AM on February 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
See, now, my own parents have already said similar words, quite likely a dozen times by now, but contradict themselves in the same breath, or if I'm really lucky, in the same week. I would be a fool to pay any attention to what they say. Perhaps the gift David Sedaris got is not so much the words themselves but that his dad is on his deathbed as he says them. One can hope that he was sincere.
posted by MiraK at 10:38 AM on February 27, 2020 [1 favorite]
This is a hard read for me, as my own father is not doing so well. I can really empathize with the idea of knowing someone so completely, and at the same time being almost as completely unable to eulogize them because the tangible life facts are so hard to pinpoint.
That ending, though.
posted by Mchelly at 10:45 AM on February 27, 2020
That ending, though.
posted by Mchelly at 10:45 AM on February 27, 2020
soooooooooo.......i'm not going to read this at work.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 11:35 AM on February 27, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by misanthropicsarah at 11:35 AM on February 27, 2020 [2 favorites]
While the rest of us may mourn our father’s passing, only Paul will truly grieve.
Reading the essay was worth it for that line alone. I think I will return to that thought often when my own father declines, and hopefully I will feel less guilty about not grieving knowing that other people have been in the same situation.
posted by Maarika at 12:00 PM on February 27, 2020 [5 favorites]
Reading the essay was worth it for that line alone. I think I will return to that thought often when my own father declines, and hopefully I will feel less guilty about not grieving knowing that other people have been in the same situation.
posted by Maarika at 12:00 PM on February 27, 2020 [5 favorites]
I've often thought that there's no "winning" in that situation. Not really. What do you win? The past is beyond anyone's power to rewrite. The dead person won't be any more dead, where conditions are the same for all.
posted by praemunire at 1:18 PM on February 27, 2020
posted by praemunire at 1:18 PM on February 27, 2020
Thanks, OP. I got back from four weeks at my dad’s bedside in a nursing home where he is dying more quickly than he was when I saw him six months ago. That’s probably because of the stroke he had in early December. I went around town to tell various people where my dad was and what had happened to him. Trades folk. The woman who runs the soup kitchen. People at the post office. My cranky, pain-in-the-ass dad has lived most of his life outside of my orbit. That was pretty true even before I became an adult.
It was interesting to discover that my dad is cherished by several folks (who are strangers to me). I don’t know if it is despite his quirks or because of them. But I found it heartening that he had created informal but meaningful bonds with other people despite having virtually no friends in the traditional sense of the word. Or, at least, not in the way I have friends. Anyway, it was a somewhat surprising discovery even though I had suspected that might be the case.
I really like the writing of David Sedaris. I would not want to be him and I would not want to live with him and I would not want to be related to him. Because he sounds like a prickly asshole. Also, I already have a full supply of difficult and challenging relatives. Of course they have, in turn, me. So it probably evens out.
posted by Bella Donna at 4:06 PM on February 27, 2020 [6 favorites]
It was interesting to discover that my dad is cherished by several folks (who are strangers to me). I don’t know if it is despite his quirks or because of them. But I found it heartening that he had created informal but meaningful bonds with other people despite having virtually no friends in the traditional sense of the word. Or, at least, not in the way I have friends. Anyway, it was a somewhat surprising discovery even though I had suspected that might be the case.
I really like the writing of David Sedaris. I would not want to be him and I would not want to live with him and I would not want to be related to him. Because he sounds like a prickly asshole. Also, I already have a full supply of difficult and challenging relatives. Of course they have, in turn, me. So it probably evens out.
posted by Bella Donna at 4:06 PM on February 27, 2020 [6 favorites]
David Sedaris is such a beautiful and such a difficult writer. Just as xingcat says, he's so unfiltered. I find myself reading and by turns hooting with laughter and wincing with horror, trying to convince myself that he can't really be that self-centred or vicious in real life. Just because it's so painful to think he might actually do or say or think those things. Or that he might share such personal things about his family members purely for the sake of having a good tale to publish or perform. But who knows. He has an acutely beautiful turn of phrase and swings between bleakness and gut-splitting humour so incredibly deftly. But I'm super-glad I'm not in his family.
Thanks for sharing.
posted by penguin pie at 4:10 PM on February 27, 2020 [4 favorites]
Thanks for sharing.
posted by penguin pie at 4:10 PM on February 27, 2020 [4 favorites]
Well, as usual, he's super blunt...
So is his dad actually dead now? Or what?
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:43 PM on February 27, 2020
So is his dad actually dead now? Or what?
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:43 PM on February 27, 2020
It really struck me that Hugo, who for whatever reason his father had taken against, was willing to clean the filth out of David's dad's house with his bare hands.
It's not super clear in the article, perhaps the New Yorker assumes its readership is well versed in the life of David Sedaris (probably a pretty fair assumption), but Hugh is David's life partner. It's not so much that old man Sedaris has a personal issue with him as he cut David out of the will for being gay but is willing to partially relent for the sorts of complicated reasons that would lead David and Hugh to be there for a dying old homophobe who hates them.
posted by rodlymight at 4:53 PM on February 27, 2020 [9 favorites]
It's not super clear in the article, perhaps the New Yorker assumes its readership is well versed in the life of David Sedaris (probably a pretty fair assumption), but Hugh is David's life partner. It's not so much that old man Sedaris has a personal issue with him as he cut David out of the will for being gay but is willing to partially relent for the sorts of complicated reasons that would lead David and Hugh to be there for a dying old homophobe who hates them.
posted by rodlymight at 4:53 PM on February 27, 2020 [9 favorites]
I'm not sure how much tact one owes an abusive parent, even a dying abusive parent.
posted by praemunire at 7:44 PM on February 27, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 7:44 PM on February 27, 2020 [6 favorites]
The "Perpetual human storm cloud", and "Fox news" bit reminded of my own Dad; and the 'mourn' v. 'grieve' part is an interesting way of differing how a passing affects different people.
Not the best article to read before bedtime.
posted by Afghan Stan at 8:33 PM on February 27, 2020
Not the best article to read before bedtime.
posted by Afghan Stan at 8:33 PM on February 27, 2020
Wow. I assumed the author was cut out of his dad’s will because he was wealthier than the other kids (based on a comment in the story itself). I had no idea he was cut out of the will because he’s gay. Fuck that shit.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:06 AM on February 28, 2020
posted by Bella Donna at 1:06 AM on February 28, 2020
I find it fascinating that at least some of the point of the essay is the idea that his dad expects/expected the people around him to make his life just work without him having to relate to them as real people, but then Sedaris tosses in sentences like "Gretchen served Greek food for lunch" that casually elide the labour that went into creating that meal. He's mad at his dad for being the way he is/was, but he's also habitually that way himself to some degree. Maybe that's one of the comparisons he's trying to draw subtly with the piece, but I think it's also the reason I find it kind of hard to connect with his work emotionally.
posted by terretu at 1:24 AM on February 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by terretu at 1:24 AM on February 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
This feels eerily similar to the semi-Fred Rogers movie Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which I watched last night. Both Rogers & Sedaris are having an open conversation with their audiences about how we navigate life, and in this case, family, being wounded or harmed, infirmity, mortality and death. You can’t equate one with the other, but we don’t all respond to the same music, either.
posted by childofTethys at 9:58 AM on February 28, 2020
posted by childofTethys at 9:58 AM on February 28, 2020
After what he wrote about Tiffany when she died, I decided he was dead to me and never to buy another book. I made this known to my mother, ostensibly to let her know not to get them for me for presents. She now makes sure to bring her copy of each new David Sedaris book with her when she stays at my house and just, kind of, forget to take it home. It's an appropriately Sedarisesque solution to the problem.
Both he and Amy are these fascinating brilliantly mutilated products of deeply cruel and twisted and miserable but also extremely sympathetic parents, and of their brilliant, miserable siblings, all of whom David has all of his publishing life dragged protesting onto the world stage.
He has that story where he tries to teach his sister's parrot to say "forgive me" because he's broken her trust and betrayed her and the rest of the family getting rich telling all their stories to The New Yorker. With that parrot story he tries to make up for all the public displaying of the Sedaris laundry for all time, but he can't even ask for forgiveness himself, tries to shove it off on a bird, and besides, there's no evidence the parrot learns anything, so his sister probably never had an inkling this even happened 'til he gave her the galleys to check.
Furthermore and worst of all, he doesn't quit doing the thing for which he made that halfassed probably mostly invented stab at a bid for forgiveness. He keeps doing it, and then he tops everything that came before with a truly epic hideous crime years later, when in a rage after his sister's suicide, he blazes out her whole life story, all cheap shots, all ill-informed because he elected not to know Tiffany or to question the family pact to scapegoat her. The naked cruelty of it makes you gasp. Redeeming the cruelty is the equally naked dishonesty, which must be evident not just to everybody reading but to himself because he's already written Tiffany, years before. He can't lie--even while trying to--because we already know her from the couple of stories of Tiffany and the Sedaris-ing of Tiffany.
He doesn't forgive himself; he can't make anyone forgive him, no matter how he pesters the parrot, no matter how much trash he picks up along the roadside, no matter how perfectly he obeys the fitbit, because he can't stop himself from savaging his family, and they can't make him stop even by dying. To quote his mother, and Crumpet, "He is playing a dangerous game." David Sedaris can't be forgiven. It's kind of his whole shtick.
He is doomed to spend his life betraying himself and his family while at the same time rendering them all supremely lovable, all essential to our happiness, all Sedarises, including his own awful self, including the sister he renounced, the brittle, stingy father who savaged him and threw him out of the house and broke his mother's heart, and of course and supremely his glorious, terrible, generous, cruel, wonderful mess of a mother. We can't forgive him or any of them. But we are forced to love him and all of them.
posted by Don Pepino at 11:52 AM on February 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
Both he and Amy are these fascinating brilliantly mutilated products of deeply cruel and twisted and miserable but also extremely sympathetic parents, and of their brilliant, miserable siblings, all of whom David has all of his publishing life dragged protesting onto the world stage.
He has that story where he tries to teach his sister's parrot to say "forgive me" because he's broken her trust and betrayed her and the rest of the family getting rich telling all their stories to The New Yorker. With that parrot story he tries to make up for all the public displaying of the Sedaris laundry for all time, but he can't even ask for forgiveness himself, tries to shove it off on a bird, and besides, there's no evidence the parrot learns anything, so his sister probably never had an inkling this even happened 'til he gave her the galleys to check.
Furthermore and worst of all, he doesn't quit doing the thing for which he made that halfassed probably mostly invented stab at a bid for forgiveness. He keeps doing it, and then he tops everything that came before with a truly epic hideous crime years later, when in a rage after his sister's suicide, he blazes out her whole life story, all cheap shots, all ill-informed because he elected not to know Tiffany or to question the family pact to scapegoat her. The naked cruelty of it makes you gasp. Redeeming the cruelty is the equally naked dishonesty, which must be evident not just to everybody reading but to himself because he's already written Tiffany, years before. He can't lie--even while trying to--because we already know her from the couple of stories of Tiffany and the Sedaris-ing of Tiffany.
He doesn't forgive himself; he can't make anyone forgive him, no matter how he pesters the parrot, no matter how much trash he picks up along the roadside, no matter how perfectly he obeys the fitbit, because he can't stop himself from savaging his family, and they can't make him stop even by dying. To quote his mother, and Crumpet, "He is playing a dangerous game." David Sedaris can't be forgiven. It's kind of his whole shtick.
He is doomed to spend his life betraying himself and his family while at the same time rendering them all supremely lovable, all essential to our happiness, all Sedarises, including his own awful self, including the sister he renounced, the brittle, stingy father who savaged him and threw him out of the house and broke his mother's heart, and of course and supremely his glorious, terrible, generous, cruel, wonderful mess of a mother. We can't forgive him or any of them. But we are forced to love him and all of them.
posted by Don Pepino at 11:52 AM on February 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
I take issue to the idea that David Sedaris is essential to my happiness.
posted by chromecow at 6:29 PM on February 28, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by chromecow at 6:29 PM on February 28, 2020 [2 favorites]
(Disclaimer: have seen him perform maybe 5-6 times or so and have had extremely brief and awkward conversations with him at book signings.)
I think Sedaris just has to spill all the tea, brutally so, and couldn't stop even if he wanted to. Which I mostly assume he doesn't want to. It's the dude's dream to essentially get paid to be himself and live life as he freaking wants to. He gets paid millions so he can go pick up trash all day in Europe and buy ridiculously expensive clothing if he feels like it instead of cleaning houses. (Hell, I want that life except I'm female and god knows I could never get away with it, right?) And we all go along with supporting that by reading his stuff. Which I generally continue to find interesting even if I don't think he's the most pleasant dude ever and certainly the most awkward conversationalist I've ever dealt with. (You NEVER know where a 2 minute autograph chat is going with him. NEVER.)
Also, if you are a born performer/attention whore sort of personality, and your best skills involve talking about your real life instead of trying to be fictional, everything around you is copy. He also doesn't have much in the way of a sensitivity chip as is (may be a family trait in some respects). I really don't think he could ever stop writing just to protect the delicate feelings of his family members. His diary writing alone is compulsive. And if you live your life that openly, at least in books every few years (imagine if the guy was pimping himself online, y'all, and you should probably be happy he isn't really), I don't know how well he could hide all of everyone else's shit when he feels compelled to blab. To some degree it's probably easier to be all ,"who cares? I'm gonna do what I want." Also, life can be an addicting soap opera.
Plus, well, he didn't get Tiffany, none of them ever did or could, but clearly they were bothered by her, if not as much as she was by them.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:17 AM on March 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
I think Sedaris just has to spill all the tea, brutally so, and couldn't stop even if he wanted to. Which I mostly assume he doesn't want to. It's the dude's dream to essentially get paid to be himself and live life as he freaking wants to. He gets paid millions so he can go pick up trash all day in Europe and buy ridiculously expensive clothing if he feels like it instead of cleaning houses. (Hell, I want that life except I'm female and god knows I could never get away with it, right?) And we all go along with supporting that by reading his stuff. Which I generally continue to find interesting even if I don't think he's the most pleasant dude ever and certainly the most awkward conversationalist I've ever dealt with. (You NEVER know where a 2 minute autograph chat is going with him. NEVER.)
Also, if you are a born performer/attention whore sort of personality, and your best skills involve talking about your real life instead of trying to be fictional, everything around you is copy. He also doesn't have much in the way of a sensitivity chip as is (may be a family trait in some respects). I really don't think he could ever stop writing just to protect the delicate feelings of his family members. His diary writing alone is compulsive. And if you live your life that openly, at least in books every few years (imagine if the guy was pimping himself online, y'all, and you should probably be happy he isn't really), I don't know how well he could hide all of everyone else's shit when he feels compelled to blab. To some degree it's probably easier to be all ,"who cares? I'm gonna do what I want." Also, life can be an addicting soap opera.
Plus, well, he didn't get Tiffany, none of them ever did or could, but clearly they were bothered by her, if not as much as she was by them.
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:17 AM on March 3, 2020 [1 favorite]
I am as baffled today by the rage about the Tiffany piece as I was when we went around and around about it at publication.
I was spared a “complicated” relationship with my father because he died (cancer) when I was 16. I have no doubt he’d be a raging frothing Fox-viewing Trumper now, given who he was in 1986. I still find this piece beautiful and remarkable even though the idea of that kind of closure - or even an adult relationship with a father - is as alien to me as the far side of the moon.
posted by uberchet at 7:12 PM on March 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
I was spared a “complicated” relationship with my father because he died (cancer) when I was 16. I have no doubt he’d be a raging frothing Fox-viewing Trumper now, given who he was in 1986. I still find this piece beautiful and remarkable even though the idea of that kind of closure - or even an adult relationship with a father - is as alien to me as the far side of the moon.
posted by uberchet at 7:12 PM on March 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
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posted by rory at 7:20 AM on February 27, 2020 [6 favorites]