The Bookworm: 'The Best of Me'

The Best of Me, by David Sedaris. 388 pages. Little, Brown and Company. 2020.

My dad was like the Marine Corp, only instead of tearing you to pieces and then putting you back together, he just did the first part and called it a day. Now it seems cruel, abusive even, but this all happened before the invention of self-esteem, which, frankly, I think is a little overrated. (p. 221)

My mother in law, The Librarian, likes to give each family member books for Christmas. She has given me two books each year since I became part of the family in 2020. Sadly, they have all sat unread on my bookshelf, mostly because I have been too busy to read them or chose to read something else.

Last Christmas she gave me Led Zeppelin: The Biography. Before reading it, I decided I needed to read all the other books she had given me in the order I received them. (I like to earn my dessert and save it for last.) First up was David Sedaris’s The Best of Me, a collection of his “funniest and most memorable work.”

I admit that I was not thrilled about getting this book. I had soured on Sedaris a while ago, mostly because it was sometimes hard to separate the fact from fiction, what he lived and what he made up. (I blame myself for that. I was too dense back then.) I even got rid of all of my Sedaris books during one of my book purges, though I may still have one (I assume it’s Me Talk Pretty One Day, which I got for a class in college). However, I thought it sporting (albeit necessary to earn Led Zeppelin) to give Sedaris another shot and am glad I did.

I loved the stories in this book, especially his coming-of-age tales. I busted out laughing a lot. His writing is insightful, incisive, and hilarious. I could not always tell where the story was going or how all the details would tie together, but I was happy to find it usually worked out in the end. Though it took me forever to finish and I don’t remember all of the stories, those that stood out to me are “The Girl Next Door,” “Nuit of the Living Dead,” “Memory Laps,” “A Guy Walks into a Bar Car,” and “Now We Are Five.” My favorite was “You Can’t Kill the Rooster.”

The delivery and dialog are what got me laughing the most. Those little lines that come at the perfect time, resonate, and hit one in the funny bone. I loved those. Those are the things that Sedaris does so well, and they are evident in almost every one of the stories in this collection.

But are those details accurate? Does he embellish a little in his nonfiction? The veracity of Sedaris’s nonfiction has been called out in the past, and as a lover of literary nonfiction, I understand that not all the details are perfectly accurate since memory is the source. I am sure Sedaris embellishes here and there for comedic effect, but I give him the benefit of the doubt, that what he writes is true. His stories are more engaging and funnier that way.