Fraud: Essays
by David Rakoff
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Book Summary Information
Author: David RakoffEdition: Paperback
Published: 2002-04-23
ISBN: 0767906314
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Broadway
Book Reviews of Fraud: Essays
Book Review: For real
Summary: 4 Stars
A piercing and amusing volume of essays, Rakoff's collection recounts the wanderings of a radio journalist. Half of these pieces first aired on public radio's This American Life, others were written for magazines. It took some effort to relax into these tales, given my distrust of media stars. A well connected, expatriate Canadian, gay, Jew in the Big Apple seems too predictably a darling of the literary set to warrant my attention without a healthy measure of talent and wit to back it up. For the most part the author pulls that off. From Icelandic elf worship to the US Comedy Arts Festival to Loch Ness or roughing it in suburban New Hampshire, Rakoff's work is self aware, mischievous, unyielding, and funny enough to make simultaneous eating and reading a Heimlich event. His manner feels less affected than Bill Bryson (A WALK IN THE WOODS: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, Bantam Doubleday, 1998), I'M A STRANGER HERE MYSELF, Notes on returning to America after twenty years away, Broadway Books, 1999), who writes in a similar style: an urban fellow somewhat at sea in the wild world, skeptical but friendly, put upon by the coarseness of biota, a little bit above it all.
Summary of Fraud: Essays
Let's get this out of the way: David Rakoff is not David Sedaris. When you hear him being incredibly smart and funny on This American Life, you invariably think, "Oh, it's David Sedaris." But if you listen closely, you can tell the difference. Rakoff, while no less witty or nasal, is a little more disappointed. In his first collection--a series of pieces for public radio and for various magazines--he positively revels in his world-weariness. Whether he's investigating the Loch Ness monster, attending a comedy festival in Aspen, Colorado, visiting a New Age retreat hosted by Steven Seagal, or just, you know, playing Freud in a department-store window at Christmastime, Rakoff tends to get comically depleted. Watching the comic Dan Castellaneta, for example, he writes, "It's a bad sign when I start counting the unused props on stage. Only two wigs, one stool, an easel, and a dropcloth to go. I begin to pray to an unfeeling God to please make Castellaneta multitask." In a piece where he attempts to climb a mountain (well... a very short hill), Rakoff immediately nips any Sierra Club fantasies in the bud: "I do not go outdoors. Not more than I have to. As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of living in New York City is indoors. You want greenery? Order the spinach." But in the end, what makes him such a terrific writer is that he's not only onto everyone else, he's onto himself. No wonder his visit to a kibbutz becomes the occasion for some supremely self-conscious amusement: "I know I sound like the Central Casting New Yorker I've turned myself into with single-minded determination when I say this, but the main problem with working in the fields is that the sun is just always shining." --Claire DedererFrom This American Life alum David Rakoff comes a hilarious collection that single-handedly raises self-deprecation to an art form. Whether impersonating Sigmund Freud in a department store window during the holidays, climbing an icy mountain in cheap loafers, or learning primitive survival skills in the wilds of New Jersey, Rakoff clearly demonstrates how he doesn’t belong–nor does he try to. In his debut collection of essays, Rakoff uses his razor-sharp wit and snarky humor to deliver a barrage of damaging blows that, more often than not, land squarely on his own jaw–hilariously satirizing the writer, not the subject. Joining the wry and the heartfelt, Fraud offers an object lesson in not taking life, or ourselves, too seriously.
Wherever he is, David Rakoff is a fish out of water. Whether impersonating Sigmund Freud in a department store window during the holidays, climbing an icy mountain in cheap loafers, playing an evil modeling agent on a daytime soap opera, or learning primitive survival skills in the wilds of New Jersey, Rakoff doesn't belong. Nor does he try to. Still, he continually finds himself off in the far-flung hinterlands of our culture, notebook or microphone in hand, hoping to conjure that dyed-in-the-wool New York condescension.
And Rakoff tries to be nasty; heaven knows nothing succeeds like the cheap sneer, but he can't quite help noticing that these are actual human beings he's writing about. In his attempts not to pull any punches, the most damaging blows, more often than not, land squarely on his own jaw -- hilariously satirizing the writer, not the subject.
And therein lies David Rakoff's genius and his burgeoning appeal. The wry and the heartfelt join in his prose to resurrect that most neglected of literary virtues: wit.
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