Naked
by David Sedaris
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Book Summary Information
Author: David SedarisEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-06-01
ISBN: 0316777730
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Book Reviews of Naked
Book Review: Naked: A Book Review
Summary: 5 Stars
When I first set out on this project to review an established writer's work, it was difficult deciding which author's work I was going to dissect. After skimming through several novels' introductions, I chose to review Naked written by the overly dramatic and hilarious David Sedaris. Since I had already read some of David's literature, I knew that I would enjoy this eclectic autobiography. The first thing that attracted me to this book was the name itself; Naked. Was David an established nudist whose life, he thought, in itself a good story? Was he revealing how society was impacted by the human body? In this review, I am going to try to decipher why David titled this book Naked. After reading through the collection of essays, I'm first going to break down what Naked initially meant to me. Naked is a collection of essays that describe memorable bits and pieces of the author, David's, life. Although some readers may not enjoy his attention to detail, I found that it was his detail that allowed us, the reader a glimpse into whom David Sedaris was and is. He revealed his inner thoughts in various situations. When he was a child, David had many nervous habits that he would have to carry out to make himself feel comfortable. In the 2nd chapter, A Plague of Tics, David, in great detail, goes through a day in his life including the walk home from school where he finds it necessary, not only to count his foot steps, but to lick, jump over, kick and read various objects on his way home. The way in which he describes these events it is as though there is absolutely nothing wrong with his behavior and that it is completely normal.
His abnormal, deranged family is brought into the novel in the first chapter but we don't really get to know them until the end of the collection of essays. With each "episode" or essay that I read, I got to know David better. While reading through the novel I was waiting for a deciding moment in which the title would clearly have relevance to the sum of the essays. In the final chapter, David decides to go on vacation to a nudist camp. I had thought for sure since this essay was titled Naked that it would have tied all the essays together to make sense of the books title. On a planned vacation from New York City, David rents the front room from a trailer, yes a trailer, and travels by bus, since he can't drive, to a nudist camp. From the moment he arrives, he is unsure of his willingness to be there. Although this chapter was significant, there were many other chapters that I believed held more significance to the collection.
So why was the book titled Naked? Throughout the beginning of the collection of essays, I was very curious of his sexual orientation. As a child, through his descriptions of daily activities, I knew that he was different. He hinted that he was homosexual but it wasn't until the end of the essays that he openly stated that he was attracted to men. As well as David having a gut-wrenching satirical humor, he also possesses a realistic view of the world that he doesn't hold back. Through dialogue with dozens of insignificant figures in the book, I got a real sense of how David viewed the world. It wasn't necessarily the words that he spoke, but it was the thoughts that he had when he spoke to these characters. Allowing the reader in on very memorable thoughts meant revealing himself. I came to the conclusion that this was why the book was titled Naked. It wasn't the fact that David was, for a short week, a nudist. It also wasn't titled Naked because of his views of how the world viewed the human body. It was because of David's revelations. Throughout all his adventures, he had allowed the reader to know his deepest thoughts. When his mother died, when he discovered God, when he traveled across the country and when he realized he was different, he had revealed his true self in his literature. This collection of essays was a release of all his inner thoughts and dialogue. After revealing so much, David truly, must have felt Naked.
Summary of Naked
Welcome to the hilarious, strange, elegiac, outrageous world of David Sedaris. In Naked, Sedaris turns the mania for memoir on its ear, mining the exceedingly rich terrain of his life, his family, and his unique worldview-a sensibility at once take-no-prisoners sharp and deeply charitable. A tart-tongued mother does dead-on imitations of her young son's nervous tics, to the great amusement of his teachers; a stint of Kerouackian wandering is undertaken (of course!) with a quadriplegic companion; a family gathers for a wedding in the face of imminent death. Through it all is Sedaris's unmistakable voice, without doubt one of the freshest in American writing.Hip radio comedy fans and theater folks who belong to the cult of Obie-winning playwright/performer David Sedaris must kill to get this book. These would be fans of the scaldingly snide Sedaris's hilariously described personal misadventures like The Santaland Diaries (a monologue about his work as an elf to a department store Santa) seen off-Broadway in 1997. In a series of similarly textured essays, Sedaris takes us along on his catastrophic detours through a nudist colony, a fruit-packing plant, his own childhood, and a dozen more of the world's little purgatories.
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