She Treads Softly: Happy-Go-Lucky

Saturday, September 28, 2024

Happy-Go-Lucky

Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris
5/31/22; 273 pages
Little, Brown and Company

Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris is a highly recommended collection of his essays on a wide range of subjects. The subject matters covered lean more to deeper, serious topics, including his father's death, with a few lighter musings included, like buying gummy worms to feed to ants. Everything still has Sedaris's unique irreverent take on it.

After reading and enjoying almost everything Sedaris has written for years, in this outing he is, perhaps, showing his age. I was expecting the collection to leave me laughing and guffawing out loud throughout the collection and then spend days quoting various parts to everyone I see. Instead these stories are uneven. There are several quotable comments and laughs along the way, but not as many as I was expecting. Perhaps it's due to the essays stepping into the whole Covid lockdown.

Long time fans will definitely want to read Happy-Go-Lucky and will grant Sedaris a measure of grace for the inconsistent set. Those new to him will want to start with his earlier work.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.