February
20
Calypso by David Sedaris
How I wish I was related to David Sedaris. In my imagination, he would inch up to me at family dinners just to hear my latest story and pick me for conspiratorial bitch sessions under the table.
In this book (written in 2018) David Sedaris walks the oh so precious path between laugh out loud humour and melancholy with stories of his five siblings and parents. Not quite a novel and not quite an essay, it’s just a book about family.
There is much I could say about the underlying reflection in Calypso. The way Sedaris opens up about his sister’s suicide, his difficult relationship with father and his mother’s descent into alcoholism – there may even be a tinge of regret. I think the conclusion is that, in families, there are some things you can laugh off, maybe even need to in order to survive, and other things you can’t….this book will leave you pondering.
When I think about David Sedaris and his four sisters, I think about my half Greek husband Jason and his first cousins. The six of them grew up together and their shared stories and jokes (most involving of poo, a stingy, ageing relative, or ideally, both) have been on replay for as long as I can remember. There is occasional embellishment, but most of the shared family material has been doing the rounds since the early 70s.
As David Sedaris would say, I know these stories so well that I could virtually lip sync them, but these nutbags still keel over with laughter as if they are hearing them for the first time. Their affection for one another is so deep and genuine that if Jason was asked to choose between me and his cousins, I am sure he would choose them. To be fair, they are the only ones that still laugh at his jokes and admire his cooking. One year, we were getting into the car as family to go to a cousin’s dinner only to realise that Jason had already left. He just couldn’t wait to be with them.
In my favourite chapter of Calypso, called Sorry, David Sedaris is conflicted about being asked to apologise to his mother-in-law for something he had said. Pretty serious stuff in most families. He sits down alongside one of his sisters to “tap into the comfort and outrage that only family can provide”. But just as he opened his mouth to discuss the incident, his sister said;
“Do you remember my old boyfriend Greg?….he used to drink the liquid out of tuna cans”
Sedaris said “I let go of my anger, all of it, and leaned back on the beach blanket, feeling palpably lighter, giddy almost. ”Oil or water?” I asked.
In my husband’s case, his cousins’ stories (as wonderful as they are) don’t often translate outside of their group and most nights, the dutiful outsiders (we call ourselves The Anglos) watch wistfully or turn to our own material, which generally involves making fun of them. The genius of David Sedaris however, is that he can tell the most personal, juvenile of stories in a wonderfully wise and widely relatable way. Those cousins could learn a lot.
Readhead 