Book Review: Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls

When I picked up Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls - Essays, Etc., I questioned whether it was a Southern recipes cookbook or a part of a peculiar cross-section of endocrinology and ornithology. Once I saw the name “David Sedaris,” however, I anticipated poignant musings, satirical commentary and great material for forensics tournaments. Needless to say, I purchased the book that day.

The good news? Sedaris’s latest collection met my expectations. The bad news? Sedaris’s latest collection met my expectations, but did not exceed them.

In “Understanding Understanding Owls,” Sedaris writes of his ridiculous collection of owl memorabilia and complains that “this is what happens when you tell people you like something.” The latest collection of Sedaris’s essays is much like the excessive owl memorabilia: it is an entirely useless abundance given to readers because they said they liked Me Talk Pretty One Day.

Still, certain essays resonate with the same humor and poignancy of his earlier essays, such as “SantaLand Diaries” and “Jesus Shaves.” It takes a special author to make me care about colonoscopies, taxidermy and Amtrak, yet Sedaris always manages to seamlessly integrate meaningless everyday occurrences into meaningful truths. “Loggerheads,” the strongest essay in the collection, mingles the absurdity of childhood imagination with the understated emotion of coming of age. My particular favorite is "A Friend in the Ghetto," reminding me of his segments on "This American Life" on NPR. The prose exudes the same incisive voice as do his early essays. The most redeeming quality of his collection is apparent in the audiobook. Sedaris’s reading of his own essays adds humor through careful emphasis on certain words and more exaggerated inflections. Unfortunately, without the assistance of his voice, this humor is often lacking in the static prose.

In his boldest change of pace, David Sedaris included “Etc.” into his latest collection. The “Etc.” refers to fictional monologues written for high schoolers who need material for forensics tournaments, a competition in which students perform monologues in front of a panel of judges. The monologues are told from varied perspectives: a Jesus-obsessed woman; a sixteen-year-old recently returned from the United Kingdom; a man who just murdered his wife. The monologues, however, relied too heavily on cliches and lacked the celebrated nuanced humor of Sedaris’s other essays. Regardless, I admire his willingness to move beyond his typical format and explore a new mode of storytelling, just as he did in Squirrel Meets Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary. 

The greatest achievement and challenge for David Sedaris is that he is very good at what he does. Like King Adidas, the man can turn the mundane into gold. He fails, however, in transcending his own format rather than relying on overwrought satirical tropes. In his essay, “Day In, Day Out,” Sedaris states that the power of his personal writing is that “it not only calls forth the person you used to be but rubs your nose in him, reminding you that not all change is evolutionary.” Unfortunately, that is not only true of him, but also of his latest book.