Barrel Fever

Rating:
Summary: If you liked "Naked"...
Review: ...read it again, or buy "Me talk pretty one day", and take a pass on this collection of contrived stories sprinkled with a few good essays.

Rating:
Summary: What's Reality?
Review: David Sedaris' "Barrel Fever" is an odd hybrid of a book: stories together with essays? But a consistent tone and narrative style soon comes across in this slim volume of personal essays and fiction. Sedaris loves to blur the boundary between reality and delusion. His work displays a healthy dose of sarcasm, but the pieces are so slight they mostly fail to engage readers. After all, you can only sympathize so much with a man who rants from the grave and curses childhood friends for the smallest slight. As pure shock value, the stories work. His essays suffer from the same nasty tone. Only "SantaLand Diaries" creates a successful vision of the world. In this last essay, Sedaris relates his experiences working as an elf at Macy's Christmas display. Here, at last, Sedaris' wit combines with brilliant insights into human nature. You'll get the feeling the rest of the book was just an excuse to get to this concluding piece.

Rating:
Summary: It Doesn't Get Any Funnier Than This!
Review: This is the book that put David Sedaris on the map, along with the broadcast of the brilliant, hilarious 'SantaLand Diaries,' the autobiographical retelling of Sedaris' stint as an elf at Macy's that is a cornerstone of this collection of twisted stories. Many more treasures can be found here also. In 'Parade' Sedaris sets the absurd tone with a kiss-and-tell that reveals past relationships with the unlikeliest of lovers...a notorious former heavyweight champion and a Hollywood icon/NRA-spokesman among them. The satirical 'Glen's Homophobia Newsletter, Vol.3, No. 2,' a catty tirade spurred by misdirected affection, unrequited love, and paranoia, is a standout. Another is 'Season's Greeting's...' a brilliant account of the disintegration of a deliciously dysfunctional family upon the arrival of a half-Vietnamese ... child. I could go on and on...
The inability of people to understand each other due to differences in culture, class, or education is a theme that recurs throughout these stories, as well as later stories in 'Naked' and 'Me Talk Pretty One Day'. I highly recommend all of these collections, but be forewarned - they are not for the timid. I have read and reread 'Barrel Fever' many times over the years, and it is still fresh. What really makes this book a must-read is Sedaris' original voice and pitch-perfect delivery. Audio versions of these stories are also worth exploring. ... END

Rating:
Summary: Not for the meek!
Review: Boy, David Sedaris can write! But don't expect an uproarious read. What you'll find here is warped, stinging satire of life's underbelly, sometimes sad, sometimes shocking, sometimes funny. Always true to life though. Sedaris kicks us through life's meanness with his tongue in his cheek.

Rating:
Summary: "Weak Stories" b/w "One Ace Essay"
Review: I'd enjoyed David Sedaris's commentaries ("This American Life") on NPR from time to time, and friends kept telling me I'd like his writing, so I finally checked this slim book out. Belatedly I realized that the bulk (2/3) of it is taken up by 12 short stories and there are only 4 essays. Sad to say, the stories are pretty lacking, each is built around a single conceit which is well worn by the end. All are written from a first-person perspective which at times becomes indistinguishable from story to story. Persistent themes of homosexuality grow tired from repetition as well. Although there are a few bon mots scattered about, the stories' attempt at sardonic, satirical wit fall well short on the whole. For better results, check out Mark Jude Porier's "Naked Pueblo" or Ethan Coen's "Gates of Eden." The first three of Sedaris's essays are pretty basic riffs, entertaining, and well done, but nothing to write home about. However, the last, and longest--"Santaland Diaries"--is a classic, the kind of essay you'll take to the office photocopier to send to friends and family.

Rating:
Summary: "Sorry, man. I don't date other guys" (very loudly)
Review: I don't remember why I ended up buying BARREL FEVER, but it was one of the more fortuitous discoveries I've made in the desolate wasteland of "important" modern American literature. I never got to hear Sedaris on NPR, but judging from these stories, he must have been something. Three stand out: "Season's Greetings...", which takes a sympathetic look at that nearly dead straw man, the American bourgeois family, and gives it a good kick in the head anyway (most people from "middle-class" backgrounds probably knew or grew up with a family like the Dunbars), "Malison," mercilessly skewering the whole pretentious "literary" mindset (thank heaven I wasn't an English major!), and, of course, the crowning masterpiece, "SantaLand Diaries," which stands as one of the major literary monuments to the enslavement of vast swathes of the American populace in the service industries and retail (and kicks the ol' bourgeois family some more). Even though some of the stories were a lot better than others, the humor was consistently and howlingly funny without being pretentious; in fact, I was rather disappointed with NAKED since, while "better," it didn't make me laugh as hard. David Sedaris is one of the finest writers in America today and possibly the funniest.

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious book
Review: This is one of the funniest collection of essays I've ever read. It's sick too! But I laughed so hard, at times I had to put the book down just to catch my breath. You'll love this book.

Rating:
Summary: Rolling Laughter for Even the Most Unrollable.
Review: I don't laugh out loud when I read very often, but this book requires hearty gaufaw. David's outlook on life will have you rolling on the floor in no time. He picks apart the most ordinary and mundane in life, and the result is something anyone can relate to in a most humorous way.

Rating:
Summary: Can I rate it less than one star?
Review: Barrel Fever is a lame attempt at "cutting edge" humor. The collection consists of stories that are mostly one note ideas with little insight or compassion.The writing is sophmoric, as are the attempts at outrageousness which fail to obscure that Barrel Fever is not funny

Rating:
Summary: Funny funny funny
Review: Barrel Fever is a pure delight and one of the few books I read again and again. It's darly humorous and wonderful. If you buy one book this summer, buy this one.