Naked

By David Sedaris

Book Overview

In "Naked," David Sedaris's message--alternately rendered in "Fakespeare, " Italian, Spanish, and pidgin Greek--is the same: pay attention to me.

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316777730
• ISBN13: 9780316777735
• Release Date: June 1998
• Publisher: Little Brown & Company
• Length: 291 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Genious

I am the type of person who is very picky when it comes to books. I can't get into a book or even finish it unless it's very good..But this is the book that got me hooked on David Sedris. I've read all of Sedaris's books, this one is by far the funniest. I remember this book being the first one I have ever read in one sitting, and actually laughed out loud to! The man is just hilarious. Plain and simple..His stories are so different, so bizzare, and just delivered with great wit. This is the kind of humor I wish was more apparent in TV and movies, not that horrible teen movie "look at my gentials" kind of garbage. Get this book!

Funniest memoir I've ever read!

This book is classified as a memoir, and it's the funniest one I've read to date. Growing up Greek in North Carolina couldn't have been easy, but adding to the mix a crazy grandmother and a sibling with a penchant for using towels as toilet paper makes it that much harder (and funnier, to us). David was struck with enthusiastic OCD as a child, only to find ways to "cure" his tics in college. His stories of life after schooling include apple-picking and packing, working with jade (not to mention a crazy, hypocritical Christian), and refinishing woodwork with a Jew-hating Lithuanian and a somewhat confused black guy. He hitchhikes with all levels of human decapitation until a rowdy truck driver combs thicket by the roadside looking for him.Not all of the fifteen stories are side-splitting funny. "I Like Guys" highlights accepting his homosexual feelings, and an undercurrent of seriousness lines the story. "Ashes" tells of his mother's cancer, and a sense of tragedy seems to sober his usually razor-sharp satirical style.The last (and title) story, "Naked", tells of his experience with a nudist colony. It's written in more a journal form (the others are written in a 'flashback' form) and by the end, you feel strange in your own clothing.I definitely plan on recommending this book to my friends. I don't see how you could live your life without picking up a Sedaris book.

Very, very funny

NAKED is--by far--the funniest book I have ever read. Several people suggested that I read it, and I ignored them for a long time: I had a lot of other books I wanted to get to first. I finally read it this weekend. The next thing I knew, I was ordering HOLIDAYS ON ICE and BARREL FEVER.NAKED is a collection of true stories from David Sedaris's life. I only wish my life was half as funny. "Chipped Beef," "Get Your Ya-Ya's Out" and "I Like Guys" are highlights of this collection, but the funniest story is "A Plague of Tics." In it, Sedaris discusses his strange behaviors as a child: licking lightswitches, hitting himself with his shoe. I laughed so hard reading this story that my roommate told me I was going to have to shut up.Give NAKED a shot. If you like it, pick up BARREL FEVER. It isn't as funny, but it's close.