But not very much.
I seem to have a love-hate relationship with Amy Sedaris.
I first read about her in one of her brother, David's books. He described her wearing a fat suit home for the holidays, so successfully that she horrified their father, who had always been so taken by her beauty. He spent the whole holiday trying to get her to diet. She is a beauty who delights in making herself look repulsive. Not only is she fascinated by physical ugliness, she has invented a boyfriend, Ricky, and made herself up with bruises and black eyes to look like a battered woman.
I find her fascinating. Her portrayal of the over-the-top bizarro Jerri Blank in Strangers with Candy only added to her legend.
So on the one hand, we have an obviously good-looking, intelligent, funny woman with a pet rabbit, neighbor of Sarah Jessica Parker and cupcake franchisee, whose alter-ego is ugly, psychotic or at least unbalanced, and brutish.
Most people have two sides, they just seem a bit more polarized in Ms. Sedaris who seems to careen between extremes approaching those of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
So it was with great anticipation that I ordered I Like You, Hospitality Under the Influence (and sent it to several friends as a Christmas present.) The down side is that the book so gripped me that it has taken me six months to finish it.
The book is a disorganized mess. Reading it is like watching a small child act out. Entertaining for a short while, then pretty boring. The book features a lot of trampy photos of Ms. Sedaris in 1960's hairstyles, posing in pantyhose. The kind with the reinforced crotch and toes, to boot. Others show her looking very wholesome (in 1960's clothing, God knows why). Others before her have invented a different public personna, and so I suspect these are polarized extremes of the real Amy. At least I hope so.
I Like You is a book of mostly cheesy entertainment tips: Making your own invitations and decorations from construction paper, papier mache or bits of cloth and string. Putting out a tip jar (the money jar)when friends come over, and getting them to contribute. Drink and drug tips.
The recipes are the best part. Most sound good, and there are many I'd like to try, so this book will wind up in the cookbook collection. Unfortunately, even this best part is as if she took years of recipe file cards and clippings, dumped them in a pile, and said to her editor "here, just stick them in there." Some measurements are in grams, some in cups and teaspoons. Some sound delicious, others just weird.
After a while, it becomes heavy slogging. Some sections are charming, some are tedious, and they are all thrown together. You have to do the work of mining the gems.
And hardest to forgive for me are the sloppy spelling or grammatical errors. I was pulled up short a few times reading this book by what I can only think of as sloppy editing. One example is "Mix together 1 can of award-winning tuna, drained and rung out,". It happened a number of times as I read the book. I can only cite the last example because it took me so long to read the book that I have forgotten the others.
Maybe all this means I am too anal retentive to appreciate the genius of this book (I felt that might be the case about Jerri Blank as well). If so, too bad, that's just the way I am. In fact, I suspect that Ms. Sedaris is a hilarious person, and I just don't quite get her.
But I'm interested enough that I'll follow her career with bemused fascination.
I like you, Jerri. I mean, Amy.
Maybe she's part of the reason her brother lives in France...
Posted by: LC | June 16, 2007 at 08:03 AM
Nah - David Sedaris lives in Paris because you can smoke everywhere.
Posted by: Spikat | June 21, 2007 at 07:21 PM