Today I was a chauffeur for my brother. He had his wisdom teeth out. They won't allow you to schedule the surgery unless you have someone around to make sure you don't die and such afterwards. I was that someone. I spent a few hours in the waiting room reading David Sedaris. It was Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim if anyone is curious. There were only a few other people in the waiting room, but they were all doing the same thing. Granted, they used different devices, but they were doing the same thing. Each was checking his/her Facebook. I could see them. One used an iPad. One used another tablet, and the daughter of the iPad user used her iPhone. Part of the reason we like Facebook so much is that it's true. Or at least it's supposed to be. Facebook might as well have "a memoir" embedded in the banner. Although, I think "based on true events" is a more accurate tag.
We were essentially doing the same thing, acting on the same urge. My waiting room companions were seeing if their friends' lives were more interesting and/or worse than their own, and I sought the same in Sedaris. While taking a break from my reading, I perused Wikipedia for some extra information on Sedaris. I'm the worst about this; I waste hours of my life learning my favorite authors' favorite pies. I didn't come across his favorite pie, but I did notice something I've seen before. Sedaris has had some of his essays retroactively labeled as fiction because adequate proof of their veracity was unavailable. Sedaris is beloved. His books are always best sellers, and he is established. He's probably getting off easy, much easier than say, James Frey.
I think I'm one of the few people who read Frey's A Million Little Pieces after it was discovered that his memoir wasn't entirely true (or much at all). I'm a Goodwill fanatic, and after seeing so many copies of his book there so frequently I finally broke down, slid a quarter to the cashier, and read it that day. It really is a fantastic book. I was shocked at how many times I heard, "How can you read that? He's a liar." In my mind, a writer probably should be a liar, and a good one. It didn't bother me at all that the events in A Million Little Pieces didn't happen. Frey just made the mistake of having it published as a memoir. The rest is history: the public outcry, the apology on Oprah, and his disappearance from bestseller lists.
Sedaris gets away with some "embellishing" because his essays are so funny that we assume he's got to be exaggerating at least a little bit. No one's life is that interesting. He's Greek? And gay? And he dropped his gum in someone's lap on an airplane? Hilarious. And it really is. He's like that person on Facebook who inevitably has a funny anecdote to share at the end of each day in the form of a paragraph long status beginning with, "Only me" or "My life, you guys" in a way that's meant to be self deprecating but ends up being more self aggrandizing. But does anyone unfriend that person? Does anyone post a paragraph long status of their own vilifying the story teller as a liar, James Frey style? I don't. I look forward to the status stories.
I was interrupted in the middle of Sedaris's essay about his sister's blue parrot. I know, right? The nurse tells me that my brother is done with his procedure and I can take him home now. As I stood in the doorway of his room the doctor shook my hand and quickly left. The nurse talked about what he could and couldn't do for the next few days. I had already watched the video. I tried to pay attention to what she was saying, but there was really only one thing on my mind. I stared at my brother's puffy cheeks through the harsh fluorescent lighting and thought about taking a picture of him for my Instagram. Fluorescent light isn't very flattering. Which filter would look best for this I wondered.
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