It's unfortunate that my first impulse, one common to many readers, is to compare David Rakoff to David Sedaris. Because compared to Sedaris's winning alchemy of wit and absurdity, Rakoff's stories at first seem a little wan. To the hearty comedy that is "Me Talk Pretty One Day," "Fraud" might be a bitter, hemophiliac sibling. But I think I might prefer Rakoff for exactly this reason. Rakoff is less interested in mining a situation for its inherent inanity than he is in investigating his own cynical reactions to those situations. Where Sedaris is brightly, eagerly funny, and forthrightly sets out to endear himself to his readers, Rakoff is caustic and dark. His jokes don't have punchlines, except where, through a combination of pomposity and self-flagellation, he is himself the punchline.One of many gems: "The average fertile thirty-five-year-old man has many million sperm, a few million of which are motile enough to knock someone up. When I get my results, I find that I have ten. Not ten million: ten. Three are dead in the water, and the other seven are technically motile but given a grade very close to dead... I come up with the idea of naming them. For all the male-of-the-species reproductive good they'll do me, I consider calling them all Janet. Then I settle on Radcliffe, Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Vassar."Not to be too distracted by the comparison between Sedaris and Rakoff, I do think it's worth noting that Rakoff's essays have a fuller roundness. Whereas Sedaris's stories ramble a little like an anecdote delivered to a friend, Rakoff's stories are tighter, each finding by the conclusion the thematic thread of its introduction. Of course, there's much more to them as well. There is greater loneliness in these essays. Epiphanic moments illuminate the most alienating situations. One such moment comes as the author returns from a lonesome trip to Scotland over Passover: "I retire to the dining car. I sit, smoking and drinking a stunningly expensive beer across from a man who tucks in to his plate of haggis and peas. I smile at him in greeting. He does not know it, but this is our silent seder for two."
I have wanted to read another David Rakoff since last Hannukkah's present of Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish (ok I had to look up the title on that one). This book of essays is insightful, witty, hypercritical, and hilarious. Unlike David Sedaris', this collection read like the Greatest Hits of the long career of a human interest magazine writer. Because of that there was almost nothing memoir-like about it; instead the essays focused on these assignment-like pieces on the various bothersome people he encounters, I loved the travelogue style in the stories about Icelandic elf believers and Scottish Nessie believers. I LOVED his skewering of the New Age retreat, Omega, and all the bullshit spewed about with these aging neo hippies. The last story of the bunch, about revisiting his frozen sperm many years after the fact due to a quarter-life bout with Hodgkins lymphoma and sperm-killing chemotherapy, was just gut-wrenching, given the fact that David Rakoff died of cancer a few years ago. That story was sad and cathartic enough without that context, made doubly so by the knowledge of what happened to him. This guy had such a great wit! I kept marveling at his turns of phrase, each one more surprising than the last. What a great writer, it's so sad that he died so young.
What do You think about Fraud: Essays (2002)?
I really wanted to like this book. Honestly, I really did. I love Rakoff's work on NPR's This American Llife, so I was really surprised as to how unlikeable this book was. At this point, the author had as of yet to cement his persona as a loveable curmudgeon, and instead comes off as cranky and self righteous. He also seems to be pre-occupied with the task of impressing the audience with his vast vocabulary, instead of drawing the reader into his work. Long story short, the subtext of this book is that the author is smarter and more cultured than you are. Skip this one and read his later works instead.
—Melissa
Very smart and very funny. I listened to this in my car, and I found myself wishing I could stop and somehow 'highlight' numerous passages. He is a delightful writer with a marvelous command of language. I think I will buy a hard-copy for the simple pleasure of defacing it with dog-earred pages and highlights of its many savory phrases. I owe a debt of gratitude to the This American Life podcast for introducing me to Rakoff. If you like David Sedaris or This American Life - you will almost certainly relish Rakoff.
—Paula
I think I wanted to say something about how reading David Rakoff's work expands my brain and my emotions, but after finishing the last essay in which he talks about searching for 3 sperm samples he gave before going through the chemotherapy in 1987 that would eventually lead to the cancer that killed him just a few days ago...I find myself expanded by the experience of him and his writing, but at a loss at the blindness we each suffer from in our lives. Of course, Rakoff couldn't have known that his cure would lead to the more recent sickness that would in his death, and there's this desire to step back and be somewhat amazed and somewhat afraid.In trying to get people - friends - to read or listen to his work - I can't help but to read off paragraphs to anyone willing to listen - I've gotten complaints about his pessimism - a pessimism that I find comforting to the point that I don't see it as pessimism but rather a realistic look at life. Well, maybe not life, but people, and not in a really negative way: people aren't necessarily all bad, but bumbling and sometimes stupid and too eager to take the easy route. And since being introduced to Rakoff, I see, even if I'm mis-seeing, his humor as less of a bitterness but just a dry, Bob Newhart-esque laughing at the state of things. With a desire for things to be better or at least different.But still everything I wanted to say was swept up in the chill of the last essay.
—J.P.
