Happy Go Lucky by David Sedaris
(Format used for this read: Audiobook)
Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As Happy-Go-Lucky opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes.
But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine.
As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter.
In Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.
I will always and forever be a David Sedaris fan.
I just adore his humor….it’s just the right mix of oddness, sarcasm, pettiness, darkness, and honesty mixed with a dash of heartwarming too.
I will only do his books in audio form, because I just friggin’ LOVE hearing him read all his own words.
He is such a unique and imaginative writer…..he is ALSO a damn amazing oral story teller too.
Plus he just has a fun voice.
Whenever I need to laugh a bit, he’s a go-to for me.
I have read some ugggghhhhhh level books lately and needed a palate cleanser.
David Sedaris was the perfect fix.
Dark sarcasm mixed with some weirdness is one of my love languages, I think.🤣
While I adore his witty insights and stories, I love that he always has some thought provoking shit thrown in too.
He’s so layered 🤣
He’s the BEST.
I don’t have any big deep thoughts to share…just had a great time listening to this one, as I always do.
Love ya, David, you quirky little man.