Naked
David Sedaris · 1997
Sedaris' second major collection, darker than *Me Talk Pretty*, covering his hitchhiking years, a nudist colony, and working the apple harvest. The humor essay as survival mechanism.
The case against
Sedaris exaggerates freely; these essays live closer to fiction than the nonfiction label admits, and once you notice the shaping, the true-story frisson leaks out. A formula emerges by mid-book too: deadpan setup, grotesque stranger, mortifying reveal. The cruelty toward the afflicted and the odd reads differently once you have been somebody's grotesque stranger yourself.
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