Wednesday, October 21, 2020

Calypso

Calypso by David Sedaris

Calypso is comprised of 21 essays full of comedic charm, disgusting exaggerations, family love, childhood memories, loss, alcoholism, suicide, and musings on mortality.

A recurring theme with Sedaris's essays are stories featuring members of his family. They are a family that plans annual vacations, holidays together, and travel abroad together but also don’t speak for months. 

The running theme through his essays in this collection is the constant call to reconnect and relive special childhood memories. Sedaris writes about childhood vacations to the beach and his father always declaring to buy a beach house promptly followed by all the reasons why he could not buy the beach house. With a constant drive to have the upper hand when it comes to his father, Sedaris purchases a beach house just so he can be the one to make that dream come true for the family.

David Sedaris's North Carolina beach house 
 
The beach house, called the “Sea Section,” provides much of the settings throughout Calypso’s stories. From highly competitive games of Sorry! with his teenage niece to handling the suicide of their youngest sister, Tiffany.

The “Sea Section” is the missing piece the family ultimately relies on to keep them connected. In the book Sedaris notes about the house in his classic style, "it would be every one’s as long as they followed my Draconian rules and never stopped thanking me for it.”

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What’s a favorite childhood memory for you? Do you find yourself trying to recreate those memories for your family or maybe just for yourself?

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