In today's ADD-addled society, readers often find it excruciating to have to sit through an entire novel. Most people want their books to be like their TV news: quick sound bites of bright images and funny catchphrases that aren't too difficult to digest in one sitting.
Luckily for even the most extreme instant gratification-seekers, David Rakoff has just released his second book, "Don't Get Too Comfortable," a rather slim volume of engaging and quick-moving essays. (Literature purists, don't fret: the fast food size and format of the book are no reflection on the nutritional value of its content.)
It's tempting to compare the author to another famous contemporary David who writes humorous collections of essays, but Rakoff is no Sedaris. While Rakoff's autobiographical first book, "Fraud," skirted the territory of his NPR colleague, "Don't Get Too Comfortable" is more interested in slices of life (albeit a somewhat uncommon life: how many people actually fly Hooters Air?) and American society at large. One thing the two writers do share is their sense of humor, which is, in both cases, smart, subversive and usually surprising.
Rakoff's humor often comes not from the actual situation he is describing, but from his own absurdity. Though each piece is ostensibly about a different specific event or idea, Rakoff allows himself lots of digressions.
In an essay about crafting ("Martha, My Dear"), he takes a break to offer an exultant parenthetical apostrophe to his own beloved crafting supplies: "Glorious, glorious polyurethane! To your gorgeous fumes, a woozy hymn with half the words missing!"
For the most part, Rakoff's pieces are as light and effervescent as a spray of polyurethane: the topics covered in "Don't Get Too Comfortable" include gourmet food trends, a soft-core video shoot, Parisian fashion shows, plastic surgery, and the "Today" show. Each essay mixes varying degrees of mockery (often directed at Rakoff himself) with a sort of humanitarian optimism, a formula that keeps the stories from being either too mean or too frivolous.
"What Is the Sound of One Hand Shopping?," for example, lambastes the posturing of the bourgeoisie who spend money on rare sea salt or order special-delivery ice cubes made from the water of a Scottish river, but it does so with a certain degree of self-implication.
The theme of guilty indulgence continues in the next essay, "Sesi??® ?rivada," in which Rakoff expresses his self-disgust as he allows himself to be waited on hand and foot: "I am suffused with well-being and just as quickly sickened with myself. Mine are the tears of the Walrus, bemoaning the wholesale carnage of his little oyster friends as he scoops another bivalve into his voracious, sucking maw."
The only time Rakoff actually attacks any specific person is in retaliation. "I Can't Get It For You Wholesale" has Rakoff brutally slaying fashion designer Karl Lagerfield, who had asked him, "What can you write that hasn't been written already?" In Rakoff's defense, Lagerfield should have realized by now that insulting the writer taking notes about you and your show is as bad an idea as insulting your waiter.
Although most of the pieces are about Rakoff embarking on quirky mini-adventures, a few are political and even poignant. "Love It or Leave It," for example, has the newly-naturalized Rakoff telling the story of his and his friends' anxiousness on November 2, 2004 as they frantically phoned each other, preparing themselves for a Kerry victory.
Naturally, liberals will find his recount of the night especially bittersweet, but any reader can get a nonpartisan thrill out of the elegance of Rakoff's prose: "We are contacting one another the way my immediate family obsessively did in the final days of my sister's first pregnancy leading up to the birth of my oldest nephew. We are trying to bear witness for one another in these last few moments of the never-to-be-returned-to time of Before."
The sophistication of Rakoff's writing works best when he contrasts his high style with more lowbrow elements. "Don't Get Too Comfortable" is filled to the brim with pop culture references; on a random two-page spread, Rakoff mentions the films "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Reds," the comedian Lenny Bruce, and the novel "Catcher in the Rye."
Even Rakoff can't keep up with his own cleverness; after one particularly exhausting stint in a fashion show audience, he loses all his capacity for aesthetic criticism: "All my fancy education and artfully crafted cant can't help me now. I am feeling linear and literal and must not be mentally taxed with anything more difficult than the sledgehammer subtle symbolism of, say, a butterfly landing on a coffin. Where was I? Oh, that's right: I like pretty things."
Fortunately for the reader, there is no such feeling of artistic oppression after finishing "Don't Get Too Comfortable," thanks to Rakoff's effortless blending of sophisticated style and accessible subject matter. Its essays, while intellectually engaging, never overwhelm the reader who is just looking for a quick diversion.
