David Sedaris. Holidays on Ice (1997)

     David Sedaris. Holidays on Ice (1997) Occasional pieces by a satirist who at his best rivals Swift, but too often is merely bad tempered. All these pieces deal with Christmas. “Santaland Diaries reports on Sedaris’s stint as a department store elf; his observations on the tyranny of sentimental expectations are astute and hilarious. “Based on a True Story” satirises the contemptuous and self-deluding attitudes of the self-styled creative people who want to make money with movies and TV shows supposedly about actual events. It uses Swift’s technique of impersonation of the satiric target, and succeeds as Swift’s “Modest Proposal” does: it makes us squirm as we half-recognise attitudes in ourselves uncomfortably close to those attacked. Sedaris has a reputation as a humorist, but humour is at most a side effect of his true talent, that of clear-eyed observation of the follies and vices that beset us all. ***