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Our first exposure to David Rakoff was not that long ago when he was a guest on The Daily Show, being interviewed by Jon Stewart and promoting his latest book, which Fraud is not. Rakoff was so funny and endearing that we knew we needed to seek out his books right away, and, when we found this, his 2001 debut, at a used book store (our lifestyle not being of the "rush right out and buy the latest new thing" class), all the jacket blurbs from McSweeney's/This American Life heavy-hitters didn't hurt either.
Superficially, Rakoff is something like a younger, slightly hipper David Sedaris: a writer of autobiographical essays, out, sardonically funny. He even follows in Sedaris's elfin footsteps as a New York City retail Christmas performer, documenting his experience as a living "Christmas Freud" in a Barney's window display. As could be inferred from the difference in their Christmas roles, Rakoff is a bit less populist than Sedaris and swings a little more toward the intellectual side, sometimes a bit overly so, making references that let people that get them feel smart (and the rest of us not as much). Then again, Rakoff is equally comfortable with the lowbrow, amusingly detailing his brief career as a soap opera actor (he still acts, incidentally, with a one-line, blink-and-you-miss-it role in this year's Capote).
His backward-looking material occasionally comes off as whining—yes, yes, you had a cruddy, soul-crushing job; who hasn't? He's much better when he turns his gimlet eye away from his own navel and casts it outwardly, though really he makes no effort to separate himself from his subject matter. He reports on lonely travel experiences to far-flung places like Iceland, Loch Ness, Tokyo, and New Hampshire, and reverses the stranger-in-a-strange-land equation by tailing a group of young Austrians recruited to teach in New York City public schools. He's best when he forces himself out of his own self-styled city-slicker box to attend a workshop on wilderness survival, or a New Age retreat where the star attraction is Steven Seagal. Though his view on these events is that of an outsider and is certainly and justifiably jaundiced, he also finds surprising value and meaning in them. The old saw "scratch a cynic and you'll find an idealist" certainly applies here; just below Rakoff's sardonic detachment lies an obvious yearning and a search for a deeper understanding of and connection with life and the world, something which I and many others of my approximate age can relate to. I'm certainly not trying to call Rakoff "voice of a generation" or anything like that, but his writing does resonate, and despite its faults, it's never less than engaging. (mike.11.05)
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