Barrel Fever, by David Sedaris

I am currently reading Barrel Fever by David Sedaris. While I'm usually delighted in Sedaris' whimsical and disturbing (only a true master can get away with this) tales, I find some of the stories in Barrel Fever a bit difficult to endure. The absurd recalling of twenty celebrity names, some living, some not so living, while the narrator fails to reason... at... all... is cute, but not really all that cohesive. Really, it's a dip into the sad pool that is dysfunction.While Sedaris is no stranger to dysfunction, Barrel Fever explores its murky depths in first person point of view, and to the point where the humor fades, leaving the reader gasping for the surface of sanity. Thanks, David, for the tour. But no thanks. I'm still waiting for a Sedaris line to reach out and grab me, as he did in Holidays on Ice with the phrase, "If you stand on the star, you can see Cher."