When I purchased this at Beer's Books in Sacramento I had no idea it was Sedaris' debut book, I just knew that he was a hilarious guy and the cover just made me laugh, I loved it and had to buy it.

I sort of went in with high hopes, a few people I know had recently seen him live and said he was great. "Barrel Fever" is a collection of short stories and essays, and for a debut collection it was not bad. None of the stories are bad, but they're not amazingly great either; however, I found the four essays that conclude this book much more engaging than the short stories that take up the majority of the book. This is not to say that the short stories are bad, just that they are more forgettable and don't quite match up to the quality of the essays.

Sedaris often invites us to laugh at ourselves, and he does so in a peculiar way that leaves his audience gasping for breath. I will say, this collection would have received a two star rating if not for 1 story and 1 essay in this collection. The story "Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!" and the essay "SantaLand Diaries" completely save the collection. I found both to be laugh out loud funny and downright crazy.

Throughout the collection Sedaris' characters were quite obnoxious, such as his blatant attempt at formulating a hipster-esque character in "After Malison;" however, I did enjoy that one just for its ridiculousness, it sorta reminded me of Bret Easton Ellis' characters in "Rules of Engagement." But if you're going to give this collection a try, I recommend trudging through the first part. You'll have a moment of giggles when you hit "Season's Greetings..." and if you can get to the last piece in the collection, SantaLand, I promise you will be greatly rewarded. You'll also never look at Macy's around Christmastime the same way again.

Overall, a solid collection of stories, but from what I hear it is his strongest work. Will you laugh while reading it? Why yes you will. Will you remember these stories after checking out some of his other works? Eh, it's not likely, aside from maybe "SantaLand Diaries." On to Me Talk Pretty One Day!

David Sedaris has become one of my favorite writers. He's funny, he's brutally honest, and he looks at life through a unique lens that I've grown to love. But I'll be honest: if this had been the first book by Sedaris that I read, I probably wouldn't have found any of this out because I wouldn't have been tempted to pick up another of his books ever again.

Okay, so it wasn't unreadable. In fact, it was often funny and it did shed a light on the stupidity in society, something that I've come to appreciate in his works. But it was just so...dark. And not in a good way because, believe you me, I like dark. Just not this brand of dark.

I think perhaps that my issue is that I like his essays much more than his short stories. He is a brilliant essayist and that's what I've been used to with the last several books that I've read by him. Barrel Fever is mostly short stories, something that I'm afraid he doesn't excel at. A lot of the stories seemed to be repetitive and many of them were too disturbing to be truly funny.

Not all of them were horrible. The last two stories in the book were incredible. "After Malison," which tells the story of a young woman obsessed with an obscure contemporary author, featured a character with a distinct voice who was so delightfully hipster (before there even were hipsters) that I couldn't help but love it, especially at the end when she gets her comeuppance. The titular story, "Barrel Fever," revolves around the alcoholic son of a racist woman who named him, of all things, Adolph. Yup, as in "Hitler." He's such an awful guy but the story is so funny and it really points out a lot of the insanity present in society. Other than these two, however, I really didn't like any of his short stories.

His essays are a completely different ballgame. The last thirty or so pages in the book are essays and they are definitely the Sedaris that I know and love. One of my favorite quotes in the book comes from the essay entitled "Diary of a Smoker:"

The trouble with aggressive nonsmokers is that they feel they are doing you a favor by not allowing you to smoke. They seem to think that one day you'll look back and thank them for those precious fifteen seconds they just added to your life. What they don't understand is that those are just fifteen more seconds you can spend hating their guts and plotting revenge. (p. 152)

Sedaris is at his best when he's talking about himself. His self-deprecating humor and his hilarious family stories (featuring, among others, his sister, actress Amy Sedaris) are much more impressive than his lack-luster, completely off-color short stories. It's one reason why I'm glad that so far this is the only book I've read by him that isn't completely essays.

Would I recommend this author? In a heartbeat. Go and read him right now. Would I recommend this book? Probably not. I'd say that if you do read it, just skip the first hundred-fifty pages and go straight to the little grey box towards the end that denotes where the short stories stop and the essays begin. Definitely read "SantaLand Diaries" because it's hysterical. There are, however, much better books out there by Sedaris, like Naked and When You Are Engulfed in Flames, both of which I highly recommend.

I give Barrel Fever 3 out of 5 stars but it only gets that many because the essays are great.

A collection of satirical fiction, with some essays. Some of the humour is unpalatable; for instance, any joke which involves a dead baby.

One can see Sedaris at work here, finding his balance as he reaches towards developing the (somewhat fictionalized) personal essays for which he is now famous.

I really, really liked this Sedaris book. I liked that he wrote stories, where he wasn't a character in them. But, I think it made me think too about his later books - how we think of it as David talking about himself and his life. But, now I think I view all his stories as fiction; even if he is in it, he's a fictional character in it.
And not always a likeable one at that. But then, that's half the fun.

Che immane fatica!
Sì alla fine ci sono arrivata: ma che fatica!
Chi ti ha obbligata (potreste chiedermi)?
Un obbligo con me stessa dato che ho accettato di giocare al gioco “adotta un autore”. Guarda che ...fortunella sono che la ruota della fortuna mi fa adottare tale Sedaris mai sentito nominare.
Dato che difficilmente mi tiro indietro (capatosta!!!) .....eccomi, e questo è anche il secondo libro che leggo!
Per tutta la lettura mi sono immaginata una di quelle scene da (tele)film americano dove il protagonista si posiziona davanti ad un pubblico annoiato in un bar di periferia e cerca di "scaldarlo" con battute a raffica. Ridono in due: lui e la moglie che sta in prima fila.
Almeno in "Me parlare bello un giorno" c'era un filo conduttore basato su alcune sue esperienze e sulla sua strampalata famiglia.
Visto il titolo, qui ti aspetti che il tema sia il tabagismo; ridicolizzato, ironizzato come Sedaris sa fare; invece, salta di palo in frasca tra l'altro inventando delle cose assurde che non reggono proprio.
L'idea che mi sono fatta è che dopo il grande successo radiofonico come comico intrattenitore si sia voluto approfittare per far cassa a tutti i costi. Il risultato è qualcosa di veramente forzato!!
Un "No, grazie" ripetuto all'infinito!!!

There are hilarious moments, but there are also some really long and really not funny parts -- the final 2/3 if the book is spotty (a generous assessment) but the first 1/3 is fantastic. I just never seem to enjoy it when Sedaris strays from talking about his family. For whatever reason its rarely beyond mediocre (Santaland Diaries notwithstanding.) Really a 2.5, but when its good its crazy good so I will round up.

I'm actually surprised I read this whole thing. From the opening stories I felt as though this was nothing more than an amateur author testing his skills, attempting to find his voice, struggling to be humorous. On more than one occasion I actually checked the sexual preference of the author for fear that the entire thing was just supposed to be one horrible gay joke, as opposed to the working out of demons that it more likely is. Perhaps the issue is my knowledge of current David Sedaris and his rather clever and almost sometimes bordering on cutesy humor, as opposed to this incredibly dark, poking fun at completely horrible people type of thing.
That being said, I did really enjoy Seasons Greetings, one of the short stories in the collection. It did a lot of the same as the rest of the short stories, but did so in a way that was actually a brilliant look into a specific type of terrible person that really felt as though it were crafting a full picture, as opposed to just showcasing those self-serving folks.

However, the true highlight of this collection, the story that actually put Sedaris on the map, is The SantaLand Diaries. I enjoyed this essay so much that I actually forgot how much I despised the majority of the rest of the book. Simply put, you must read his expose on the life of mall elves. The rest, however, could just be forgotten.

Luckily, SantaLand is what made Sedaris famous and is what obviously shaped his current career more than the rest of this collection, so perhaps this book did serve one good purpose...getting the rest of the stuff out of the way so we could see what Sedaris is really capable of.

Errr, were these stories supposed to be funny? I find them to be absolute rot, completely un-enjoyable to me personally as I just could not relate to any of the characters. I liked the first Sedaris work I read which was ‘Me Talk Pretty One Day’ so I thought that I might like this one but the stories completely threw me off. Understandably, this was his first published work and differed in that they are ‘stories’ which were fiction whilst ‘Me Talk Pretty One Day’ was more of a memoir. In saying the above though, I note the essays were more in line with what I was expected so I did enjoy the last 50 pages or so and found them more humorous than the stories.

After reading some books that had little to no comedic value to them whatsoever, I thought it'd mix it up a bit with a work from a comedian that I found to be funny in the past, David Sedaris. I had first heard his comedy a few years ago when my mom had me listen to the audiobook version of Lets Explore Diabetes With Owls during a long car ride. As Sedaris has had a very interesting and somewhat checkered past, some of the stories he told (the book was a collection of essays) were pretty awkward to hear with your mom right next to you. But nevertheless, I thought his style of writing and the topics he delved into to be hilarious. After being reminded of his work by watching (or hearing?) his sister Amy Sedaris preform on Bojack Horseman, I picked up his seminal work Barrel Fever and the rest is history.

Barrel Fever is a collection of short stories and essays from the mind and life of Mr. David Sedaris; the first, maybe, three-quarters of it being the stories and the rest the essays. It's a bit hard to summarize the book as a whole simply due to the fact that it's multiple stories rather than one, but there are definitely some overarching themes present throughout. His comedic style is essentially a satirical, sometimes absurdist take on some larger than life characters and the ridiculous situations they get themselves in – not even discounting the autobiographical parts. From stories like "Season's Greetings", an increasingly bizarre and hilarious tale of an extremely dysfunctional family told from the context of a Christmas card, to "Don's Story", a fictional transcript of an overtly long and egotistical Academy Award acceptance speech, and to the famed "SantaLand Diaries", a hot take on Sedaris' own time in the hell of a Macy's brand SantaLand working as an 'elf', Barrel Fever certainly never lets up.

I personally loved this book. Thinking back on it, I don't think there was a single story in here that I did not actually laugh out loud at. Sedaris' style and prose is so perfect for the stuff he's creating and writing about, it feels like the characters in the book are actually real. Extremely exaggerated yet no less nutty than the people in everyday life. The satirical take on many of modern culture's own vices and embarrassments are not in any way tired or obnoxious, in fact, they feel fresh and calculated despite the book being over 20 years old at this point. From the first pages to the last, this book was an absolute joy to read.

While I really didn't have any major gripes with this book, one thing I'd have to recommend to Mr. Sedaris is to mix up the order of the stories a bit. While theoretically I could have read them in any order, I feel like the way that they're placed offers some times where the reader needs to adjust either because of a dramatic change of tone or the need to realize that one story is not a continuation of the other. Again, this is barely Sedaris' fault, but it's really the only thing I could think of in terms of critiscm.

I have read Sedaris before and laughed and felt I need some levity and picked this off the shelf. I read more than half the book and not even a chuckle much less a laugh out loud. I may have smiled or smirked at a few of the characters here and there but no laughs. Not what I was looking for and I wasn't enjoying it so I decided to stop reading it.
Now, that's 2 books in a row I have given up on. I'm a little concerned, maybe its me.

David Sedaris is quite a conundrum for me. I think his spoken material is hilarious. He's my favorite contributor on 'This American Life'. That's why it pains me to dislike this collection so much. The characters are generally unlikable and the stories themselves are so dark I found them hard to get through. Would probably work much better as an audio-book if he read the essays. Maybe I couldn't get his "voice" right in my head. DNF (but willing to try it again from Audible...someday).

I hate I do not love this, because I love him. That said. This is some of his earlier short stories and essays. I can completely see how his writing as evolved. I also prefer his semi-biographical stories and this collection did not have very many of those.