Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff

You know how you meet someone, and you end up thinking he's a jerk after a few minutes of conversation, but he's friends with some of your friends, so you end up hanging out with him again anyway? That's pretty much how my reader/writer relationship has gone with David Rakoff. Most authors don't get a chance to re-engage me after severely disappointing me on the first go-round. (Just ask any number of chick lit and hipster writers.) But Rakoff did--mostly because I felt like I should like him. He's genuinely witty underneath the abrasiveness of Fraud (despite how obnoxious I found a lot of the writing); he's got the NPR hipster pedigree I usually love so well; and he's really entertaining when you see him on The Daily Show and the like. So I decided to pick up Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torments of Low Thread Count, the Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems.

The format is pretty much the same as Fraud's. Even the covers are nearly identical (I guess branding is a First World issue as well). It's another collection of nonfiction essays, most of which were first published elsewhere. But the writing is better, on the whole. Where Rakoff used to be too abrasive and judgmental about his subjects, now he's a little more contemplative, like he's learned more about profiling instead of condemning. And the latter must have been pretty tempting, given that George Bush, Hooters Girls, and Log Cabin Republicans are among the characters here. Rakoff is less likely to go for the instant scoffing payoff than he was before. The dry humor stays, without the shrill need to bond with the reader by saying "Oh my God, will you look at this guy?"

However, there are drawbacks to a deeper approach, in that Rakoff apparently feels it's necessary to end most of the essays on a moralizing note. Sometimes it works (as in a brief contemplation of the wonder of human travel at the end of a piece on contrasting airlines), and sometimes it just doesn't (like when an essay on working at the pool of a posh hotel finishes with a random musing on Floridian socioeconomics). It's like he's trying to give a journalistic overtone to what are very much fluff pieces. It's too bad, because the fluffiness is probably the best part. If you're gonna write about what happens to a person when he goes on a juice fast, great. I'd want to read that. Ditto on what it's like to work undercover as a poolboy. Explore, share, but don't bother pretending you're doing this for society's sake. I like Rakoff's curiosity about random things, and I'm coming around on his voice. I just wish those were the dominant elements here.

The highlights of the book include the aforementioned Log Cabin Republican piece, in which Rakoff tries to look objectively at how fellow gay men can align themselves with "the enemy;" a quasi-scientific profile of the cryogenic preservation movement, and all the related implications of mortality; and a reflection on the bureaucratic process involved in his becoming an American citizen. (Side note: the latter essay has a random appearance by Sarah Vowell as a character. Between this, the peer references in her own books, and Nick Hornby's shout-outs to her in his Believer columns, someone should be tracking this stuff. Clique lit is the new hotness, apparently. Too bad I'm too lazy and easily distracted by other projects to attempt such a chart on my own.)

And now for the usual Bits I Liked:

On a faded NYC billboard for a long-defunct strip club: "Nostalgia has always been a bit of a bunko scam. Authentic charms of its signage notwithstanding, it's worth remembering that those must have been pretty grim circumstances for the young ladies of the Whirly Girly. Unless it's your own heyday as a peepshow dancer you're fondly recalling, it's dangerous to drag a sepia-dipped brush over the sleaze of yesteryear."

On writing: "If seated at the computer, I check my email conservatively 30,000 times a day. When I am writing, I must have a snack, call a friend, or abuse myself every ten minutes. I used to think that this was nothing more than the difference between those things we do for love and those we do for money. But that can't be the whole story. I didn't always write for a living, and even back when it was my most fondly held dream to one day be able to do so, writing was always difficult. Writing is like pulling teeth. From my dick."

On leading the Log Cabin Republicans: "We go out to lunch together at a nearby Mexican restaurant. The only two people in the place on this gray day, we sit underneath strings of chili-pepper lights. It makes for a very sad fiesta. Perhaps abjection is in the air as I can't help wondering why someone would take a blowtorch to such a promising political resume. With the exception of that Jai Rodriguez fellow--the culture expert on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy--Patrick Guerriero might just have the worst gay job in America."