BOOKS: Don't Get Too Comfortable, David Rakoff (2005)

Marvelous collection of essays, loosely built around the theme of the foolish luxuries we Americans indulge in. Fashion Week in Paris, $15-a-pound salt, Puppetry of the Penis, and contrasting flights (on the Concorde and Hooters Air) are among Rakoff's topics.

Here's a sample, in which Rakoff finds himself overwhelmed by a seemingly endless series of runway shows:

My shirt front is transparent from the more than half a bottle of water with which I have doused myself and I am feeling incredibly shaky and I no longer have the capacity to articulate anything. I like pretty things, I suppose, and things that make me feel stuff, but if there were a gun at my head at this moment, I couldn't elaborate on that thought. Suddenly it all feels beyond my grasp. My aesthetic comprehension of the entire century -- why the Jasper Johns American-flag painting is so good; why it should trouble me that artists like Damien Hirst don't do the actual physical making of their art, while it doesn't bother me that Frank Gehry isn't laying his own titanium siding; why the directors of the French New Wave spawned generations of cineastes who consider Kiss Me Deadly a masterpiece while I just can't bear that movie -- it's all running through my fingers like sand. All my fancy education and artfully crafted cant can't help me now. I am feeling linear and literal and must not be mentally taxed with anything more difficult than the sledgehammer subtle symbolism of, say, a butterfly landing on a coffin. Where was I? Oh, that's right: I like pretty things. Tell me about the rabbits, George.

The best piece here is a long profile of Patrick Guerriero, head of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay Republican lobbying group. Rakoff is perplexed by the very idea of a gay Republican, comparing it to "the cow helpfully outlining its tastiest cuts on its side with chalk, while happily pouring the A-1 sauce over its own head."

Rakoff's humor is less flashy than that of David Sedaris, with whom he's often compared (40ish gay humorists, both well-known for their appearances on radio's This American Life), and for my money, Rakoff's the better writer; Sedaris may be funnier in short bursts, but I find his humor overly aggressive and wearying after a while. Rakoff's a bit more understated, and the humor never becomes overwhelming. He's a sharp, observant writer, and this is a solid, entertaining collection.