When You Are Engulfed in Flames

P: How Does Sedaris' inclusiveness of sometimes unpleasant detail affect you as you read?

R: In response to your last comment, I'm not going to lie, I really don't like it when Sedaris begins to include those sort of crude details to repaint a story of his past. To include a concrete example almost the entire chapter of "The Understudy" was tough for me to read. He described this babysitter Ms. Peacock in a way that just made me want to skip along to the next paragraph. The only problem with that is how his descriptions of her is what makes the chapter what it is. How else could he convey his complete misery in having her as a babysitter? When we are first introduced to her we receive a description of her vaseline colored skin, paired with her yellow hair and "great bare legs, which were dimpled at the inner knee and streaked throughout with angry purple veins". Just previous to this we get the pleasure of learning that she tends to walk around in only a slip. Poor, poor kids. This I suppose s the purpose of this specific chapter is to instill that feeling; however, I can't say I like having that disgusted feeling right before I go to bed, as I mentioned in a previous blog. The worst in this chapter which I have yet to mention ress with the back scratching monkey claw, "Again and again we ran the paw over Ms. Peacock's back, the fingers leaving white trails and sometimes welts." By the third or fourth description of this back scratching, I was ready for the next chapter.