Writer David Rakoff. Photo Don Denton/Random House Canada.
Humourist David Rakoff was born in Montreal and raised in Toronto. He moved to New York in 1982, and has lived mostly in Manhattan ever since. After a decade of unfulfilling work as a book publicist, he was coaxed to begin writing by a good friend, the author and playwright David Sedaris. Rakoff has since become one of North America’s funniest, most gleefully acerbic essayists. He is the author of 2001’s hot-selling Fraud, a former writer-at-large for GQ, a regular contributor to Public Radio International’s This American Life and an occasional actor and director. (His most notable role so far: a modeling agent on a daytime soap; the experience is chronicled in Fraud.) In 2004, Rakoff became a dual citizen of Canada and the United States, prompted by an urgent (albeit futile) desire to vote George W. Bush out of office.
Fraud focused on Rakoff’s life as a gay, Jewish urbanite. “I do not go outdoors,” the book begins. “Not more than I have to. As far as I’m concerned, the whole point of living in New York City is indoors. You want greenery? Order the spinach.” In Don’t Get Too Comfortable, his splendid new collection of essays, he ruminates on flying aboard Hooters Air, foraging for edible plants in Brooklyn, the inherent hypocrisy of homosexual Republicans and other oddities of contemporary Western culture.
Q: In Don’t Get Too Comfortable’s opening essay, “Love It or Leave It,” you write about worrying that an inappropriate answer on your U.S. naturalization application could trigger a wiretap, tax audit or worse. Only a few pages later, though, you call Barbara Bush a “stupid f---ing cow.” Shouldn’t that have been your greater cause for concern?Courtesy Random House Canada.
A: It did cross my mind to worry a little bit, and certainly my father thought that I would be killed by the [U.S.] government. But then Mrs. Bush said her thing [about Hurricane Katrina’s evacuation process working “very well” for the storm’s impoverished victims] at the Astrodome in Houston. Well, she put money in my pocket, didn’t she? She made me look far more prescient than I could ever be on my own.
A: On some level it’s easier. To use the old expression, you’d better laugh, because the only alternative is to cry. Was I feeling super-funny immediately after 9/11? No, but I cracked a few jokes. I won’t lie. The anxious release of humour was sometimes the only recourse we had. These are funny times we live in, and by funny I mean horrible. I read in the Globe & Mail [the other day] that the world is more peaceful now than it has been in the last 12 years. I think the statistic comes as cold comfort to the residents of Darfur, but it’s interesting to hear.
A: It’s been a bee in my bonnet for years and years. When I was in high school or before, I twigged to the fact that when people describe something as having a subtle, nutty flavour, what they literally mean is that it has no flavour. So I thought, “Aha, there’s a naked emperor around here somewhere!” It’s nice to be thought of as having an educated palate; it’s nice to be able to discern subtleties. And some subtleties are discernable, some things do have a subtle, nutty flavour — but it’s the framing of [those subtleties] as moral virtues that freaked me out. I like good food as much as the next person, but it has shifted from being a privilege to being something as necessary to our well-being as medicine. It used to be, “Isn’t it nice for me that I can afford better olive oil.” Now it’s, “You guys, I’m really sorry that I slapped that waitress and that I’m crying and that I told your kids that they’re f---ing a--holes, but I’m really hungry and I can’t eat this.”
A: Did you ever see Minority Report? It’s predicated on a society where fetal, soothsaying creatures who live in a tank of amniotic fluid predict the crimes that society will commit. The creatures only exist in this amniotic underworld. The humour that I was writing for Outside was not dissimilar, in that I could turn around a humour piece for them, but I had literally no idea what they wanted the humour to be about. They would say things like, “Can you write about El Niño?” I would say, “Sure, but I don’t know what El Niño is.” Then a packet of information from Outside’s research department would be FedExed to me. I would read it, then write about El Niño. Then they would say, “We need 750 words on Alberto Tomba.” Again, no idea who the man was. A skier, apparently. A naked, Italian skier who slapped people in public.... It was a strange relationship.
A: I play a rude New York writer who is dismissive to Harper Lee at a party. Or rather the shiny back of my head plays a rude New York writer who is dismissive to Harper Lee at a party.
A: Yes, he’s more like Classy McSophisticate. Classius Sophisticato — he’s more Italian. It’s a real, real stretch. I’m branching out.
A: I won’t lie, on some level, yes, it is an absolute dream come true. But the nice thing about when dreams come true is you realize that reality is more nuanced and more interesting, and sadder and less fun and more beautiful than you could have conceived of it. Do you know what I mean? In many ways, my dream was to become a New Yorker and have interesting friends with terrible problems. That all happened. Writing is difficult, but it’s not mining coal. For that reason alone, one has to be grateful. Gratitude and guilt, they’re very important. That would be a good name for a catering company, or one of those annoying shops in Stratford, Ontario, that sells, you know, soap. Soap, chocolate, potpourri, chimes on the door, and everyone talks in a whisper you can’t even hear. “Hi, welcome to Gratitude & Guilt, how can I help you?”
Matthew McKinnon writes about the arts for CBC.ca.
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