balding angrily

David Rakoff is a frequent contributor to This American Life. I read Don’t Get Too Comfortable a couple of months ago, and my reaction to it was mixed. I love how he puts together a sentence. If ever I can put together a sentence half as well as he can, I will be happy. The downside is that sometimes his bitterness stops being funny and starts getting unpleasant. This may be his intention or it may not be. He is like I am a card-carrying liberal, and God bless him for it. However, his rants are sometimes too vehement for even my tastes. Because I want the last sentence of this mini-review to be a positive one, this book had me in stitches more than once.

I wanted to share the best sentence in the whole book, and possibly the best sentence I’ve ever read in my life. In this excerpt David is covering the couture collections in Paris. I’m not sure if it is the fashion week, and I’m too lazy to re-read the whole chapter to find out. Just assume it is.

All of the designers I have met up to this point have been very nice, although upon being introduced to Karl Lagerfeld, he looks me up and down and dismisses me with the not super-kind, “What can you write that hasn’t been written already?”

He’s absolutely right, I have no idea. I can but try. The only thing I can come up with at that moment is that Lagerfeld’s powdered white ponytail has dusted the shoulders of his suit with what looks like dandruff but isn’t.

And here it is.

Also, not yet having undergone his alarming weight loss, and seated on a tiny velvet chair, with his large doughy rump dominating the miniature piece of furniture like a loose, flabby, ass-flavored muffin overrisen from its pan, he resembles a Daumier caricature of some corpulent, inhumane oligarch drawn sitting on a commode, stuffing his greedy throat with the corpses of dead children, while from his other end he shits out huge, malodorous piles of tainted money. How’s that for new and groundbreaking, Mr. L?

The price I paid for the book was worth it just for being able to read that sentence. If it inspires you to buy the book, please do. My partner has another couple of favorite phrases or sentences, but this is mine.