240 pages. Doubleday. $12.95.
Reviewed by Patricia R. Payette
11.28.06

As the long-lost Canadian twin of American humorist David Sedaris, Rakoff shares with his sibling a rare comic gift for retelling personal stories in which he is both disaffected observer and hapless participant. In his new book, Don’t Get Too Comfortable—a collection of droll, highly articulate accounts of the author’s misadventures across a range of cultural frontiers—Rakoff shows a fearless talent for pointing out what is absurd and unpredictable about the human condition, including his own. Especially his own. Whether he is recounting the bizarrely impersonal maze of bureaucratic hoops he jumped through to secure American citizenship, or spilling the less-than-juicy details of his stint working as a pool boy for an exclusive Miami hotel, Rakoff deftly mixes his intensely witty, self-deprecating persona with a matter-of-fact reporting style, baring his own soul while unmasking the preoccupations of mainstream Americans who want to endlessly be entertained, pampered, and turned on. “[W]hat is it that matters most in life?” Rakoff asks. “Here’s a hint: it’s a pronoun that can be effectively conveyed without any words at all. Just take your index finger and point it to the center of your chest, an inch and half from your precious, precious heart.”

The essays in Don’t Get Too Comfortable simultaneously celebrate and mock. In “As It Is In Heaven,” Rakoff both demystifies and relishes the comforts of the legendary Concorde by taking part in its final trans-Atlantic flight. He notes that the demise of the Concorde “represents that rarest of occurrences in civilization: a technological step backward. But the Concorde has always been more a triumph of consumption than of science.” Two weeks later, hopping a flight on Hooters Air, our intrepid journalist spots two of his flying companions, a blonde and brunette Hooters Girl, “dressed in body-covering track suits in sherbet-orange viscose. This is their more modest walking-around-the-airport attire. They look like Olympic athletes representing the tackiest country on earth, which I guess they kind of are.” Rakoff is careful to aim his satirical comments not so much at the Girls but at the culture that dreamed them up in the first place. His ultimate target, in other words, is his own readers, cast here as culpable consumers.

Rakoff can’t help being funny, but he is not afraid to tackle messy political topics as well. In “Beat Me, Daddy,” he recounts his investigation into the secret world of the Log Cabin Republicans, the largest organization of gay and lesbian GOP members. As a gay man, Rakoff is mystified as to why the Log Cabin leaders actively support a political party that is “hellbent” on their “eradication” and on “legislating away” their rights. “It seems a misdirected penance, this martyring oneself to a cause when the cause itself is the source of the sufferings. Lovingly polishing the handle of the knife sticking into your side instead of just pulling it out. Surely, I suggest, there is a point at which one’s self-respect has to count for something?” For Rakoff, the situation is a “heartbreaking” instance of “myopia,” and what begins as a playful attempt to understand and even change the mind of the Log Cabiners ends with genuine frustration.

Such moments of unexpected earnestness are at play even in the collection’s most sharply funny essay, an account of traveling to Paris to cover a week of couture fashion shows for a magazine. After experiencing several days in his rarefied surroundings, meeting outré models and eccentric designers (and learning that, in direct contradiction to the famous quote attributed to the Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson, it is “distinctly possible to be both too rich and too thin”), Rakoff has exceeded his tolerance for accented, meaningless conversations about beautiful clothing: “I am oversated with perfection, a deadened, gouty feeling. I want to go home and clean my bathroom, or anybody’s bathroom, for that matter.” If Rakoff’s genius is his ability to plumb the depths of Americans’ foibles and fantasies without taking the entire endeavor too seriously, even he has his limits.

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