Happy-Go-Lucky

Happy-Go-Lucky is a collection of personal essays by humorist and memoirist David Sedaris. The essays span roughly 2012 to 2021, covering the COVID-19 pandemic, the decline and death of Sedaris's father, and observations drawn from his life in the United States, England, and France. Several threads run through the collection: Sedaris's complicated relationship with his father, Lou; his long partnership with Hugh; his bond with his siblings, especially his sister Amy; and his experiences as a touring author navigating a changing America.

The collection opens with "Active Shooter," in which Sedaris and his oldest sister, Lisa, visit a North Carolina firing range on a whim. Lisa proves a natural marksman, while the instructor repeatedly calls Sedaris "Mike." The lighthearted outing prompts darker reflections on mass shootings from Sandy Hook to Parkland and the absurdity of proposed solutions like arming teachers. Sedaris contrasts American gun culture with his life in the UK and closes by recalling childhood atomic-bomb drills during the Cuban missile crisis, when fear felt abstract and a school day's end still brought excitement.

"Father Time" introduces the central narrative of Lou's decline. The night before his ninety-fifth birthday, Lou fell in his kitchen. After small strokes affected his vision and memory, he moved into Springmoor, an assisted living center. Four months passed before Sedaris visited, arriving to find Lou bleeding from his ear after a grandfather clock fell on him. Sedaris acknowledges his guilt at being the last sibling to visit, while Lisa, his brother Paul, and Paul's wife, Kathy, had been devoted caregivers. At the family's beach house on Emerald Isle, North Carolina, called the Sea Section, sea turtles hatched nearby, and Hugh was moved to tears by the last hatchling struggling alone to the ocean. At a family lunch, Lou learned the Turtle Patrol named that hatchling after him and insisted on his own legendary status.

In "Bruised," Sedaris recounts summers at Hugh's farmhouse in Normandy, where he struggled to learn French and felt stripped of his personality. One summer, Olivier, the twelve-year-old grandson of their neighbors, began making deliberate physical contact with Sedaris and entering the house when Hugh was away. Sedaris, whose French was too limited for a delicate conversation, fled each time. He recognized in Olivier the same confused longing he had felt as a gay child but feared the boy might make accusations if confronted. Years later, Sedaris saw Olivier working as a cashier and felt disappointment at the apparent smallness of his life.

"A Speech to the Graduates" presents a commencement address Sedaris delivered at Oberlin College, in which he critiques the common parental advice to find something to fall back on and offers idiosyncratic counsel: Buy quality scented candles, write thank-you letters, and avoid being an asshole.

"Hurricane Season" blends the destruction of the Sea Section by Hurricane Florence in September 2018 with a candid portrait of Sedaris's relationship with Hugh. Hugh was devastated by the loss, while Sedaris initially felt nothing. Sedaris describes Hugh's unpredictable moodiness alongside the beauty Hugh creates in their domestic life. His sister Gretchen joined them at the beach during the rebuilding. The essay closes on the night the hurricane hit, with Sedaris comforting a sobbing Hugh and reflecting that, despite appearances, they sustain each other through genuine crises.

"Highfalutin" celebrates Sedaris's bond with Amy. He recalls their childhood cooking show, their 1990s theatrical collaborations in New York under the name "the Talent Family," and a Greek lunch followed by an afternoon of shopping. Sedaris reflects that his idea of perfect happiness is simply being with her.

In "Unbuttoned," Sedaris flew to Raleigh when Lou's heart began failing. At Springmoor, Lou was skeletal and barely audible. Sedaris could not bring himself to embrace his father and instead made a bitter joke about his inheritance, since Lou had secretly cut him out of his will. Lou asked his children if he was real to them, calling himself a zombie. Then he told Sedaris, "You've accomplished so many fantastic things in your life…you won" (100). Uncertain whether Lou meant he won at life or won the lifelong battle against his father's disapproval, Sedaris resolves to accept the words and put down "this lance I've been hoisting for the past sixty years" (100). Paul, the only sibling to fight the do-not-resuscitate order, called Lou his best friend.

"Themes and Variations" surveys recurring motifs from Sedaris's book tours, including audience jokes, emergency-room stories, and a chain of $50 bills he was asked to pass to strangers. "To Serbia with Love" describes annual December trips with his friend Patsy, a Paris-based tour guide, to Eastern European countries, closing with reflections on Western privilege and the irony that his Greek grandparents' immigration allowed his father to vote for Donald Trump.

"The Vacuum" chronicles the COVID-19 lockdown in New York, where Sedaris proved pathetically bad at hoarding and filled his days vacuuming obsessively and walking deserted streets after midnight. "Pearls" examines living with Hugh full-time during lockdown, including their purchase of an upstairs apartment they call "Luigi's," and Sedaris's admission that his desire to resume touring stems from a craving for attention rather than money.

"Fresh-Caught Haddock" places Sedaris amid the George Floyd protests of 2020. He and Amy joined a march in lower Manhattan, and Sedaris reflects on his own racial assumptions while observing the cultural divide between New York and coastal North Carolina, where Confederate flags signal a different America.

The title essay records what proved to be Sedaris's last visit with his living father. Three days before Lou's ninety-eighth birthday, Lou greeted the family warmly, dressed with a red bandanna. Most strikingly, he admitted he was wrong about Trump. As Sedaris wheeled Lou to dinner, Lou asked him not to leave yet. Lou died a few weeks later. Sedaris reflects that the gentle man he saw may have been there all along, "smothered in layers of rage and impatience that burned away as he blazed into the homestretch" (191).

"A Better Place" is a burst of grief-fueled irreverence directed at funeral clichés. "Lady Marmalade" confronts Lou's pattern of inappropriate sexual behavior toward his daughters and addresses Tiffany, Sedaris's youngest sister, who accused Lou of sexual abuse but died by suicide before the family could resolve the question. What the rest of the siblings normalized as characteristic of their father, Tiffany experienced as criminal. "Smile, Beautiful" addresses Sedaris's lifelong dental phobia and his transformative experience getting new teeth during the pandemic.

"Pussytoes" covers Lou's final days and funeral. After a stroke, Lou died at Springmoor, and the family's grief was muted compared to earlier losses. After the service, Sedaris, Amy, and Gretchen walked through a state park. Amy's phone rang and she reflexively answered as though greeting their father, briefly making Sedaris believe the death was a prank. He reflects on the difference between losing his mother, whom he would have given anything to have back, and losing his father, whose lifetime of criticism left him disfigured "like one of those pollarded plane trees" (238). The essay ends with the siblings orphaned at last.

The final essay, "Lucky-Go-Happy," follows Sedaris back on tour in fall 2021 through a changed America: HELP WANTED signs everywhere, wildly varying mask policies, and TRUMP 2024 signs dotting the Midwest three years before the election. The most lingering image comes at the Springfield, Missouri, airport, where Sedaris found a collection of small personal objects in an unused baggage carousel, a portrait of an unknown young woman he thinks about for months as he moves through a divided, weary country.