Sleepwalk with Me: and Other Painfully True Stories by Mike Birbiglia
Mike Birbiglia is a funny guy. I’ve heard him on “This American Life” a couple of times, and he’s a great comedian. He manages to make me laugh without resorting to racism, misogyny, or a surfiet of swear words, unlike many comedians. So when my friend lent me her book club’s selection for last month, “Sleepwalk with Me: and Other Painfully True Stories” I was surprised to hear that the book club didn’t like it.
So I went into this book with guarded expectations. After all, I’d already heard the eponymous story on a podcast and found it both fascinating and hilarious. I also enjoy memoirs, though I’m a little burned out on the “my childhood was worse than your childhood” subgenre.
Here’s the problem. If you went into this book with the idea that you were going to read a book about a sad loser who had a horrible childhood, and if you like that sort of “my childhood was worse than your childhood” subgenre, you might find this okay. You’d balk at the private-school snobbery, maybe (I grew up in the west, so when I hear people get derisive about “public schools” I assume that they have maids and nannies and their own pony and have never stepped foot inside a Wal-Mart, and are therefore not normal Americans.) You’d wonder why he never made anything of himself despite not being beaten regularly, or having a handicap, or growing up poor in Ireland, or whatever, but you might like to hear about someone who obviously thinks he had a worse childhood than you. You might even pity him.
The Mike Birbiglia in this novel is a sad, pathetic nobody who was never liked (and probably still isn’t liked). His dad doesn’t like him, his family kind of wishes he weren’t around, and he hasn’t got any friends. He’s terrible at school, he’s not good at sports either, and women don’t even want to touch him. Mike Birbiglia, author, doesn’t seem like the kind of guy I’d invite out for drinks. I wouldn’t even want to sit next to him on the bus, for fear he would go on about himself.
And that’s the problem. Because when I HEAR Birbiglia on the radio, he sounds like a great guy. He’s funny, confident, and self-deprecating enough that I get the feeling that he’s awesome, but still down-to-earth enough that I”d want my girlfriends to meet him. When he’s speaking (which are often the EXACT SAME WORDS as from his stand-up routine) he sounds great. He’s very funny. The timing is spot-on, the intonation classic. Mike Birbiglia, stand-up comedian, comes off as a great guy.
I can only think that this book is like a photograph of a very charming and attractive person who isn’t photogenic at all. So much of what makes a person pretty is how they move, how they smile, their energy. When you get a static image, it doesn’t always look as good as the person.
The paper version of this book, I’d only recommend to people who adore depressing memoirs. The audiobook version (if there is one, and if it’s read by the author) I’d recommend to almost anyone.
