A Carnival of Snackery Chapter 17: 2018 – Summary and Analysis

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The 2018 diary entries open with Sedaris feeling adrift on New Year’s Eve while his partner Hugh recovers from the flu. Sedaris answers fan mail, encountering both heartwarming praise and a scathing complaint about his show. Throughout the year, he travels extensively—Seattle, Perth, Sydney, Tokyo, Oslo, and elsewhere—collecting odd encounters: a racist limo driver, a woman whose pug ate its own eyeball, a boy who calls him “Stuart Little.” Family concerns dominate: his father Lou falls, fractures ribs, and later is hospitalized with a urinary tract infection and confusion. Sedaris admits feeling envious of siblings who witness these moments. He and Hugh discuss past sexual assaults, revealing Sedaris’s history of being raped three times. Medical anxiety escalates when a urologist finds his prostate “harder than it should be”; scans eventually rule out prostate cancer, though blood in urine requires further tests (a cystoscopy). The year ends with Sedaris awaiting a camera “shoved up his dick,” trying to stay lighthearted. Themes of mortality, family caregiving, and absurdity run through these entries.

Key Events

January 1: Sedaris begins the year alone; Hugh bedridden with flu; Sedaris finishes answering fan mail, including a sharp complaint from a three-named woman.
January 11–12: In Seattle with Dawn; learns Dad fell and fractured ribs.
January 16–27: Book signings in Perth, Sydney; encounters a woman whose father with dementia called a five-year-old girl a “little bitch”; a man whose dad threatened to rip his arm off; trip to Tokyo with Hugh and Amy.
February 3: In Osaka, Hugh misunderstands Sedaris’s comment about a white shirt being “too white,” thinking he meant it was too small.
March 21: Over dinner, Ingrid describes a 1980s office where men photographed their genitals on a Xerox machine.
April 6: In New York, a racist limo driver rants about Muslims and Black people; Sedaris tries to change the subject by asking about birds.
April 8: Dad found on the floor, soiled and disoriented; hospitalized with a UTI; Sedaris envies siblings who are present.
May 15: A mother asks Sedaris to inscribe a book so her horrible daughter will feel guilty after she dies; Sedaris instead writes a fictional infant adoption story.
May 20: On a London bus, a young man in sweats threatens an older man for accidentally queue-jumping; later Sedaris mistakes a priest’s uniform.
June 20: In Albuquerque, a woman tells Sedaris a pug ate its own eyeball; a psychiatrist recounts a prisoner who gouged out his eyes with a spoon.
July 12: In Cambridge, a Turkish woman offers a graphic insult involving planting a fir tree in Sedaris’s mother.
July 18: In Newcastle, Sedaris watches a seagull kill and decapitate a pigeon.
July 28: On the Eurostar, Sedaris confronts a woman applying nail polish; later a grandmother admits she might do her toenails on a train.
July 29: Sedaris discovers a subconjunctival hemorrhage; brushes teeth with Hugh’s foot cream.
September 19: A ten-year-old boy in Tesco calls Sedaris a wanker and “Stuart Little”; Sedaris reports him to the cashier.
October 22: Hugh and Sedaris reveal they were both raped in the past; Sedaris reflects on gay rape and not reporting it.
November 6: Election Day in the U.S.; Sedaris worries about Trump gloating; Amy is stung by a wasp in Tokyo; Sedaris prioritizes shopping over her safety.
November 12: Sedaris loses his Apple Watch at Heathrow; airline staff are unhelpful; he blames British bureaucracy.
December 6–19: Sedaris self-treats a UTI; sees urologist Dr. O., who performs a digital rectal exam and orders scans; Sedaris fears cancer.
December 22: Amy arrives in London; Sedaris tells her about the anal probe; she suggests an inflatable doughnut.
December 28: Dr. O. confirms no prostate cancer; but blood in urine requires a cystoscopy; Sedaris dreads a camera up his urethra.

Character Development

David Sedaris: Grows increasingly aware of his own mortality and aging body. His envy of siblings during Dad’s hospitalization reveals a selfish but honest side. He confronts past sexual trauma for the first time with Hugh. His medical anxiety shows vulnerability beneath his ironic humor.
Hugh: Remains a stabilizing presence, but is deeply affected by Sedaris’s health scare. He shares his own rape story, deepening their intimacy.
Amy: Provides comic relief in Tokyo and London, cutting through Sedaris’s worry with sharp wit. She is quick, funny, and unafraid to mock Sedaris’s vanity.
Dad (Lou): Declining physically and mentally—falls, UTI, confusion. Represents the difficult reality of aging parents.
Dawn: Functions as a shopping conscience; her gluten allergy leads to a frustrating restaurant experience.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

Mortality and Bodily Decay: The chapter is saturated with references to aging, illness, and injury: Dad’s falls, Sedaris’s bleeding eye, the prostate exam, the pug’s eyeball, the prisoner who eats his own eyes. The body is portrayed as fragile and absurd.
Absurdist Humor as a Shield: Sedaris uses jokes to defuse fear—joking about the “worst homosexual” during the prostate exam, or asking if cloudy urine “looks like cancer.” Humor allows him to process trauma.
Family Caregiving and Guilt: Sedaris’s envy of siblings who witness Dad’s decline reflects his own guilt for being absent. His brother Bob and sister Lisa do the heavy lifting.
Travel as a Mirror of Society: Sedaris observes national stereotypes—British queue etiquette, Japanese formality, Norwegian weekend mess. His encounters reveal both cultural quirks and ugly biases (racist driver, angry bus passenger).
The Watch as Symbol: The lost Apple Watch represents Sedaris’s attachment to material objects and his frustration with British bureaucracy. Its loss triggers disproportionate anger, masking deeper anxieties about control and time.

Why This Chapter Matters

Chapter 17 marks Sedaris’s most explicit engagement with his own mortality. Unlike earlier diaries that treat aging as a source of comedy, here the jokes feel strained against real dread—the prostate scare, his father’s decline, the admission of past rapes. The chapter also shows Sedaris moving toward greater honesty with Hugh about trauma, strengthening their bond. The recurring motif of bodily violation (prostate exam, cystoscopy) echoes the rapes he describes, suggesting that medical procedures reawaken old wounds. For the first time, Sedaris allows himself to be scared, and the humor feels more like a survival mechanism than a performance.

Study Questions

Why does Sedaris envy his siblings when they find their father on the floor? What does this reveal about his character?
Answer: Sedaris admits he is jealous because they are “observing, they’re having conversations in hospital rooms, they’re seeing Dad as they’ve never seen him before.” This reveals his writerly impulse to turn even family crises into material, and his guilt at not being present. It also shows his struggle to balance being a son with being an observer.
How does Sedaris use humor to cope with the prostate cancer scare? Give two examples.
Answer: He remarks to the urologist, “I really am the worst homosexual in the world,” after the rectal exam. Later, when told he needs a cystoscopy, he says, “You’ve got to be kidding me…what holes might he violate next? My ears? My nose?” The humor distances him from his fear while acknowledging the indignity.
What does the encounter with the racist limo driver (April 6) say about Sedaris’s response to bigotry?
Answer: Sedaris does not confront the driver directly but changes the subject to birds—a weak, evasive tactic. It shows his discomfort with conflict and his privilege as a white man who can afford to avoid the conversation. The driver’s rants about Muslims and Black people are left unchallenged, perhaps reflecting Sedaris’s own failure to engage with political reality in that moment.