Arts
& Lectures Magazine David Sedaris: Stranger in an even stranger land By Barbara McKenna This story orignally appeared in Arts & Ideas magazine (Vo. 1, No. 3), a publication of Arts & Lectures at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Best-selling author, radio satirist, and former elf David Sedaris will be in Santa Cruz this spring reading from his work as part of Arts & Lectures' 2002-03 series. His talk, which takes place on April 26, is Sedaris's first here in four years. Featured frequently on public radio's "This American Life" and on NPR's "Morning Edition," Sedaris has gained a wide and devoted following through his sharp, self-effacing, laugh-out-loud humor. In 2001, he was named Time magazine's Humorist of the Year and received the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Called "wickedly funny" by the Washington Post, Sedaris is uncontestably one of the best satirists writing in America today — his razor sharp zingers have the electric energy and precision of a Kobe Bryant dunk and his observations have the startling accuracy of a Martha Stewart stock trade. As one critic put it, "his tart voice never gets lost in NPR's Sargasso Sea of sincerity." Sedaris is the author of four volumes. Barrel Fever and Naked both became both best-sellers. His latest book, Me Talk Pretty One Day, is a loose documentation of his life and eventual evolution into a "spooky man child" living in France and capable of communicating only with nouns. His book Holidays on Ice is a collection of Christmas-related stories, including one about his job working as an elf at Macy's. In recent years Sedaris has focused on playwriting. As The Talent Family, Sedaris and his sister Amy Sedaris have co-authored several plays that have been produced in New York. One Woman Shoe received an Obie Award and The Book of Liz was published last year by the Dramatist's Play Service. As Sedaris was unavailable for an interview this year, we reprint here the interview he gave previous to his last Santa Cruz visit. That interview was originally scheduled to take place in Paris when both parties happened to be in the city. That interview was pre-empted in true Sedarisian style when an irate neighbor lady refused to open the gate to his apartment and threatened to throw water on Sedaris's interviewer if she didn't leave immediately. The interview was conducted sometime later by phone. Q: You mentioned that your sister is visiting you right now. That's good to know, it shows you're on speaking terms with your family. Do they have issues about serving as the main characters in your work? How do they react to this public exposure? A: They're really good sports about it. I let them look stuff over before it's published. Usually they don't have any objections. The only time I can remember any problem was with a story I wrote about my brother. I sent it to him and my dad and my dad was concerned about something in the story. But it wasn't a big deal, I just changed it. Q: Writing about your life is a very personal act, something that you seem to acknowledge by titling your second collection Naked. Is it difficult to expose yourself so completely to the world? A: I don't worry about being exposed. When I'm writing about myself I think about myself as a character. There is a ton of stuff going on in my life that I don't write about. If I need to write that stuff down, I write about myself in my diary. Q: How did you start writing? A: I started when I realized what a terrible artist I was. I started writing at about 21 and before that it didn't occur to me that I would ever write. What I wanted was to be a visual artist, partly because one of my sisters was good at it. I went to the Chicago Art Institute. Now I write every day and when I was in my "Little Artist" period, I did something every day, some kind of art. I've created stacks and stacks of some of the worst crap you've ever seen. I was always very determined about it, but my work never improved and when I was at the Art Institute I could see there was a profound difference between me and those who are talented. So I began reading more and more and it snowballed. I started writing more. And as I went on, I found that I was really affected by stories and by the power of words. I realized that the written word affected me much more profoundly than any visual art. When I was trying to be a serious artist, there was a point where I could pretty much name the artist and date of every work in the North Carolina Museum of Art. But I never looked at the art, only the tag. Every time I go to any kind of a museum or art exhibit I leave thinking I need a haircut or a shave because what I wind up doing is looking at myself reflected in the glass. Q: Can you name some of your favorite authors. A: Yes, I'm always suspicious of people who can't think of a book they like. Susan Sheehan of The New Yorker. Richard Yates, who wrote Revolutionary Road and Eleven Kinds of Loneliness. Tobias Wolff, who wrote The Night in Question, which should be a book every schoolchild has to read until the end of time. Tobias Wolff I love because his characters are so real. My inclination is always towards the ridiculous. I can't help myself. I can't hold myself back. Q: What are you writing about these days? A: I'm writing about coming to France, starting school. What's interesting about being here is that everything is so new that my senses are so heightened. I regularly experience feelings of terror, joy, and joy and terror mixed together. The more I learn and the more I find my way around, the less it will be that way. It makes me think of all the people in New York who can't speak English and who must be terrified of the guy who comes to read their gas meter or desperately hope the clerk will show them how much they owe instead of just telling them. I've never thought about those people and now I'm one of those people. Q: What are your plans for the near future? A: The plan for the next year-and-a-half is to stay in Paris and write and learn the language and spend more time with my Polish friends. Isn't that funny? I'm in France and I have no French friends, but I have a Polish friend and a Brazilian friend now. This happened just the other day when this Polish woman in my class asked me out for coffee along with another guy in our class, a Brazilian guy named Milton. So I have friends. We can barely speak to each other and they're not French, but they're also not American. |