david sedaris essay about amy

No One Knows Amy Sedaris Better Than Her Brother David

The humorist paints a hilarious portrait of growing up Sedaris.

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When we were young, my sister Amy and I used to pretend that we had a hospitality show. I don’t remember if we were supposed to be man and wife, or if we were just friends. Lex and Germalina, we called ourselves. I wish they’d been better names, but we were only 8 and 12 at the time. “Today we’re going to make fried chicken,” Amy would say in an artificially bright voice. “And if your family is anything like mine, they’re guaranteed to lllllove it.”

“And how!” I might add, or “Who doesn’t like chicken?” She was at ease in front of the nonexistent cameras, while I tended to freeze up, qualities that would continue into our adulthoods when the cameras became real. I go on talk shows and look like a hostage, my hands twisted in my lap, my eyes darting this way and that, counting the seconds until the host releases me. Amy, on the other hand, appears completely at home. People who watched her on Letterman, or see her now on The Late Show or Later Than Late , or Now It’s So Late It’s Actually Early , think of her as bubbly. The word quirky gets tossed around as well, but she’s neither of those things. In real life, Amy is thoughtful and low-key, more apt to ask a question than answer one.

Back in our Raleigh kitchen, I’d admire the way she could fake-smile, and convincingly act as if something was burning. When it came to pretend, I was spent after 20 minutes, while she could go on all afternoon, and well into the evening. “And how about some biscuits to go with that chicken?” she’d ask, positioning a number of rolled-up white socks on a baking sheet and popping them into the oven. “ Mmmmm , buttery biscuits are what makes a house a home!”

Cut to 50 years later, when my sister actually has such a show. It’s not as earnest as our childhood version, but its bones are the same, and it’s been nominated three times for an Emmy Award. At Home With Amy Sedaris , it’s called, and its second season had just begun airing when my boyfriend Hugh and I, who left New York in 1998, returned, at least part time, and got a place on the Upper East Side. A few days after moving in, I had to leave on a 45-city lecture tour, and by the time I got back, Hugh had essentially sprayed the place, the way a tomcat would, and made it his own.

“I actually caught him telling someone they had to come and see his new apartment,” I said to Amy on the phone one afternoon. “His!”

She was dealing with a new place as well, though hers was downtown, and in the same building she’d occupied for the last 10 years. It’s a one-bedroom in the West Village, and when its twin became available directly upstairs from her, she bought it. “I didn’t want anybody loud to move in,” she explained. Everyone assumed she’d build a staircase and join the two places, but she doesn’t care to, in part because of her rabbit, a male named Tina, who runs freely throughout her home, eating it. I learned years ago never to leave anything on a chair or, worse still, the floor. “I could have sworn these shoes had laces,” I’d say before I wised up. How many times did I come upon my earbuds, wireless before they made them wireless? The last night I spent at her place, I awoke to find her previous rabbit, Dusty, chewing my eyelashes, which were, like, still connected to my lids.

Tina has gnawed holes in Amy’s sofa, and taken to the underside of her very expensive bed the way a beaver might. If a cat had caused that much damage, okay, but I don’t see the emotional payoff with a rabbit. The only reason they’re not classified as rodents is that they have four incisors rather than two—a technicality if there ever was one.

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Without a staircase connecting the floors, Amy will be able to have unfortified electrical cords in the new, second apartment. The first thing she did after getting the keys was coerce Hugh into painting it. Not that he complained. My sister is the kind of person you want to do things for. I can’t even call it manipulation. She says she needs something, and all you want to do is provide it.

When we both lived in New York, back in the ’90s, Amy and I went by the name of The Talent Family and put on a number of plays together. She’s not a writer in the traditional sense. She doesn’t arrange words on paper; rather, she throws out ideas she becomes bored with between the time you jot them down in your notebook and the time you type them up in the form of a script. “I know I said it would be funny if my character’s mother comes to visit,” she’d say at three in the morning, both of us stoned and reading over the scene I’d constructed. “But what if she came on a horse?”

So the mother would arrive on a horse. Then Amy would decide it shouldn’t be the character’s mother, it should be her stepmother alone on the rear seat of a tandem bicycle. We smoked pounds of marijuana. We also put on seven plays and I never missed a single performance. I really couldn’t, because if someone weren’t there keeping watch, all hell would break loose. Then, too, I didn’t want to miss out on anything. The writer Douglas Carter Beane hired my sister to act in one of his plays and was later heard to say, “What do you call it when Amy Sedaris recites one of your lines? A coincidence.”

“What the hell was going on out there?” I’d ask after a performance, more astonished than angry, really. I can never get angry.

“Well, people laughed,” Amy would say, referring to something she’d improvised.

“Yes, but when your character says something like that, it completely undermines…”

“Oh, come on. It was funny.”

And of course it was. I’ve never seen audiences laugh the way they did at those plays. Movies and TV can’t capture what’s special about Amy. She’s not an actress, exactly, or a comedian, but more like someone who speaks in tongues. As opposed to myself, and just about everyone I’ve ever known, she lives completely in the moment. “What was that funny thing you said yesterday when we saw that old blind woman get mowed down by a skateboarder?” I’ll ask.

And she’ll have no memory of it. When Amy gets going, it’s like she’s possessed.

The best moments of my life were spent in the dressing room, laughing with the cast and crew before a show. Never did I wish that I was going onstage myself. It felt good enough to sit in the back row, occasionally hearing a word I had written, and watching the audience discover my sister. You sometimes couldn’t tell if she was a man or a woman, and so people would poke one another, whispering as she stormed into a scene, “Who is that person?”

There are few greater pleasures than feeling proud of someone, of worrying you might burst with it, especially if that someone is related to you, and therefore part of your organization. I’ve always thought of my family that way, as a company. What’s good for one of us is good for all of us. Our jobs are to advance the name Sedaris.

We might have continued with the plays, but then I got a lecture agent and started going onstage myself, in a way that I was comfortable with-—just reading out loud. Amy created a TV show with her old friends from Second City, and we continued on parallel tracks, always supporting each other and calling for advice. “What would be a good fake name for a fish restaurant?” one of us would ask. “For a polluted river? For a perfume worn by a street prostitute?”

“What would be a good fake name for some medication?” Amy asked in late May of 2019 when we got together for lunch in New York. She’d just started working on the third season of her TV show, and I was enjoying a week in my new apartment between the end of my lecture tour and the start of my paperback tour.

We like going out for Greek food, so we met at a place called Avra Madison on East 60th Street. Amy wore a long gingham dress from Comme des Garçons that made her look like a hostess at Cracker Barrel, and when she waved and called out my name—we never hug—I noticed that she had two teeth missing on the upper right side of her mouth: her first premolar and its neighboring cuspid. The two were next to each other, and the gap left by their absence was big enough to stick your thumb through. “The latest was pulled a week ago,” she told me as we were led to our table. “But you can’t really notice it, can you?”

“Ummm, yeah ,” I said, thinking of how hickish we must have looked. My teeth splayed like a donkey’s, and hers simply AWOL.

What’s good for one of us is good for all of us. Our jobs are to advance the name Sedaris.

Amy’s problem, though, was just temporary. “They gave me a flipper, but I can’t really eat with it,” she explained, adding that the gap would be plugged with implants, which would be installed over the coming year. “The dentist stuck a needle as long as a pencil into the roof of my mouth, and though I couldn’t see myself, I’m sure I made a face I’ve never made before.”

“I’m eventually getting implants for my two front teeth,” I told her, opening my menu, “but am thinking that instead of central incisors side by side, I’d like one single supertooth. Wouldn’t that be funny?”

Our waiter looked Greek but was from Macedonia. “Really?” we said. “When did you move here? Where do you live now? Is your mom still back in your hometown? Does she cry easily?”

We’re often accused of being overly curious, but doesn’t it beat the alternative? Our mother was the same way. “Oh, Sharon, what does it matter whether or not the guy likes working here?” our father would say. “He’s a nobody. He’s nothing, a grown man pulling corks out of wine bottles.” Our father has always been horrible in restaurants. The last time he was with us in New York, he slammed the empty bread basket on the table and thundered at a passing busboy, “Bread!” When the waiter asked if we were ready for the check, my father said, “Are you ready to bend over and take it?”

“Which didn’t even make sense,” I said to Amy later that night. “In the first place, I paid, not Dad. He didn’t even pretend to reach for his wallet. That issue aside, wouldn’t it be the customer who bends over and takes it?” He’s always treated people in the service industry with contempt, so we were always extra warm and engaging, trying to make up for it.

After we’d ordered, and I had suggested “Highfalutin” as a good name for fake medication (“the doctor wants me on 50 milligrams of Highfalutin, but I think he’s just full of himself”), Amy told me about a story she’d just read in the paper. “It was about this guy in Russia, I think, who came across a bear. The bear broke the man’s spine, then dragged him back into his cave. I guess bears do that—save things to eat later. So this man was there for a month, drinking his own urine. When they found him, his eyes were swollen shut and he looked like a mummy. I’ll send you the picture.”

This prompted me to bring up a woman I’d read about who was discovered in the parking lot of a Walmart somewhere or other. “She was drunk and riding around in one of those carts, a Jazzy or a Rascal, drinking wine out of a Pringles can.”

“A Pringles can!” Amy said. “Why didn’t we think of that?”

People assume that if you’re on TV and in movies, everyone you hang out with is an actor. My sister, though, is more apt to spend time with the Korean woman who is her dry cleaner, or a Queens retiree named Helen Ann, who used to run one of those Mailbox Plus–type places and taught her, among other things, that a dollar bill is approximately six inches long. “Good to know if you need to measure something in a pinch,” she’d said.

“What’s Adam up to?” I asked, referring to a fellow in his late thirties who was a cheerleader back in college and will do back flips on command.

“Good,” she said. “He came over last Saturday, and we took mushrooms. Then I decided we should cut up my bedroom carpet.”

“So, you were on mushrooms with razor blades in your hands?”

She nodded, and speared one of the meatballs I had ordered as an appetizer. “Adam didn’t think it was such a great idea either, but it worked out fine. Boy, we had fun.”

He came over last Saturday, and we took mushrooms. Then I decided we should cut up my carpet.

The only thing I miss about being sober is not getting high with Amy. “I wish someone would just slip me something,” I said, claiming the last meatball. “That way, it wouldn’t be my fault, and technically I wouldn’t have to start counting days again from zero. That’s called a freelapse, apparently. Can you believe there’s a word for it?” One big difference between my sister and me is that she can have drugs in her house for months on end. Her appetite isn’t bottomless the way mine was. It’s the same with alcohol. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her finish a drink. In that regard, at least within our family, she is unique.

Amy insisted on paying for lunch, and then, because it was right across the street, and we can’t go more than two hours without buying something, we went to Barneys. When the uptown branch first opened in 1993, we came with our younger sister Tiffany, who was visiting from Boston and loudly said of everything she touched, “Holy fuck, this is more than my rent.”

She was on Ecstasy, as was I, but still. “Keep it down,” Amy and I said. Tiffany read our embarrassment as pretension, but it wasn’t that. Her comments just weren’t funny enough to be overheard. Amy and I couldn’t afford anything at Barneys either, but still we defended its right to exist. We had no idea back then how drastically things would change—not just our fortunes, but the world in general.

The saddest development in New York since I left 20 years ago is the rise of e-commerce. People are ordering everything online, and it’s killing stores. It’s horrible, the number of empty shop fronts you pass now.

“They’re like missing teeth,” I said to Amy. “I mean…oops.”

She scowled like a jack-o’-lantern at the passing traffic. “It’s so unfair things have to change because of lazy people.”

In the not-too-distant future, who knows what we’ll be left with? Maybe that’s why we shop so much now: because we can. When Amy comes to see me in London, it’s one store after another. I make a schedule, with breaks so we can return to the house and drop off our bags. One of our favorite places there is Dover Street Market, which sells both crazy Japanese clothing and taxidermy. The best of both worlds. As we walked into Barneys, I told her about a kiwi they were selling a few months earlier. “It was the size of a chicken, mounted on a thin plank of wood with its head lowered just slightly and this beautiful, delicate beak about four inches long,” I told her. “I asked the price and learned it was the equivalent of ten thousand dollars. ‘It’s a hundred years old,’ the salesman told me, which I guess makes sense, but still.”

“That’s when you should have snapped the beak off and asked, ‘How much is it now?’ ” Amy said.

Ten years ago, Barneys would have been full of shoppers on a Thursday afternoon, but now it was dead.

“I like your look,” a lonely salesman said to me on the second floor. “Are you an architect?”

“These aren’t architect glasses, are they?” I asked Amy as we proceeded upstairs. “Architects wear, like, scaffolding on their faces. These aren’t nearly dramatic enough.”

Read and Watch the Sedarises

Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002)

I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence

At Home With Amy Sedaris Season 1

She considered a floor-length Balenciaga dress she found beside the register in one of the women’s departments. It was pink and looked like a long shirt you’d cut the sleeves off of, roughly, with scissors. “I’m just going to try it on over what I’m wearing,” she said to the salesclerk, slipping it over her head.

He was slim and wore very small, very tight shorts.

Amy was eyeing herself in the mirror. “I don’t need it, really, but I don’t know. It’s sort of nice.” She’d just looked at the hefty price tag and I could see her justifying the cost in her head when the salesman said that actually, the dress was on hold for somebody else.

“Really?” Amy said. I could practically see the spirit entering her body.

Taking over. “On hold for somebody else?” With that, she yanked the dress back over her head, bunched it up, and threw it on the floor. She glared down, briefly—no longer herself, but a character—and, just as I thought she might step on it, or pretend to spit on it, she balled her hands into fists and stomped off: the monster with two teeth missing, the terror in the Cracker Barrel dress.

It was the funniest thing in the world if you knew her. If you didn’t know her, if you were the salesclerk in the tiny shorts who watched my sister retreat up the escalator, you’d likely have been thinking, as had so many before, Who is that person?

This article appears in the February 2020 issue of ELLE.

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• Entertainment

The Truth About Amy Sedaris' Relationship With Brother, Writer David Sedaris

It's hard to believe that so much talent could be concentrated into one family, and that actress and comedian Amy Sedaris could be related to humorist David Sedaris — but it's true, the pair are brother and sister.

Raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, Amy and David are two of six Sedaris siblings: Gretchen, Lisa, Tiffany, Paul, David, and Amy (via The News & Observer  and  The New Yorker ). From a young age, David and Amy embraced their creativity together, pretending to host a hospitality show (via Elle ). This fake show would eventually serve as the inspiration for Amy's very real TruTV show, "At Home with Amy Sedaris." In an Essay for Elle, David jokingly recalled, "'Today we're going to make fried chicken,' Amy would say in an artificially bright voice. 'And if your family is anything like mine, they're guaranteed to lllllove it.'" 

The pair would continue to collaborate, and when they each moved to New York City in the '90s, they started writing and performing plays together under the banner "The Talent Family." Watching Amy perform is an experience David recalls fondly. "The best moments of my life were spent in the dressing room, laughing with the cast and crew before a show. Never did I wish that I was going onstage myself. It felt good enough to sit in the back row, occasionally hearing a word I had written, and watching the audience discover my sister."

The siblings are on parallel tracks

Soon, Amy would go on to create the sketch comedy show "Exit 57" with Second City collaborators like Stephen Colbert,and Paul Dinello, and later create the cult hit "Strangers with Candy" (via IMDb ). Meanwhile, David found success after being discovered by NPR host Ira Glass, who asked Sedaris to read his diaries on the radio (via NPR ).

Although both Sedarises have gone on to have their own individual success — with Amy appearing in films like "Elf" and guest-starring on just about every TV show, from " Sex and the City " to "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" and David writing 17 books — David sees this, essentially, as good for the family business (via IMDb and  Elle ). "Our jobs are to advance the name Sedaris," he wrote.

Since then, the pair have still found ways to collaborate and share creativity. Amy has contributed to the narration of her brother's audiobooks, and when asked by Interview Magazine , "What film and book have you seen and read the most times, and why do you return to them?" she said, in part, "all of my brother David's books." 

And when "BoJack Horseman" gave fans the opportunity to learn Princess Carolyn's backstory (the character long-voiced by Amy), the natural choice to play the cartoon's mom, Cutie Cutie Cupcake? Her brother, David, of course (via IMDb ).

Recommended

Watch CBS News

David Sedaris on finding a story anywhere and everywhere

By Jon Wertheim

October 30, 2022 / 6:58 PM EDT / CBS News

The best stories happen to those who can tell them. It's a fundamental rule of writing - maybe of life. And for decades now, David Sedaris has taken his offbeat experiences and unfiltered observations and turned them into rollicking essays - which he not only writes masterfully, but then performs as he threads the globe on tour. It's made him among the world's bestselling authors. It's made him rich enough to buy a Picasso. It's made him a humorist on the order of Mark Twain - if Mark Twain had been discovered after writing about his job as a department store Christmas elf.

David Sedaris: I'm in show business. And I-- I love the show business life. (LAUGH) I really do. It's the laziest form of show business there is. But yeah, I think of it as showbusiness, I do.

Writers tend to be a solitary, introverted tribe. Showbusiness, the readings, appearances, book signings, often mark the worst part of the job. Not so for David Sedaris.

He turns his tours into performances, drawing big crowds to hear him hold forth on topics petty and profound. And reliably funny.

David Sedaris at one of his readings: That's what makes me unworthy of a biography, not just that I'm dull and have never been unfaithful, but that I'll zone out and think about Dumbledore, or a TV show I like called "1000-Pound Sisters." 

And it's not just in front of the urban hipster crowd…

When we first met up with Sedaris, he happened to be headed to Skagway, Alaska, population 1,100, for a show at the local Eagle lodge.

Followed by a line to experience that Sedarian satire one-on-one. 

He loves the interactions, stays for hours, but Sedaris also gets something practical out of this: potential material.

David Sedaris: One time I said to this woman, "when was the last time you touched a monkey?" And she said, "Can you smell it on me?" And she worked for a center in Boston that trains monkeys to act as helpers for paralyzed people.

Jon Wertheim: You had no inkling this w--

David Sedaris: I had no idea. None whatsoever. And then she invited me to the center. And so I went to the center and I had monkeys all over me. 

Sedaris's ability to find a story anywhere and everywhere has helped make him a runaway success, with more than a dozen books and counting, nearly every one a bestseller, 15 million copies sold.

Jon Wertheim: Why do you think so many people relate to your work?

David Sedaris: Every night, I am on stage, and I look out, and I see people, and I wanna say, "Why are you here?"

Jon Wertheim: "Why are you here"?

David Sedaris: Yeah Because I'm thinking like, "Surely, you had stuff to do at home" the thing is I'm nobody, you know what I mean? Maybe what happens in the theater is just a celebration of our shared ordinariness.

David Sedaris at a reading: All writers are thieves, poaching a bit of one person's life, and stitching it to part of another's…

His subject matter traces the human experience, visits to the doctor, struggles in the TSA line and of course the comedy and complexities of family.

David Sedaris at a reading: "Well, I'm 100 years old," my father tells us. "Can you beat that?" "98," Amy corrects him.

Including his sister, Amy Sedaris…

Amy Sedaris: Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick tick. (LAUGH)

Amy Sedaris: That's our 60 Minutes -- whenever we would say something serious, we went, (TAPPING) "Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick."

She's a comedian and actor, a showbiz type herself, and remains her brother's closest confidant. 

There were six Sedaris siblings growing up in suburban Raleigh, North Carolina. A typical middle class household, that is until you flipped the page as it were, and ventured inside.

David Sedaris: It just felt like-- we weren't sentimental. I don't know, it was almost like we were hard-bitten alcoholics children.

Amy Sedaris: "Hard-bitten."

Jon Wertheim: Wasn't corny, but it doesn't sound like you were arch or judgmental, either.

David Sedaris: Judgmental, yeah.

Amy Sedaris: Judgmental, for sure. If you're wearing a toe ring and you're gonna come to our house, then we will rip you to shreds.

Spend time with a Sedaris, you'll notice they share a certain sensibility. A legacy of their  mother, Sharon, who also gave them their first lessons in storytelling.

David Sedaris: Something would happen and she'd get on the phone, and then tell a friend about it. And then she'd get on the phone a while later and tell another friend. And you'd think, "Oh, it changed," you know? Like the story--

Amy Sedaris: She'd work the story, which is where he gets it from, you know?

David Sedaris: And then she would do it again, and again, and again. And by the end of the day, she had this little, polished gem. But I do that same thing. Like, Amy never does that. Amy never repeats herself.

Amy Sedaris: Oh, yeah, I do, yeah, I do.

Their father, Lou Sedaris, they say, was never quite in on all the stories and jokes and could be cruel to his children, particularly to David.

David Sedaris: I just feel like my dad bet all his chips on me being a failure. You know, my father said a million times, "You know what you are? A big, fat zero." I mean, how many times did dad say that to me?

Amy Sedaris: Yeah, a lot--

David Sedaris: "And everything you touched turns to crap." I mean, over and over and over and over again.

Jon Wertheim: You heard this--

David Sedaris: And so, as a kid, I thought, "You know what? I'll show you." But you never show them.

David's early years were a struggle. He wrestled with obsessions and compulsions and with his father's refusal to accept that he was gay. He drank too much and dropped out of college —twice— before finally getting a degree in visual arts. In the early 90s, sedaris moved to New York, where he took a series of odd jobs, chronicling his life in a diary, but publishing no essays until he wrote about his time working as a department store Christmas elf. He read us an excerpt.

David Sedaris: There was a line for Santa and a line for the women's bathroom. And one woman after asking me 1,000 questions already, asked which is the line for the women's bathroom. And I shouted that I thought it was the line with all the women in it. And she said, "I'm gonna have you fired." I had two people say that to me today, "I'm gonna have you fired." Go ahead, be my guest. I'm wearing a green velvet costume. Doesn't get any worse than this. 

Jon Wertheim: Let-- let's be clear, you-- you didn't take this job as an elf for-- for irony, or because you thought you were gonna write about it one day?

David Sedaris: No. I don't have any skills.  I applied for all sorts of jobs-- and I got this job because I'm short. You know? I'm short and I didn't have a criminal record.

In the history of unlikely literary breaks, this might take the prize. What started as a journal entry became a National Public Radio essay, " Santaland Diaries ," which, when it aired in 1992, did the equivalent of going viral.

Jon Wertheim: This would be your breakout hit? This is what put you on the map?

David Sedaris: Yeah.

Jon Wertheim: Did you know that at the time?

David Sedaris: No. Nope. It just seemed like everyone was listening to the radio that day. And it really-- I went from somebody -- with no opportunities to someone-- having to weed them out.

Since then, his subject matter expanded, but his form has remained consistent. No novels or sweeping narratives. He starts with a notebook he brings everywhere and turns the jottings into personal essays, that mix memory, observation and, he admits, some exaggeration in service of humor. The final product usually begins with the mundane and ends with the meaningful.

And while the literary celebrity may be an endangered species , Sedaris not only plays the part, but dresses the part. He contributes essays to the New Yorker, the BBC and, on occasion, CBS News. And at age 65, he is on the road more than 200 days each year, good for his brand, but also his process, he writes for the ear as much as for the reader's eye, which makes audiences not simply his fans, but his most important editor.

David Sedaris: The audience isn't wrong, right? You can't convince some-- somebody that something is funny. Either they laughed at it or they didn't. Either they paid attention to it or they didn't. And the audience is telling you all of that. so it's my job to listen to them.

For all his success, his approach to the job can still leave him feeling like an imposter.

David Sedaris: That's when I worry, though, because I think, "Well, what if I'm not really a writer?" Because-- what if I'm-- you know, there's certain ways you can cheat with your voice. Right? You can make your voice--

Jon Wertheim: You-- you really have that concern? A dozen plus books into this, millions and millions sold, you really have that, "I'm-- I'm not a writer?"

David Sedaris: Yeah, because look I'm cheating here. Look. I-- I'm saying-- "He's afraid of a woman. Angela repli–" "A woman." I'm not describing her voice. I'm doing her voice. Right? So can-- can a reader hear her? Right? Or am I cheating? Am I cheating by using my voice?

Still, his readings drive book sales, which drive ticket sales, a virtuous cycle that's afforded Sedaris multiple homes, including a cottage in southeast England where he spends part of the year with his partner of more than 30 years, Hugh Hamrick, an artist who appears in many essays as the sensible, centering ballast, to David's flights of fancy.

David Sedaris: In my mind it's sort of a classic domestic story, one character is, you know, kind of hapless and the other person is reliable and capable. And that's Hugh all over, right? I don't know how to do anything. I don't know how to look at our bank statements online. I don't open any envelope unless it looks like fan mail. 

Hamrick hates the limelight as much as Sedaris craves it, and it took some convincing to get him to sit down with us. We wondered what it was like living with someone for whom everything is a potential story.

Jon Wertheim: Do you have any veto power? "Whoa, whoa, whoa, I-- I don't want this one--"

Hugh Hamrick: I think he would know what I'd accept and what I wouldn't accept.

Jon Wertheim: You've never had to say, "No, no, no, no. This can't go out to the readers of The New Yorker or the millions of people reading your books?"

Hugh Hamrick: I think I mighta tried a few times just saying, "Do you have to say that?" He says, "Yeah, everyone thinks it's funny." And I was like, "Okay."

These days going for the biggest laugh can be risky, especially for someone like Sedaris who, proudly, doesn't much traffic in boundaries.

Jon Wertheim: Are you sensitive to "Man, this is gonna make me look bad when people read this?"

David Sedaris: Everything is such a landmine now. I don't wanna sit at my desk with my hands and feet tied together. 

Jon Wertheim: "You offended me."

David Sedaris: "You offended me." I-- I think, "Great. There is other stuff for you to read. Go somewhere else."

Out here in England, far from the Twitter mob, mornings are for writing, while afternoons are for going on walks or, well, remember we mentioned Sedaris's childhood compulsions? The adult version, he says, is this: picking up trash on the side of the rural roadways. We naturally wanted to tag along.

Jon Wertheim: How many hours a day?

David Sedaris: Between four and six usually. I go out-- after midnight I'll go out-- I know, it sounds so crazy.

Jon Wertheim: You'll go out after--

David Sedaris: I go out with a headlamp on and do busier roads.

This is also where he says he does a lot of thinking, which recently has centered on his father, Lou, who died last year. Their unhappy relationship left unresolved, David wrote about one of their last conversations.

David Sedaris: Then he turned to me: "David," he said, as if he'd just realized who I was. "You've accomplished so many fantastic things in your life. You're-- well, I want to tell you, you-- you won."

Jon Wertheim: When he said, "You won," you think it was this cosmic, "You won the game of life?" Or do you think it's, "You won-- you defeated me"?

David Sedaris: I'd go back and forth. I mean, that's what-- part of what made it compelling to write about, is that I don't know. That's a question I'll be asking myself, I don't know, for the rest of my life.

Produced by David M. Levine. Associate producer, Elizabeth Germino. Edited by Patrick Lee.

L. Jon Wertheim is an accomplished journalist and 60 Minutes correspondent.

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David Sedaris Knows What You’ll Laugh at When No One Is Judging

By David Marchese Oct. 25, 2021

• Share full article

“I love an old-fashioned vulgar joke.”

By David Marchese

“When I was riding my bike or walking,” says David Sedaris, sitting on the terrace of his apartment high above Manhattan on a gentle autumn evening, looking back on his younger days, “I used to fantasize about having the life that I have now.” No wonder. The essayist’s books, the latest of which is “A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020),” are reliable best sellers, and he’s the rare author whose readings, reliably, fill theaters. Such professional constancies have afforded Sedaris, who is 64, and his longtime partner and frequent literary foil, Hugh Hamrick, personal luxuries like homes in New York, Paris, the English countryside and on the beach in his native North Carolina, as well as the means to indulge his passion for Comme des Garçons clothing. More fortunate still, his success — Sedaris was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019 — hasn’t softened the mordant snap that is so much its source. “Now when I walk around, I don’t dream about the future. Because in the future, I’m just older,” Sedaris said. “I mean, if life is like a roller coaster, right over this little hump I’m at now is terminal cancer.”

There’s always a sense in your books that you’re an empathetic guy at heart, but some of the funniest parts are when you’re expressing condescension or disdain. So I’m curious: How do you see empathy as fitting into what you do? I’m not a monster, I suppose. In the new book, I said there’s a look that you perfect in first class, like, Just do your little job . Writing it makes me laugh because it’s so snobby. But it’s thought snobby. It’s not action snobby. There’s a huge difference. I refuse to believe that everybody’s not an asshole in their brain. Who doesn’t walk through the airport and think, Oh, my God, that person looks awful; look at her legs; what made her think it was a good idea to get a tattoo there? I would never say it. If you go to Starbucks, and you’re like: “I’ll pay with cash. No, you know what? I’m going to pay with a card. No, you know what — ” If you think the people behind you aren’t imagining you in the electric chair, you’re wrong. And they should be imagining you in the electric chair.

In the last entry of the new diaries — it’s from Dec. 31, 2020 — you write that you had finally turned old, and your realization had to do with finding certain ideas hard to understand. What are some ideas where you disagree with what you see as younger people’s consensus? That has been interesting signing books: When gay men and lesbians come up, I say, “Where do you stand on the word ‘queer’?” The young people are like, “I love it.” It’s their word. I hate it. I read an interview with this woman, and she identifies as queer because she’s tall. People who identify as queer because they feel “other”? Everybody does at some point in their life. It’s just the rebranding. No one asked me about it. There was not a vote. So now I identify as a straight man. Whatever you identify as, people have to respect that, right? I identify as a straight man because the word “straight” doesn’t change. I just want some stability.

But isn’t the rebranding you mentioned more about other people wanting to be described a certain way? What’s the tension there for you ? I’d rather say I’m homosexual than queer. It’s completely strictly generational. That’s what people my age were called, you know? But that’s not the part of it that bothers me. It’s just the rebranding. That’s why now I’m a straight man. And you know what?

What? I’m going to be a really good spokesperson for straight men too. We’ve been maligned for too long, and we’ve had it. We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore.

It’s about time straight men got a chance. It really is.

I don’t know. Is there really some problematic movement of people who used to identify as straight now identifying as queer? Well, it’s a lot of people who are genderqueer or metasexual.

What’s metasexual? You only have sex with someone who you feel a deep emotional commitment with. It used to be called “Christian.”

Are there ideas younger people hold that you don’t necessarily feel comfortable with but that you also suspect might be an improvement on your own? In some literary offices I’ve heard that people are no longer allowed to say, “May I have a word with you?” because it triggers people into thinking they’re going to be fired. Are they supposed to just say, “Hey, David, you’re [expletive] fired”? Or Brandeis University putting out that list of words and phrases: You can’t say you “killed” that exam or take another “stab” at it. But you can order the battered chicken?

So I guess your answer is no? If somebody treats me poorly, it’s like they handed me money. I write about it, and I’m like, I’m so glad I was there at that moment. I don’t want anybody to throw acid on me, but there’s a lot of stuff that’s shy of that. I was out a couple of weeks ago. Usually I go out after midnight, and I take a five-mile walk. I’m on Park Avenue; I take a right onto East 72nd Street. This woman says, “My name’s Andrea. I’m from Queens. I’m the queen of Queens. You need a date?” She grabs my penis, and I said, “Look, I’m gay.” But she will not get off of me. So I went to a doorman building. It wasn’t my building. Anyway, she was so annoying. I wrote about it in my diary. I made it funny, but I said, “Can a woman sexually assault a man?” Because the threat of penetration wasn’t there. I was afraid because she was so unpredictable, and she had the craziness in her eyes, but I don’t believe I was afraid the way a woman would be afraid if a man did the same thing.

That answer went in an unexpected direction. Oh, I wrote about it in my diary, and I thought, This could be an essay. But there has to be some depth to it. One of the things I realized was that if I was Black, I couldn’t have gone to a doorman building on the Upper East Side and had them let me in — probably wouldn’t. That maybe isn’t an aspect I would have considered two years ago, you know? You don’t want to make somebody feel bad. You don’t want to belittle somebody. You don’t want to heap stuff on them. But there’s something to be said about developing a thick skin. Like, I wrote an angry email recently to Audm because they were doing a New Yorker story about the making of “Midnight Cowboy.” They quoted John Wayne, who said it was a movie about a couple of bleep . So I wrote to Audm, and I said why did you bleep out the word “fag”? You’re quoting John Wayne in 1969. Of course John Wayne said that. Bleeping out the word is treating me like I’m some sensitive flower.

What was the last thing that you were offended by? I get angry about things, but I don’t know that I get “offended.” It’s not really a word that I would use. I don’t like it when someone says, “I love to read about your dysfunctional family,” because I don’t like the word “dysfunctional.” I don’t think it means anything. There’s a certain kind of person who thinks that’s a fun word to say. If I hang out with my siblings and I talk to them all the time, I don’t see how that’s dysfunctional. But I don’t think I get offended.

Unlike in the first volume of your diaries, there’s not much self-doubt or anxiety in the new one. I’m a happy person.

How much of that is an outcome of achieving success? Because often people think success will make them happy, and then it doesn’t. It’s hard to say, because I don’t know what it would be like to not have done that . I remember what it was like not to have any money, and to be sick and not have health insurance and not be able to go to the doctor. I have friends who are my age who have all those fears and anxieties, and they’re near retirement age. They can’t retire, and they all say the same thing: I’m just going to work until I drop. But my job is to take whatever [expletive] thing is in front of me and make it laughable. You have to be in a certain state to make that happen, and I’m always in that state. My boyfriend, Hugh — you can leave the room, and there’s no telling what’s going to be there when you come back five minutes later. You can’t have two people like that in a relationship. I’m the sunny one. Somebody has to be.

There’s also a degree of affluence in the new set of diaries that contrasts with the poverty that you lived in for a lot of the period covered by the earlier set. Some people feel guilt or embarrassment over having a lot of money. Do you have any ambivalence about it? I think I am pretty good at it. I was thinking about my dad, because his house just sold and Amy sent me a picture of the chaos that was his house. There was something he had on his dresser about “The Art of Giving.” My father was the cheapest person. One year I donated money to the church for him for Christmas, and he called and asked if he could have the write-off. There’s a responsibility to having money, and my dad didn’t honor that. No one taught me about that responsibility, but you look around and there’s just [expletive] you’re supposed to do if you have money. Give it away. Be generous. Find your younger self and make a difference in that person’s life. And you’re supposed to spend money if you have it. You’re not supposed to just keep it all. It’s one thing if you’re poor, but if you have it, you’re supposed to buy [expletive]. It’s different for you, because you have kids, right? So you have to think, If I buy that painting, that’s the college education for both of my kids. But I don’t have to worry about that.

How much do you spend on Comme des Garçons in a year? I wonder if I spend $50,000. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that much. But the way I look at it — when I first started reading out loud, I would wear a tie. I always dressed up. My ideas of dressing up have just gotten different. My audience, they don’t understand it. They think I’m crazy. But if you’re going to be in front of people, you should give ’em something to look at.

Do you think much about what you can and can’t get away with? People say, “I can’t believe what you say onstage,” because you can’t say anything anymore. I mean, I love an old-fashioned vulgar joke. There is a joke that I’ve been reading onstage: A woman wakes up on her 40th birthday, and she goes to the drugstore and says: “Today’s my birthday. Can you guess how old I am?” The druggist says, “36?” She says, “I’m 40.” Next she goes to the butcher shop and goes: “Today’s my birthday. Can you guess how old I am?” The butcher says, “32.” She goes, “No, I’m 40.” She goes up and down Main Street. Nobody comes close to guessing her age. She gets in her car and goes to the gas station. Says to the guy, “Can you guess how old I am?” He says, “I can guess your age and your birthday. But first you have to let me fondle your breasts for a while.” She says, “OK.” Then after about five minutes, he says, “You are 40 years old, and your birthday’s today.” “How did you do that?” He goes, “I was in line behind you at the butcher shop.” The audience gives the biggest laugh from that line. But first the audience makes a noise when the gas station attendant says, “You have to allow me to fondle your breasts for a while,” and she says, “OK.” Whereas 20 years ago, her agreeing to it would have just been accepted as part of the joke.

Are you finding that the gap between what people will laugh at and what they would admit to finding funny is getting more pronounced? You know what was interesting? I did a bookstore event the other day, and I read the funniest bits from the diary. I got nothing. Nothing . Then people said afterward, “My face hurt from laughing.” I said: “You weren’t laughing . I was here, you know.” But you turn the lights off? In a theater, the lights are all the way down, and people will laugh.

Because people behave differently when they’re not worried about any social consequences or judgments? Yeah. Especially if you’re in America and race comes up in any way, the audience freaks out. So Andrea, the woman who assaulted me, was Black. When I shape that into an essay, I think it’s important. I was let into the foyer of a building I don’t live in; that had everything to do with me being white. If you have a character who’s Black and is not a virtuous character, the audience freaks out, because they think: If I laugh, does that make me a racist? If I don’t like this person, does that make me a racist? It’s something I’ve noticed for years. The audience freaks out, and it’s by and large a white audience freaking out, and it gets worse with every passing day.

This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and the columnist for Talk. Recently he interviewed Alice Waters about being uncompromising and Neil deGrasse Tyson about how science might once again reign supreme.

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Does Good Taste Run in the Family?

David Sedaris on eye color, cholesterol, and an appreciation of taxidermy.

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A few years back I asked for and received a hundred-year-old taxidermied kiwi. It was a Christmas gift from my boyfriend Hugh, and it was very regal-looking, a real museum piece. “Oooh,” my sister Gretchen moaned when she saw it standing on my desk a few months later. “Can I have this when you die?” This is her all over. Sneeze in her presence, and before you can wipe your nose she’ll have half your house emptied out.

Another sister, Amy, was with me when I first saw the kiwi in London, and though she liked it well enough, we both knew it wasn’t quite her thing. It’s not that she’s against birds, or taxidermy—she’s got a stuffed white goose on one of her end tables. But that’s enough for now. Moths get to something and it breaks your heart. “Look at my chipmunk!” she wailed a few years back, pointing at what looked like a fetal zombie: hairless, half the face eaten away, one of the paws just bones. If Gretchen were to die tomorrow, and doctors told me I would follow in a few weeks’ time, I could give the kiwi to my brother Paul. He’d like it well enough, but his house is a wreck, like one of those you see on TV that’s just had the roof and two walls ripped off by a hurricane. Our late sister Tiffany lived that way as well, as did our father.

My sister Lisa would not want the kiwi. She’s the oldest, and we cannot understand her taste to save our lives. “She bought the outfit she wore to Dad’s funeral at Costco!” Amy said recently.

Of the six children in my family, five have a similar eye. Were we to walk into the Prado, I don’t doubt that we would all gravitate to the Goya painting of Saturn devouring his son. At a neighbor’s house we’d likely all notice the little hairs in the bathroom sink. It’s the way our senses of humor are similar—not identical, by any means, but in the same ballpark. The differences come down to refinement, I suppose. My sister Amy is in show business, so if you send her a clip from a comedy, she’s likely to say, “That’s sort of overdone now.” It’s her business to notice things like that. I’m that way with books. Amy, Gretchen, and I are all big shoppers. We know what’s out there. We knows what’s a fad, or an imitation, as opposed to Paul and Lisa. “Look at this!” Lisa said the last time I dragged her to a store. “Wouldn’t this be a good present for Amy?”

“Actually, no,” I said. I don’t remember the object in question, but it was everywhere that year, and Amy would have seen it a hundred times already.

“Well, I’m going to get it for her anyway,” Lisa said.

We draw names for Christmas, and special pity goes out to whoever Lisa or Paul get. At their best they offer gift certificates to Amazon. I can’t bear to buy things online. What’s the point when you live in New York and London and there are real shops right outside your door? So I pass the Amazon cards on to Hugh, who gives them to one of his brothers.

Still, I send a thank-you, usually written on a postcard. “Oh my god,” Amy or Gretchen will say. “This postcard, where did it come from?” I always save the best ones for those two. They get them, and so they get them.

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Happy-Go-Lucky

Back when restaurant menus were still printed on paper, and wearing a mask—or not—was a decision made mostly on Halloween, David Sedaris spent his time doing normal things. As  Happy-Go-Lucky  opens, he is learning to shoot guns with his sister, visiting muddy flea markets in Serbia, buying gummy worms to feed to ants, and telling his nonagenarian father wheelchair jokes.

But then the pandemic hits, and like so many others, he’s stuck in lockdown, unable to tour and read for audiences, the part of his work he loves most. To cope, he walks for miles through a nearly deserted city, smelling only his own breath. He vacuums his apartment twice a day, fails to hoard anything, and contemplates how sex workers and acupuncturists might be getting by during quarantine.

As the world gradually settles into a new reality, Sedaris too finds himself changed. His offer to fix a stranger’s teeth rebuffed, he straightens his own, and ventures into the world with new confidence. Newly orphaned, he considers what it means, in his seventh decade, no longer to be someone’s son. And back on the road, he discovers a battle-scarred America: people weary, storefronts empty or festooned with Help Wanted signs, walls painted with graffiti reflecting the contradictory messages of our time: Eat the Rich. Trump 2024. Black Lives Matter.

In  Happy-Go-Lucky,  David Sedaris once again captures what is most unexpected, hilarious, and poignant about these recent upheavals, personal and public, and expresses in precise language both the misanthropy and desire for connection that drive us all. If we must live in interesting times, there is no one better to chronicle them than the incomparable David Sedaris.

Buy "Happy-Go-Lucky"

About david sedaris.

David Sedaris is the bestselling author of the books Calypso, Theft By Finding , Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Holidays on Ice, Naked, and Barrel Fever . He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and BBC Radio 4.

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David Sedaris: The real tragedy of my sister’s suicide was her mental illness

David Sedaris says writing about his younger sister’s death by suicide was not difficult, and that the real “tragedy” was the mental illness she suffered from.

The US writer and broadcaster said he had thought about his sister, Tiffany, every day since her death, describing her as a “dynamic, beautiful and funny” person.

Sedaris is known for his humorous collections of stories and essays based on his own life.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs he discussed his turbulent relationships with his family, including his mother’s alcoholism and father’s refusal to accept his sexuality.

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Following his sister’s death in 2013, he wrote a book, titled Now We Are Five.

Asked by Lauren Laverne if the book had been difficult to write, he replied: “No. The thing is, it was inevitable.

“It was almost something that you had already written, all you needed were the particulars, like the method of suicide and time of year.”

He continued: “It’s so interesting to me, I wrote about it, and then I’ve gotten so many letters from people who have lost a member of their family, and everyone assumes that we’re plagued by guilt.

“I’ve never met anybody who feels guilty. It’s always the same… The tragedy wasn’t my sister’s suicide, it was her mental illness.

“She left behind some notebooks and reading the notebooks you think ‘wow, if that was the inside of my mind’.”

Sedaris and his sister had been estranged for some time before her death, though he still praised her as a “very dynamic person” who he had loved showing off to his friends.

“She could really just say something to you that would just destroy you, reach inside your soul, and find your weak spot… She couldn’t listen to people and then she became combative and became super contradictory,” he said.

“The last time I saw my sister, I was on tour, and she came to the theatre and came to the stage door. I was like, ‘whatever you’re going to throw at me right now. I can’t right now. I can’t carry that right now’.”

He added: “There were times in my life, like when I moved to Chicago, and Tiffany came to visit me there.

“I had that feeling with her like ‘this is my sister’ – (I was) just so proud of her, (she was) just so beautiful and so funny and so vibrant. And then everything fell apart.”

Opening up about his relationship with his father he admitted that he had not felt bad when he had passed away.

“It sounds monstrous,” he said.

“I know that there are a lot of people for whom that’s their attitude… you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.

“Why not? Is that the rule? You can treat someone however you want, and they can never talk about it – they can’t say ‘thank God, that’s over’ – you kind of get what you pay for.”

The new series of the writer’s own BBC Radio 4 show, Meet David Sedaris, starts on on February 23 at 6.30pm.

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5 of David Sedaris' Funniest Essays

Happy 57th birthday to David Sedaris: writer; humorist; former shopping mall elf; nudist colony visitor; smoking-quitter; frequent flyer; boyfriend to Hugh; brother to Amy, Tiffany, Paul, Lisa, Gretchen. In eight collections of essays including the most recent, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, Sedaris delivers wry observations of his family, friends, self, and the weird people with whom he finds himself.

To celebrate another year of Sedaris, let's take a look at five of his funniest essays.

"SantaLand Diaries"

This classic Sedaris essay is even better post-Christmas. He describes his experience working as an elf at Macy's in New York City. He first read the story on NPR in 1992, and it never gets old.

"Interpreters for the deaf came and taught us to sign, 'Merry Christmas! I am Santa's helper.' Thy told us to speak as we sign and use bold, clear voices and bright facial expressions. They taught us to say,'You are a very pretty boy/girl! I love you! Do you want a surprise?'

My sister Amy lives above a deaf girl and has learned quite a bit of sign language. She taught some to me and so now I am able to say, 'Santa has a tumor in his head the size of an olive. Maybe it will go away tomorrow but I don't think so.'"

"Long Way Home"

Sedaris recounts how he was burgled while vacationing in Oahu, Hawaii. The thief took his laptop and passport, which had his ever-important visa. Calamity ensues.

"There are only two places to get robbed: TV and the real world. In the real world, if you're lucky, the policeman who answers your call will wonder what kind of computer it was. Don't let this get your hopes up. Chances are he's asking only because he has a software question."

"Standing By"

As a frequent traveler, Sedaris has more than his fair share of airport horror stories. His observations are very timely, and guarantee a laugh while you're waiting for a delayed flight.

"Fly enough, and you learn to go braindead when you have to. One minute you're bending to unlace your shoes, and the next thing you know you're paying fourteen dollars for a fruit cup, wondering, How did I get here?"

"Letting Go"

Sedaris details his history as a smoker, including his cigarette selection process and how his habit allowed him to bond with his mother.

"I may have been a Boy Scout for only two years, but the motto stuck with me forever: 'Be Prepared.' This does not mean 'Be Prepared to Ask People for Shit'; it means 'Think Ahead and Plan Accordingly, Especially in Regard to Your Vices.'"

"Author, Author?"

Sedaris recalls how his book tours are bookended by humorous trips to Costco. In the first visit to Costco, he bought a pound of condoms as a gift.

"I'd later wonder what the TSA inspectors must have thought. My tour began, and every few days, upon arriving in some new city, I'd find a slip of paper in my suitcase, the kind they throw in after going through all your stuff. Five dress shirts, three pairs of pants, underwear, a cop kit full of Band-Aids and safety pins, two neckties, and several hundred rubbers — what sort of person does the mind cobble together from these ingredients?"

Bon anniversaire, David! Thank goodness for Sedaris.

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David Sedaris reflects on the driving force of his life: His war with his dad

Terry Gross

Sedaris likens this photo, taken in the Los Angeles County Library Children's Department before they opened, to a Playboy magazine author photo. Anne Fishbein hide caption

Sedaris likens this photo, taken in the Los Angeles County Library Children's Department before they opened, to a Playboy magazine author photo.

Is it possible to love a hateful person? That's the question humorist David Sedaris grapples with when he considers his combative relationship with his late father, Lou.

"It's been the driving force in my life: the animosity, the war that my father and I started when I was young and fought every day of our lives," he says.

Sedaris describes his dad as a mean man who was buried in "layers of rage and disappointment." He stiffed contractors, made sexual remarks to his daughters and, when Sedaris was young, would often shove and hit him. Sedaris always felt like Lou disliked him and wanted him out of his life.

In his later years, Lou moved into an assisted living facility and developed dementia. At that point, Sedaris says, his dad seemed to forget that he was a difficult person. Instead, Sedaris likens his elderly father to a "little cheerful gnome." Nothing bothered him; he no longer criticized everyone and everything.

"I don't know if ... that was his little core finally shining through," Sedaris says. "But I felt so fortunate that I was able to be in the presence of that lovely person."

David Sedaris On The Life-Altering And Mundane Pages Of His Old Diaries

Book Reviews

In 'happy-go-lucky,' david sedaris reflects on his fraught relationship with his dad.

Lou died in 2021 at the age of 98. Meanwhile, Sedaris is still working to resolve the anger and pain he feels towards his father. He writes about Lou in his new collection of essays, Happy-Go-Lucky .

"It's tricky because you don't want to be a 65 year old man whining that your dad was mean to you. So here I am, 65, and hopefully it's not whining," he says. "I figured there's a lot of people in the same situation that I was in. I hear from them all the time, people who had a difficult parent."

Interview highlights

On how writing about his father has changed since his death in May 2021

I think what changed was there's a real person and then there's the character of that person. And when you're in a story or an essay, you're the character of who you are. My father was not a good person, but he was a great character. I know plenty of people who are good people, but terrible characters. They just don't work in an essay. They just don't advance anything. When I wrote about my father in the past, he was like, "Oh, that nut!, Gee, he can be tough sometimes, but it's lovable Lou!" But that's not really who he was. Now that he is dead, I just feel like I can kind of let that aspect of it go.

On the nuance of loving a person who was mean

The way I've always made sense of things is to write about it. When my mother died ... I wrote something about my mother and I read it out loud. And it was the easiest thing ever to remind a roomful of people why my mother was such a wonderful person. And my father said, "I want you to do that when I die." ... He'd asked me to do it and so I read a little something and there was not a single good thing in what I read. It was just about how he used to ram other cars at the supermarket when somebody took his parking space and the comments that he made to people and how nobody understood his jokes. But I said at the end, "People say, oh, I know you're going to miss him terribly." And the fact is, we will. As for why, we'll have to get back to you on that, because it's complicated and it's allowed to be complicated. I think now people are more inclined to say, "Well, that's a bad person. We all hate that person now because they're bad." But it's more nuanced than that. You can still love a mean person. You can still love a difficult person. Your mind as an adult should be big enough to hold all of these things. I just could easily just spend the rest of my life trying to sort through the feelings that I had for my dad.

On likening his father to Donald Trump

My father was a perfect preparation for having Donald Trump as president. Just outrageous lies. ... Talking about his daughters in a sexual way was something that was Trump-like. Not paying people for the work that they did. When I was getting ready to move to New York City, he had a rental property and he said, "Paint the rental property, it'll give you some money to move to New York with." And so we agreed on a price. I painted the rental property. He offered me half what he had promised and then offered to fill it in with S&H Green Stamps that he had brought from New York State when we moved south in 1964 and I said, "Green Stamps? They're worthless!" "No, I heard you can redeem them in Florida!"

On Sedaris' father hitting him

It was like a Three Stooges cartoon. That's really what it was like. It sounds horrible [today but] back then, everybody got punished by their parents and it was normal to be hit by a parent. ... Like my mother might have slapped me across the face a few times. Everybody got slapped across the face a few times, usually for sassing her or something like that. But with my dad, it was more like just the feeling like this person doesn't like me. This person wants me out of his life. I remember him saying once, "The only reason I don't hit you right now is that I know I'd never be able to stop." And that kind of was worse than being hit over the head with a spoon.

'Let's Explore': David Sedaris On His Public Private Life

On his late sister Tiffany's claim that their father sexually abused her, and the difficulty of not knowing what to believe

My understanding from Tiffany was that she went to a therapist in the 1980s who said, "If you don't remember being sexually abused, that's a pretty good sign that you were sexually abused." And then she said, "I remember Dad coming into my room in the middle of the night," and then it became "Dad sexually abused me." And we'd say, "How? What did he do?" And there was never an answer. "I never said that he had intercourse with me. I never said that. I never said that he held me down and raped me! I never said that. I never said he raped me." Well, then what are you saying? And then she told someone later that I had sexually abused her. Kids do things, but I don't remember ever doing anything that could be construed as sexual abuse towards her. ...

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.

At the same time, our dad did and said a lot of things that were like, definitely beyond the pale. When my older sister was 17, he tried to get her to go into the woods and pose topless for him. He'd just gotten this Nikon camera, and he said he was gonna take some art photos. "I've got magazines I can show you. It's art. It's not smut." ... The way that he would talk about his daughters, talk about their bodies and stuff like that, it again, it was a different time. But he didn't help his case any, by being creepy in that way.

On the difficult decision to cut off communication with his late sister Tiffany before she died by suicide

David Sedaris, Anatomizing Us In 'Squirrel' Tales

It's been interesting, after she died, I've gotten so many letters from people who have had a sibling take their own life. The people who don't understand it are like, "I can't believe you wouldn't talk to somebody who was vulnerable, that you wouldn't reach out a hand to somebody who was vulnerable." And the people who have someone like that in their family are like, "I know just what you're going through. Sometimes you just can't do it anymore. Sometimes you just have to." I mean, it sounds very selfish to say, I have to protect myself, but sometimes you do. Sometimes it can just be so brutal that you just have to take some time out. And I never meant for the time out to last so long. I always thought Tiffany and I would find our way back to each other and, you know, and then she killed herself.

Sam Briger and Joel Wolfram produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Natalie Escobar adapted it for web.

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25 great essays and short stories by david sedaris, you can't kill the rooster, us and them, go carolina, it's catching, our perfect summer, old lady down the hall, the man who mistook his hat for a meal, now we are five, laugh, kookaburra, journey into night, the santaland diaries, when you are engulfed in flames, company man, the shadow of your smile, my finances, in brief, why aren’t you laughing by david sedaris, see also..., 150 great articles and essays.

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David Sedaris

David Sedaris has contributed to The New Yorker since 1995. He is the author of “ Barrel Fever ” (1994) and “ Holidays on Ice ” (1997), as well as numerous collections of personal essays: “ Naked ” (1997), “ Me Talk Pretty One Day ” (2000), “ Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim ” (2004), “ When You Are Engulfed in Flames ” (2008), “ Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls ” (2013), “ Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002) ” (2017), “ Calypso ” (2018), “ The Best of Me ” (2020), and “ A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020) ” (2021). In 2005, he edited an anthology of stories, “ Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules .” Sedaris and his sister, Amy Sedaris, have collaborated under the name the Talent Family and have written several plays, including “Stump the Host”; “Stitches”; “One Woman Shoe,” which received an Obie Award; “Incident at Cobbler’s Knob”; and “The Book of Liz,” which was published in book form by the Dramatists Play Service. His latest book, “ Happy-Go-Lucky ,” was published in 2022.

Sedaris made his comic début on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” in 1992, reading his essay “Santaland Diaries.” His original radio pieces can be heard on the show “This American Life” and on BBC Radio 4’s “Meet David Sedaris.” In 2001, he was named Humorist of the Year by Time . He is the recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, the Jonathan Swift International Literature Prize for Satire and Humor, and the Terry Southern Prize for Humor, and has been nominated for five Grammy Awards in the Best Spoken Word Album and Best Comedy Album categories. In 2019, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

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