Talkin’ ’bout one of my favorite writers
I imagine that many people discuss David Sedaris like they would a band who became commercially successful following years of extraordinary indie popularity that was never supposed to make them so famous that even cheerleaders and jocks would listen to their music despite not owning their obviously superior earlier albums.
(My sister was all like “‘Me Talk Pretty One Day’ is sooo funny.” And I was all like, um, yeah, but it’s no ‘Santaland Diaries.’ And she was like, “What’s that?” Can you believe it!?)
I couldn’t give a rat’s patootie if it’s fashionable to like him or not. He’s an effin’ dynamo, I tell you what. He does what he does well. Here are some specific, and to me inspirational, examples of why he is an effective – and successful – writer.
He describes things effectively in unique, odd-ball ways without being pretentious or confusing.
Here he talks about a boil he found on himself while in London in “Old Faithful”:
Given the price of a simple evening out, I figured that a doctor’s visit would cost about the same as a customized van. More than the money, though, I was afraid of the diagnosis. “Lower-back cancer,” the doctor would say. “It looks like we’ll have to remove your entire bottom.” Actually, this being England, he’d probably have said “bum,” a word I have never really cottoned to. The sad thing is that they could remove my ass and most people wouldn’t even notice. It’s so insubstantial that the boil was actually an improvement, something like a bustle but filled with poison.
“Cost about the same as a customized van” and “a bustle filled with poison” are original (and hilarious) ways to say very simply that something was expensive and protruding from his ass, respectively. Inferior writers would have gone for the cliche or the so-weird-that-nobody-can-relate-to-what-the-heck-you-mean.
He can take something simple and make it complicated without getting lost.
This excerpt is from a brief essay that details him bickering with his boyfriend. Though it has his trademark oddities in it, the essay is quite straightforward. Yet, this wonderful weirdness was a part of it:
It wasn’t my fault that no blind people showed up. “Listen,” I said. “I just spent six hours in a storage closet being ignored by a man with a rubber hand. What do you mean, ‘what else’? What more do I need?”
I know good things are supposed to come in threes, but I am feeling like I’ve been long-winded. So, ask me if you want some recommendations on what of his to read.
Here is the commencement he delivered at Princeton. Man, much better than the last commencement speech I heard. It was by a former prison warden. If I ever give a commencement speech, it will not contain the words “recidivism” or “incarceration.”