Recent Articles from this Writer More There are people out there who don’t understand why David Sedaris is so popular—why his books are bestsellers, his stories on the radio nationally broadcasted and his Zellerbach appearances consistently sold-out. These people have never heard him speak.
Sedaris’ voice is clear and soothing—surely made for radio or the occasional speaking engagement. It’s a storyteller’s voice, and as he reaffirmed to his fourth packed house at Zellerbach on Friday, he has countless stories to tell.
Greeted with thunderous applause, Sedaris opened by correcting some of the mistakes in his previously published works. In a perfect deadpan, he stressed the need for accuracy. "Play loose with the facts and people get hurt," he said, "especially when you’re writing a comic essay."
What started as an ironic observation of the public’s desire for absolute truth, complete with a discussion of James Frey’s controversial novel "A Million Little Pieces," became political commentary on the Bush administration’s manipulation of facts to justify the Iraq war.
Here and throughout the evening, Sedaris’ tales moved from tangent to tangent effortlessly. His talent lies in making it all seem casual and unplanned while guiding his ramblings along a set path.
The first story Sedaris read was "April in Paris," which will appear in his next collection of autobiographical essays. Again he moved from topic to topic—Hurricane Katrina to tote bags, anthropomorphizing animals to the addictive documentaries on Animal Planet. His main focus, insofar as there was one, was his obsession with a family of spiders in Normandy, specifically his adopted pet April. In hilarious detail, he described his method of trapping flies and feeding them to his new friends.
Next Sedaris read a story published in The New Yorker, "All the Beauty You Will Ever Need." Commenting on everything from morning people to the way straight people obsess over gay sex, it was a humorous look at the differences—between himself and his partner Hugh, between a cabin in Normandy and a trailer outside of Raleigh.
The highlight of Sedaris’ appearance was a series of diary excerpts from three months he spent in Japan. A string of concise cultural observations, they recalled his classic "Santaland Diaries" and brought the audience to tears with laughter.
Whenever he goes on tour, Sedaris picks a book to recommend to his audiences. His current pick is Max Brooks’ "The Zombie Survival Guide," because, as he explains in all seriousness, zombies are entirely real. "I would buy this before I’d buy anything written by me," he noted.
He read a few short excerpts from the book, and at first this seemed unfair—he was getting laughs from someone else’s work. But the audience response was as much due to Sedaris’ voice as it was to the original author; he took an apparently factual account of zombie protection and made it his own.
Sedaris closed with a short Q&A. Thanks to his verbose answers, which became stories of their own, the audience members were only able to ask a few questions. But what did they expect from someone so famously circuitous?
When an audience member asked Sedaris’ opinion on gay marriage, his response was matter-of-fact. To conservative opposition, he demanded, "Where did you get the idea that two lesbians reading bad poetry on a mountaintop has anything to do with you?" He then went on to admit, with no hint of shame, that he would marry Hugh if it saved him money.
There is something refreshing about Sedaris’ honesty. Maybe that’s why he began with a piece on truth. But if he proved anything Friday night, it was that a story isn’t just about stating the facts—it’s all in the telling.
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