The Wry's the Limit
His witty real-life relationship tales have made him the foremost humourist of the age but David Sedaris is darned if he truly knows what makes his readers laugh.
Anne Sexton, 23 Oct 2008
Interviewing American humorist David Sedaris feels a little odd. It’s not that I don’t want to ask him questions, I do, but they’re the wrong kind of questions. I want to know how his boyfriend Hugh is doing, if his brother Paul is as crude as ever and if his youngest sister Tiffany has finally got herself, and her disgusting feet, sorted?
It might seem nosey of me to be snooping around in his personal life, but since the majority of Sedaris’ work is autobiographical, I’m sure he’d be happy enough to tell me, if I could actually get a question in, that is. Like his essays, his conversation keeps veering off in charming but unexpected directions.
Since sitting down Sedaris has been telling me about seeing New Kids on the Block at swish sushi restaurant, Nobu – “they gotta do something about the word ‘Kids’”; lamenting the state of his barnet – “Look at it! It’s like a collie’s hair”; and updating me on how he’s coping without cigarettes – “It hasn’t been too bad, but yesterday if you had said to me that there’s a cigarette inside a child’s shoulder, I would have ripped that baby’s arm off to get it.”
Sedaris’ difficulty quitting – although his mother died of lung cancer – is detailed in ‘The Smoking Section’. This essay, ‘The Monster Mash’ and ‘Momento Mori’ all have Sedaris preoccupied with death and ageing. Bleak subject matter aside, When You Are Engulfed in Flames is Sedaris’ funniest book yet. This time however, there’s been a slight shift in style. The humour is gentler, but the language is sharper and tighter.
While Sedaris aims to find humour both in words and images, he claims to be unsure of exactly where the laughs come from.
“I laughed out loud at the typewriter the other day, but I don’t know how to guarantee that. I know from having read things out loud that there’s a description of going shopping with my sister Amy (in ‘Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie?’ Sedaris’ sister persuades him to buy women’s clothes). I’m standing at the urinal when I remember that these trouser zip up the back. I don’t know how it is on paper, but when you read it out loud, the audience gets a mental image of it and it gets the biggest laugh. It’s the greatest feeling, isn’t it? To laugh out loud when you read a book. But I can’t speak in terms of people reading my books. Except at the typewriter sometimes, I just surprise myself.”
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