David Sedaris (a slightly delayed response)

I loved hearing David Sedaris read in MemAud on Sunday. I’ve read some of his stories before, but it’s a really different experience to hear him read them aloud. He has excellent comedic timing, and separate from the amusement value of his work, it’s always great to hear an author read his or her own writing.

On one level, I found Sedaris hilarious, as I’m sure many others have previously. And he really tries to be funny, by telling dirty jokes that he’s heard or relating ridiculous stories. To be sure, his essays are humorous in and of themselves, and reading them on paper often produces a laugh or two per page, but when he reads them live he really goes for all-out comedy. In a way, when he reads his stories to an audience, he seems more like a comedian than a writer, possibly because he brings up topics that seem common to comedians (things like family issues or the struggles of traveling). Now that he’s famous and is well known for his readings, I wonder if he takes that into account while writing his stories; that is, if he thinks about the effect of reading an essay aloud while he’s writing it. On some level, I think it would be difficult for him to eliminate any thoughts of an audience, since his stories are so well suited to live readings and since he’s become so accustomed to delivering his work.

What I found most interesting in Sedaris’s reading wasn’t his dirty jokes or his diary entries, but was rather his personal story about his childhood experiences with his father. Although this essay certainly contained its fair share of humor, it was really moving on a deeper level. It reflected his extreme feelings of inadequacy as a child, which generally resulted from his father’s refusal to be proud of him. Honestly, I had trouble laughing sometimes during Sedaris’s reading of this essay. It didn’t seem all that funny to me. It seemed utterly depressing. It revealed some serious parenting problems in his family, namely his father’s disapproval and his mother’s apathy, and at some points it was painful to hear the extent to which Sedaris’s father criticized him and praised others. Worst of all was the fact that these memories have clearly stuck with Sedaris for a long time, revealing his painful experience of growing up with his father’s disapproval. When Sedaris said that to this day his father refuses to be proud of him, even to the point of denying the legitimacy of being on the New York Times bestseller list, I could find nothing amusing in such hurtful parental treatment. I can, however, see the therapeutic value in writing about his childhood and his relationship with his father. I’m often impressed by how much writers are willing to share about their personal lives, and in this case I thought it was very brave of Sedaris to discuss these childhood emotions, which clearly troubled him for a long time. But I guess once you reach fifty you’re probably better able to talk about problems from when you were ten or eleven. Still, though, I could fully understand Sedaris’s satisfaction in learning that Greg Sackis is currently selling sex toys.