American humorists often make a Faustian bargain with their personal lives. After Portnoy's Complaint, Philip Roth became the punch line to thousands of masturbation jokes. After Saturday Night Live, Steve Martin couldn't go out without being told was a wild and crazy guy. When David Sedaris gets on stage, chances are people think they know him, too. And for good reason. Over the past 10 years, Sedaris has spun one amusing tale after another about growing up gay in North Carolina, the son of a chain-smoking mother and a father who loved the idea of an honest day's work.
Not surprisingly, the Sedaris clan forms the vivid, aching center of his most recent collection of essays, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. The Las Vegas Weekly recently spoke to Sedaris by phone from Paris, where he spends time when not making people pee their pants with laughter. As it turns out, there's a great deal of craft to being funny. And one of his greatest achievements is keeping that hidden from us.
Do you notice any cultural differences between what people expect from readings between the U.S. and other countries?
Well, the first time I went to Germany, I went with the guy who translated my book. We would show up somewhere and I would say, "How long will this take? And he'd say, "A bottle." And he then drank an entire fifth of whiskey during the reading. He read for three-and-a-half hours.
A lot of your stories come out of memory or your family life. Do you ever worry you will run out of material?
No. Often Ira Glass [host of This American Life on Chicago's WBEZ 91.5-FM] will have a show and it will be about a particular theme, and he'll ask me, "Do you have something" about this or that? And I will recall something. Initially, the obvious things of my life jumped out: hitchhiking with a quadriplegic, that was one of the first things, just because it was so hard to believe, and then there are smaller things. Oftentimes, I just need an assignment.
Are you working on anything right now?
I have to write something about libraries, for the (American Library Association). So I'm writing about how my mom used to take us and drop us off at the local branch. On one of these days, I went into the bathroom and I walked in on two men having sex. And that's something I had never seen before in life. There were no books about homosexuals at the time, remember. So every time I felt alone with this feeling, I'd think, "Oh, but there are those two guys from the library, too." It was probably the best thing I ever learned at the library.
I guess we'll have to see if the ALA shares that feeling. Does your family ever get embarrassed by anything you write?
Well, it's not like they don't know I'm going to publish it. I often show them. But one thing no one in my family ever banked on was being so widely known. My older sister goes to a party now, and people say, "I know all about you." And they don't know her. I never imagined people would call at 2 o'clock in the morning. It doesn't bother me, I signed up for this. But my brothers and sisters ...
The way you tell stories about your family seems so casual, but judging by the selections you put in your recent anthology, Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules, your influences are pretty literary.
I think some people read humorists and they don't assume you made a decision, that you chose one word over another for a specific reason. If I am looking for a book to read, though, I'll probably choose something like these stories by Flannery O'Connor or Patricia Highsmith or Francine Prose. I'd rather read something that leaves me creepy and shaken up—rather than laughing.
It's interesting, because aside from Prose, both of those writers were writing at times when certain things couldn't be said. Are there things you don't write about?
Well, I don't write about sex—that would be embarrassing to me; the rest of it I can do. Something I've discovered is that if something really embarrassing happened to you, the same thing happened to 70 percent of the world.
I was wondering why your story about getting a boil in your bum crack was so funny ...
Actually, that thing came back three times—and it finally popped on an airplane.
You must get all kinds of advice.
Yeah, I learned it was called a pie-addle cyst. I've had so many people come and give me advice on that. On the last trip, I wanted some stories about monkeys; a couple of times I made the mistake about saying if you have a story about a monkey, I want to hear it.
I'm not even going to ask.