08/23/2021
The celebrated humorist returns with more offhand observations on the weird and tiresome in these sparkling diary excerpts. Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day) riffs on life with his partner Hugh Hamrick as they brave awkward dinner parties; his obsession with picking up trash; the personal inconvenience of societal upheavals (“I was thinking of my beloved shops,” he frets during a 2020 looting outbreak—“What’ll happen if there’s nothing left for me to buy!”); and the colorful, quotable eccentrics who materialize everywhere he goes. (“On my way for a coffee this morning, I passed a man with an umbrella on his head... ‘The devil will fool you,’ he told me.”) The proceedings are saturated with Sedaris’s trademark irony, wherein the search for energizing squalor ends only in the purgatory of the banal. “I’d like to see angry orphans and drunk people fighting,” he notes at the start of a Bucharest sojourn, but at its conclusion he’s trapped on an airliner as “the woman in front of me shoved her seat all the way back and the woman next to her put on some horrible melon-scented hand cream. I couldn’t have been any more miserable.” They may not stick to your ribs, but Sedaris’s memoiristic nuggets are always tasty. Agent: Christina Concepcion, Don Congdon Assoc. (Oct.)
★ 10/01/2021
Sedaris's second collection of diary entries are more cosmopolitan and assured than his first collection, Theft by Finding, which covered 1977–2002. In spite of Sedaris's new financial security and his homes in Europe and the United States, the core of his personality and insecurity—which draws so many to his writing—remains. Sedaris is curious about the world, particularly its tawdry or ugly sides, and constantly aware of his role and complicity in that ugliness. His style of engagement means finding humor in nearly everything, often in ways that may elicit discomfort, though he is serious when it comes to tragedies such as mass shootings. For this reason, some will see his book as unsalvageable. Yet selected and edited as it is, his work is about radical vulnerability and reflects a universal experience of contending with one's internal life. "Who am I, how did I get to be this way, and what is wrong with me?" is a question Sedaris asks, and one worth asking. VERDICT Entertaining reading in itself, with references to some of the books he published in this era; a must-read for Sedaris's many fans.—Margaret Heller, Loyola Univ. Chicago Libs.
2021-07-15
The second volume of diaries by Sedaris (after Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002), who navigates the early 21st century wealthier but still bemused.
The flashpoints of the modern era—the Iraq War, Ferguson, Trump, Covid-19—pop up throughout these entries, but mainly so the author can sail past them with his usual irreverence. For example: “When the pandemic hit, my first thought wasn’t Oh, those poor dying peoplebut What about my airline status?” His bottomless capacity to make everything about him doesn’t read as selfishness or ignorance, though; as with all good comics, the particulars of his life are stand-ins for everybody’s foibles and frustrations. Traveling the world for readings, Sedaris takes note of every culture’s peculiarities, from spitting on the street in Tokyo to offensive insults to language quirks—e.g., Tagalog is like “English on quaaludes.” Sedaris treats his own life as a kind of foreign country, too. After moving from his longtime home in France to England, he began his hobby of picking up litter (documented in Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls), and the reactions of his neighbors, not to mention the trash itself, provide comic fodder. Family matters were trickier during this period: His troubled sister, Tiffany, killed herself, and his elderly but resilient father still treated him like a failure. Because Sedaris traveled all over the world during this stretch, the tone and form of the diaries shift; he’s sometimes glib, sometimes contemplative, sometimes content just to catalog funny stuff he overhears. So for better or worse, he’s a humorist who’ll go anywhere. This book contains one of the best jokes about the Crucifixion you’re likely to hear, along with a few subpar quips: “To honor the death of Marcel Marceau I observed a minute of silence."
A rich trove for hardcore Sedaris fans, though no more personally revealing than his well-shaped essays.
Praise for A Carnival of Snackery: “Sedaris is a singularly talented humorist who lands acerbic zingers with the calculating precision of a kamikaze pilot… Throughout the colorful, caustic yarns that fill his best-selling essay and story collections, he’s maintained league-of-his-own status by staying light on his feet: Just when you’re expecting a wry jab, he clocks you with a poignant gut punch.”—Rachel Rosenblit, Washington Post
“Like Sedaris’s exquisitely crafted personal essays, his diary entries explore odd hairstyles, blandly aggressive post office interactions, airport bureaucracy and the non sequiturs of small talk: micro-topics he elevates to their own pedestals of meaning and humor.”—New York Times Editors' Choice
“Uproarious… a must for Sedaris fans.”—Lesley Kennedy, CNN
“Mesmerizing and jolting… Sedaris’ shrewdly sketched world travelogue, hilarious anecdotes, and frank reflections on loved ones, and life's myriad absurdities and cruelties major and minor, make for a delectably sardonic, rueful, and provocative chronicle… fans don't want to miss a word.”—Donna Seaman, Booklist
“A rich trove for hardcore Sedaris fans.”—Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Theft by Finding: “Sedaris is no ordinary diarist. He’s more like a private detective, sneaking around and capturing his subjects in moments when they think no one is looking.”—Fiona Maazel, O, The Oprah Magazine
“Finding meaning and humor in life’s interstices… is Sedaris’s unique genius as a writer… What is fascinating about this book is that narrative coherence is not apparent from one sentence or paragraph to the next but emerges through the sequence of entries over many years.”—David Takami, Seattle Times
“Sedaris fans will thrill to this opportunity to poke around in the writer’s personal diaries, which he has faithfully kept for four decades and used as raw material for his hilarious nonfiction as well as his performances.”—Paul S. Makishima, Boston Globe
“Perhaps his most intimate book… Sedaris has become a reigning master of crystalline social commentary and blisteringly humorous self-reflection.”—Lauren Christensen, Los Angeles Times
“Randomly open to any page and you’ll find a gem… Sedaris’s gift is to make you stop and think one moment and laugh out loud the next.”—Rob Merrill, Associated Press
In his second volume of diaries, covering 2003-2020, David Sedaris shares bizarre and entertaining stories from his life and travels. His narration is dry and direct; though he claims not to be a stand-up comic, he has the timing of one. Tracey Ullman delivers the sections that take place in the UK and Australia, utilizing her skill with accents to highlight the many conversations Sedaris recounts. He reflects on the people he meets at book signings, the ridiculous things he overhears at airports, and his litter-collecting hobby, for starters. But the book is also riddled with ableist language and a nostalgia for when “offensive jokes” were acceptable. Longtime fans will find plenty to love, but some of Sedaris’s observations are merely exhausting to listen to—and not funny at all. L.S. 2022 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
In his second volume of diaries, covering 2003-2020, David Sedaris shares bizarre and entertaining stories from his life and travels. His narration is dry and direct; though he claims not to be a stand-up comic, he has the timing of one. Tracey Ullman delivers the sections that take place in the UK and Australia, utilizing her skill with accents to highlight the many conversations Sedaris recounts. He reflects on the people he meets at book signings, the ridiculous things he overhears at airports, and his litter-collecting hobby, for starters. But the book is also riddled with ableist language and a nostalgia for when “offensive jokes” were acceptable. Longtime fans will find plenty to love, but some of Sedaris’s observations are merely exhausting to listen to—and not funny at all. L.S. 2022 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
