David Sedaris

David Sedaris
David Sedaris

Sedaris in 2007
Born December 26, 1956 (1956-12-26) (age 54)
Binghamton, New York
Residence London, England
Citizenship United States of America
Known for Humorist, comedian, radio contributor, writer
Influences Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Flannery O'Connor, Tobias Wolff, Richard Yates, Kurt Vonnegut[1]

David Sedaris (born December 26, 1956) is a Grammy Award-nominated American humorist, writer, comedian, bestselling author, and radio contributor.

Sedaris has been described as 'the rock star of writers'. He was first publicly recognized in 1992 when National Public Radio broadcast his essay "SantaLand Diaries". He published his first collection of essays and short stories, Barrel Fever, in 1994. His next five subsequent essay collections, Naked (1997), Holidays on Ice (1997), Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000), Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004), and When You Are Engulfed in Flames (2008), have become New York Times Best Sellers.[2][3][4][5][6] In 2010, he released another collection of stories Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary.[7][8][9]

As of 2008, his books have collectively sold seven million copies.[10] Much of Sedaris's humor is autobiographical and self-deprecating, and often concerns his family life, his middle class upbringing in the suburbs of Raleigh, North Carolina, Greek heritage, various jobs, education, drug use, and his life in France, and most recently in London and the South Downs.

Contents

Early life and "SantaLand Diaries"

Sedaris was born in Binghamton, New York, to Lou and Sharon (née Leonard)[11] Sedaris[12][13] and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is of half-Greek-American descent.[14] His mother was Protestant and his father was Greek Orthodox.[15]

Sedaris was raised in a suburban section of Raleigh, North Carolina. He is the second child of six born to Sharon and Lou, an IBM engineer. His siblings, from oldest to youngest, are Lisa, Gretchen, Amy,[16] Tiffany,[17] and Paul (The Rooster). In his teens and twenties, he dabbled in visual and performance art. His lack of success is described in several of his essays. After graduating from Jesse O. Sanderson High School in Raleigh, Sedaris briefly attended Western Carolina University[18] before transferring to and dropping out of Kent State University in 1977. He moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1983, graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1987. (He did not attend Princeton University, although he spoke fondly of doing so in "What I Learned", a comic baccalaureate address delivered at Princeton in June 2006.)

While working a string of odd jobs across Raleigh, Chicago and New York City, Sedaris was discovered reading his diary (which he has kept since 1977) in a Chicago club by radio host Ira Glass, who asked Sedaris to appear on his weekly local program The Wild Room.[19] Sedaris later said, "I owe everything to Ira ... My life just changed completely, like someone waved a magic wand."[20] Sedaris's success on The Wild Room led to his National Public Radio debut on December 23, 1992, when he read a radio essay on Morning Edition titled "SantaLand Diaries", which described his experiences working as an elf at Macy's department store during Christmas time in New York.

"SantaLand Diaries" was an immediate success with radio listeners,[21] and made Sedaris what The New York Times called "a minor phenomenon".[19] He began recording a monthly segment for NPR (based on entries in his diary, and edited and produced by Glass), considered adapting "SantaLand Diaries" into a screenplay for Touchstone Pictures, and signed a two-book deal with Little, Brown and Company.[19] In 1993, he told The New York Times that he was publishing his first book, a collection of stories and essays, and had 70 pages written of his second book, a novel "about a man who keeps a diary and whom Mr. Sedaris described as 'not me, but a lot like me'".[19]

Collections and mainstream success

In 1994, Sedaris released the book of stories and essays titled Barrel Fever. When, in 1995, Ira Glass began hosting the weekly hour-long PRI/Chicago Public Radio radio show This American Life, Sedaris became a frequent contributor. He also began publishing essays in Esquire and The New Yorker. In 1997, he published another collection of essays, Naked. His next book, Me Talk Pretty One Day, was written mostly in France over a period of seven months, and was published in 2000 to "practically unanimous rave reviews".[22] For that book, Sedaris won the 2001 Thurber Prize for American Humor, and was named "Humorist of the Year" by Time magazine.

In April 2001, Variety reported that Sedaris had sold the Me Talk Pretty One Day film rights to director Wayne Wang, who was adapting four stories from the book for Columbia Pictures with hopes of beginning shooting in late 2001.[16][23] Wang had completed the script and begun casting when Sedaris asked to "g[e]t out of it", after a conversation with his sister aroused concerns as to how his family might be portrayed on screen. (He wrote about the conversation and its aftermath in the essay "Repeat After Me".) Sedaris recounted that Wang was "a real prince ... I didn't want him to be mad at me, but he was so grown up about it. I never saw how it could be turned into a movie anyway."[24]

In 2004, Sedaris published Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, which hit #1 on The New York Times Nonfiction Best Seller list on June 20, 2004.[5] The audiobook of Dress Your Family, read by Sedaris, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album; the same year, Sedaris was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album for his recording Live at Carnegie Hall. In March 2006, Ira Glass said that Sedaris' next book would be a collection of animal fables;[25] that year, Sedaris included several animal fables in his US book tour, and three of his fables were broadcast on This American Life.

In 2007, in an article in The New Republic, Alex Heard contended that much of Sedaris's work is insufficiently factual to justify being marketed as nonfiction. Several published responses to Heard's article argued that Sedaris's readers are aware that his descriptions and stories are intentionally exaggerated and manipulated to maximize comic effect.[26][27][28]

In September 2007, a new Sedaris collection was announced for publication on June 3, 2008.[8] The collection's working title was All the Beauty You Will Ever Need, but Sedaris later retitled it Indefinite Leave to Remain and finally settled on the title When You Are Engulfed in Flames.[7][29] Although at least one news source assumed that the book would consist entirely of fables,[8] Sedaris said in an October 2007 interview that the collection might include a "surprisingly brief story about [his] decision to quit smoking ... along with stories about a Polish crybaby, throwing shit in a paraplegic's yard, chimpanzees at a typing school, and people visiting [him] in France."[7]

In December 2008, David Sedaris received an honorary doctorate from Binghamton University.[30]

In April 2010, BBC Radio 4 aired Meet David Sedaris, a four-part series of essays Sedaris read before a live audience.[31] A second series of 6 programmes began airing on BBC Radio 4 Extra on 13th June 2011.[32]

Sedaris revealed in a book signing/reading at the Chicago auditorium that his next book would be out in October 2010 (April 17, 2010). At the time it was tentatively titled 'Beastiology', things animals do and was reportedly centered around fictional memoirs by animals. The collection of fables "detailing animals in strange adult situations" was released Sept. 28, 2010 under the title Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary.[7][8][9]

The Talent Family

Sedaris is also a playwright, having written with his sister, actress Amy Sedaris, several plays under the name "The Talent Family". These include Stump the Host (1993), Stitches (1994), The Little Frieda Mysteries (1997), All were produced and presented by Meryl Vladimer when she was the artistic director of "the CLUB" at La MaMa, E.T.C. and The Book of Liz (2002) produced by Ania A. Shapiro. Sedaris also co-authored Incident at Cobbler's Knob, which was presented and produced by David Rockwell at the Lincoln Center Festival. Sets for those performances were designed by Sedaris's longtime partner, Hugh Hamrick, who also directed two of them, The Book of Liz and Incident at Cobbler's Knob. Sedaris and his sister Amy shared "The Talent Family" credit on the latter's short-lived sketch comedy show Exit 57 while David was a contributing writer.

Controversial remarks about China

In July 2011, Sedaris published a piece in The Guardian newspaper entitled "Chicken Toenails, Anyone?"[33] which, due to its negative depictions of Chinese and exotic Chinese foods, was criticized in the San Francisco Chronicle[34] and the Village Voice[35] for what was characterized as its cultural insensitivity toward the Chinese and their history of famine.

Works

Story and essay collections

Articles

The New Yorker

He has contributed almost 40 essays to The New Yorker magazine and blog,[37] including:

Other articles/Unpublished

  • "I Brake for Traditional Marriage" – 2010 a heterosexual perspective of California's repeal of Proposition 8
  • "The Poo Corner" – Public defecation in department stores

Audio recordings

Episodes of This American Life featuring Sedaris

References

  1. ^ Sedaris, David. "Introduction" to Sedaris, David, ed. Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005. ISBN 0-7432-7394-X. p. 1-7.
  2. ^ "BEST SELLERS: April 6, 1997", The New York Times, 1997-04-06. Retrieved on 2007-10-07.
  3. ^ "PAPERBACK BEST SELLERS: December 22, 2002", The New York Times, 2002-12-22. Retrieved on 2007-10-07.
  4. ^ "BEST SELLERS: June 11, 2000", The New York Times, 2000-06-11. Retrieved on 2007-10-07.
  5. ^ a b "BEST SELLERS: June 20, 2004", The New York Times, 2004-06-20. Retrieved on 2007-10-07.
  6. ^ "BEST SELLERS: July 6, 2008", The New York Times, 2008-07-06. Retrieved on 2008-07-01.]
  7. ^ a b c d Hambrick, Greg. "David Sedaris is Taking Notes", Charleston City Paper, 2007-10-03. Retrieved on 2007-10-07.
  8. ^ a b c d Isaac, Mike. "David Sedaris announces new book release", Paste, 2007-09-20. Retrieved on 2007-01-08.
  9. ^ a b Releases worth a bookmark. September 8, 2010. Retrieved on 2010-08-09.
  10. ^ Lyall, Sarah. "What You Read Is What He Is, Sort Of", The New York Times, 2008-06-08. Retrieved on 2008-06-09.
  11. ^ Sedaris, David (2006). "'Dix Hill', p. 90". Naked (1 ed.). London: Abacus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_(book)#Dix_Hill. Retrieved 09-02-2010. 
  12. ^ "TNR". http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070319&s=heard031907. 
  13. ^ "TNR". http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070319&s=heard031907&c=2. 
  14. ^ ": : a n t o n e l l a g a m b o t t o - b u r k e w e b : : c r i t i q u e : :". http://www.antonellagambotto.com/NonfictionReviewSedaris.htm. 
  15. ^ "Amazon.com: Me Talk Pretty One Day: Books: David Sedaris". http://www.amazon.com/Me-Talk-Pretty-One-Day/dp/0316776963. 
  16. ^ a b Lafreniere, and Steve "Amy and David Sedaris", Index Magazine, 2001. Retrieved on 2007-10-09.
  17. ^ Moore, Jina. "Sister in a Glass House", The Boston Globe, 2004. Retrieved on 2009-03-24.
  18. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ8j6C2JXH4
  19. ^ a b c d Marchese, John. "He Does Radio And Windows", The New York Times, 1993-07-04. Retrieved on 2007-10-07.
  20. ^ St. John, Warren. "Turning Sour Grapes Into a Silk Purse", The New York Times, 2004-06-06. Retrieved on 2007-10-07.
  21. ^ "Sedaris and Crumpet the Elf: A Holiday Tradition", NPR.org. Retrieved on 2007-10-08.
  22. ^ Richards, Linda. "David Sedaris", January Magazine, June 2000. Retrieved on 2007-10-09.
  23. ^ Fleming, Michael. "'Wave' duo pilot cable; Wang's 'Pretty' deal", Variety, 2001-04-05. Retrieved on 2007-10-07.
  24. ^ Tyrangiel, Josh. "10 Questions For David Sedaris", Time, 2004-06-21. Retrieved on 2007-10-07.
  25. ^ Glass, Ira. Chicago Public Radio pledge drive, 2006-03-24.
  26. ^ Heard, Alex. "This American Lie: A midget guitar teacher, a Macy's elf, and the truth about David Sedaris", The New Republic, 2007-03-19. Retrieved on 2008-06-15.
  27. ^ Balk, Alex. "David Sedaris May Sometimes Exaggerate For Effect!", Gawker.com, 2007-03-14. Retrieved on 2007-08-07.
  28. ^ Villalon, Oscar. "Public's taste for nonfiction has publishers playing fast and loose with labels", San Francisco Chronicle, 2007-04-03. Retrieved on 2007-08-07.
  29. ^ Why Does David Sedaris Keep Changing the Title of His Book? The Man Himself Explains New York Observer. February 21, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-10-17.
  30. ^ Binghamton University to hold second Fall commencement
  31. ^ "Meet David Sedaris". BBC Radio 4. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rp3fg. 
  32. ^ "Meet David Sedaris". BBC Radio 4. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011tzjc. 
  33. ^ David Sedaris: Chicken toenails, anyone?, The Guardian, 2011-7-15. Retrieved on 2011-7-30.
  34. ^ Yang, Jeff. "David Sedaris Talks Ugly About China", San Francisco Chronicle, 2011-78-29. Retrieved on 2011-7-30.
  35. ^ Marx, Rebecca. "David Sedaris: Not a Fan of Chinese Food", Village Voice, 2011-07-18. Retrieved on 2011-07-30.
  36. ^ Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary. Amazon.com
  37. ^ "Contributors - David Sedaris". The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/david_sedaris/search?contributorName=david%20sedaris. Retrieved 2011-03-09. 
  38. ^ 3. This American Life
  39. ^ 4. This American Life
  40. ^ 6. This American Life
  41. ^ 23. This American Life
  42. ^ 27. This American Life
  43. ^ 28. This American Life
  44. ^ 35. This American Life
  45. ^ 47. This American Life
  46. ^ 49. This American Life
  47. ^ 52. This American Life
  48. ^ 57. This American Life
  49. ^ 60. This American Life
  50. ^ 67. This American Life
  51. ^ 73. This American Life
  52. ^ 82. This American Life
  53. ^ 87. This American Life
  54. ^ 97. This American Life
  55. ^ 99. This American Life
  56. ^ 104. This American Life
  57. ^ 136. This American Life
  58. ^ 137. This American Life
  59. ^ 141. This American Life
  60. ^ 148. This American Life
  61. ^ 154. This American Life

External links

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Ian Frazier (1997) · The Onion (1999) · David Sedaris (2001) · Christopher Buckley (2004) · Jon Stewart, Ben Karlin and David Javerbaum (2005) · Alan Zweibel (2006) · Joe Keenan (2007) · Larry Doyle (2008) · Ian Frazier (2009) · Steve Hely (2010) · David Rakoff (2011)

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