David Sedaris's Career

Who is David Sedaris?

Why did he kill his sister?

Was she the one on My So Called Life?

[QUOTE]Why did he kill his sister?

Just so he could write a book about it.

I thought the essay was wonderful and thoughtful, I still don't understand the uproar. It was way better than most sappy, sentimental, emotionally cloying suicide essays I've read. If I hadn't already been a fan, I would have become one after that.

David Sedaris works as a house cleaner on the side to make ends meet

R6 for real?

Yes R7 for real

OP is obsessed. Seek help, OP. NOW.

R9 David, is that you? Why were you so mean to your sister?!

He’s cleaned houses since his 20s. It’s not like a fall from grace - it’s just a survival job he doesn’t mind doing.

I’d probably prefer sweeping up to being a bank teller or something - -

Did Susan Dey ever comment?

R8 wow...the DL is right again. R11 I'd rather be a bank teller than deal with other people's filth. Just saying. The only person I knew who actually enjoyed getting bacteria underneath her fingernails was my granny, a lifelong housewife, and she's dead now.

What's wrong with being a bank teller R13? I loved working in banking in the 90s. Money is dirty but you also get the brand new clean bills that are sharp as tacks.

He doesn't clean people's homes. He picks litter off of the streets of his neighborhood, and he isn't paid for it. He's got one of those spear-type things and a bag. I think it's a pretty cool thing for a millionaire to do.

It was a good, honest essay. When mentally ill drug addicts kill themselves after years of putting their families through hell, it isn't a Hallmark moment.

My stupid boyfriend loves him.

R16, your stupid boyfriend loves you too.

I lost interest when he wrote the book about his life in Paris. Too smug.

Can anyone post the essay?

His schtick is his kooky, teetering on dysfunctional family. The suicide kind of ruins the illusion. His life is sooo boring (good for him, he’s earned that calm) and not as entertaining fodder.

Let's just say that essay was when he jumped the shark. Nothing since has been amusing or enlightening.

Sad, really.

R19

Now We Are Five

R17 Not really. He just thinks I'm hot and I'm younger.

He's the sort of cerebral neurotic most of us Jews love. I find him delightful, and quite funny.

Augusten Burroughs (justifiably) gets a lot of shit for having sustained a career built on a dysfunctional childhood, a slim talent, and an endless taste for self promotion.

The same could be said for Sedaris, who is (arguably) funnier, but no more substantial or lasting a talent.

He's really indebted to NPR: without his appearances on-air over the years, his essays and stories really suffer without his whole neurotic personna bringing them to life. I didn't even finish reading his last collection.

I've only ever found him occasionally amusing but I really liked this. I can't imagine what the objection would be.

I commented at R21, disappointed. But I should have also mentioned that prior to what I thought of as jumping the shark, I went to many of his readings - small and large venues - and thought he was terrific. I just think he ran out of steam.

I made him and I can break him.

hasn't been funny for ages.

I still don't know who he is? Amy Sedaris brother and brother to a sister who killed herself?

Yada yada yada why should I care? My family has issues just like theirs and frankly I don't need to experience anymore dysfunction. So I really don't get his whole appeal but all I know is the NPR skit.

Terry Gross is also about as riveting as a fresh coat of paint.

^ I agree; not sure what was objectionable about it. OT: Speaking of Augusten Burroughs, I always found him less funny than Sedaris, and seems to try a little too hard.

After his story about being an elf at Macy's, it was all down hill.

As long as he is writing. That's all that matters as far as writers careers go.

When his stories became disgusting I tuned out.

[quote]He doesn't clean people's homes.

He was, in fact, cleaning people's homes before his writing career took off.

Augusten Burroughs (not his real name) has a wild imagination. And in each of his books he like to remind us that he’s 6’3”.

(Or is it 6’4”? I don’t really care, do you?)

That's correct, R35. But not for a very long time and certainly not now, which is what R6 claimed.

The last book of essays was 200+ pages of humblebragging. Some of it was quite funny, but I was worn down by the sheer materialism that seems to permeate everything in his world lately. It's so parvenu.

R36 Thanks, Melania

David Sedaris singing ‘Away in a Manger’ like Billie Holiday, always makes me laugh.

I loved his first few essay collections, but, at some point his essays became mean-spirited, or I started to notice it more. His stories also started to have no arc or point to them; they were just random and meandering. I have no problem with the essay about his sister. While I'm sure that there are two sides to the story, he has a right to tell what he views as his side. He doesnt have to write a hagiography just because his sister died.

Santaland Diaries was amusing. Everything after that was crap.

He’s a gay so I love him

[quote]David Sedaris works as a house cleaner on the side to make ends meet

Are you posting from 1992?

David Sedaris really wants to be funny...he isnt. Augusten Burrows gives me a headache.

His books have been wildly successful. Given his low key life style he likely never has to work again. I liked his stuff in the beginning but as others have said it got rambling and repetitive.

Agree R41. Rumor has it his writing was so bad that after reading his book the sister killed herself. If only he had not shown her the rough draft.

I like almost everything he writes but there was a story about buying clothes in Japan that almost finished him for me.

That thread about his dead sister was eye-opening. Thanks to whomever linked it.

I was hovering near neutral on his writing; I found some of it funny, but most of it tedious. I didn't read the last collection I was gifted. And I always skip past his bits on This American Life (etc) because I can't fucking stand his voice.

We had a recent thread that sort of picked apart Amy and I had been surprised by some of the negative sentiment about her.

The thread about Tiffany didn't clarify how actively culpable Amy really was is Tiffany's destruction, but I can see now why people would think she was as much to blame as David. It's interesting, too, that Amy seemed to nick elements of Tiffany's actual personality for her own public persona (the baking, the rabbits, etc.).

Oh, what I forgot I wanted to say was: I wonder how temperamentally similar Ira Glass is to David. I remember he got in trouble for abusing his dogs and was terrible to women, including his wife, but I'm curious if he's a legit sociopath, as David seems to be.

R48, I read that essay, too, and it did more to turn me off of his writing than anything else. It was pointless, bragging, tone deaf, and had several tangents that led nowhere and were not resolved. It was almost like he wrote it on speed, spewed everything on paper with no regard for structure, and forgot to edit before sending it in. I was disappointed in him, but also the New Yorker, where I read it, because their editors should have insisted on a re-write.

R32 is right.

Tiffany (sister who committed suicide) sounded difficult. However, I am almost 100% sure she had a totally different view of her family than does David Sedaris. I suspect that there are more fractures and factions within the remaining 5 siblings (and Dad) than they'd like to admit. Two people can grow up in the same household and experience 2 different childhoods.

I grew up in a semi-large family, two parents in the house. IMO, 2 children is the most that parents can handle. 3 at the very, very most.

I have enjoyed David Sedaris's writings (Holidays on Ice). I'm pretty sure I have read the NYer article about Tiffany before. I just re-read it and DS comes off as selfish & shallow, IMO.

[italic] Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim [/italic] and [italic] Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk [/italic] are both brilliant. I'm surprised so many here don't appreciate him. I have always found his voice adds an extra dimension, not only his quiet, slow delivery, but his timing and pauses.

He's often someone I've mentioned, when asked that question, if you could invite five living people to a party... I bet in real life he's quite likeable.

I agree that his latest book isn't as good and many of the essays are rambling, but I saw him on tour just a few months ago and he was just as funny as ever. He read us some modern social commentary that had the audience dying. I wish the last book had more content like that.

To me, he just sounds like a bitchy gay man. Can you point out something of his that is actually funny?

“How could anyone purposefully leave us, us, of all people? This is how I thought of it, for though I’ve often lost faith in myself, I’ve never lost it in my family, in my certainty that we are fundamentally better than everyone else. It’s an archaic belief, one that I haven’t seriously reconsidered since my late teens, but still I hold it. Ours is the only club I’d ever wanted to be a member of, so I couldn’t imagine quitting. Backing off for a year or two was understandable, but to want out so badly that you’d take your own life?”

Uhh...is he trying to be funny?

R56, his humor is rooted in his character being a harmless weirdo, so while it might seem like he's being bitchy at first, it kind of falls away the more you read.

R57, that snippet comes across as wistful. The phrasing is slightly facetious, the way you might be if you were trying to keep a bit of distance from a difficult subject.

I couldn't agree more with your first part R58. He's quite self deprecating, and effacing. I find him quite humble really. I agree with your second point as well.

He was looking at land for sale as I passed by, walking to the house for a gas can because I'd run out ofgas about a half-mile away (don'ask,my fault, I thought I could make it to the gas station). He rode me to the house for the can, took me back to the car, waited until it stated. Rather handsome, nice guy. I introduced myself. Only when he'd gone did I connect David Sedaris with, oh god, the writer! I knew the name from reading Me Talk Pretty One Day back in the time.

That's nice of you to share R60. I've imagined and hoped he was nice! I think he is cute as well.

Yeah, he's cute until he speaks. Then he sounds like Gladys Kravitz the First.

Funny R62, but somehow I find his voice to be quite endearing; not as shrill and alarmed as Kravitz's.

Datalounge members always have an issue with successful gays.

If neither Sedaris nor Burroughs are funny, who the fuck is??

I sure as hell am not going to read anything by Chelsea Handler.

Jean Shepherd was hilarious. He was quite the storyteller.

Yoo-hoo, R65! I'm over here in the kitchen marinating a cucumber!

I've only read a few essays by Burroughs and they were interesting. I think he spent half a page talking about someone's lips.

Sedaris I haven't read too much but have seen the Santaland Diaries play (it's at Zachary Scott Theater in Austin every year). It's very very gay!

R68 do you remember the little guy who used to play the elf in the early ‘00s? Martin something?

^^Martin Burke!

Well, this Martin Burke sure looks like an elf.

An EVIL elf.

For me, the funniest essay Sedaris wrote was "Jesus Shaves" in Me Talk Pretty Some Day. One of the few things that make me laugh out loud.

I enjoyed C.O.G. The film version was meh except it did have one scene I’ll admit I thought was hot (Corey Stoll and the largest dildo collection ever!), even though it was intended for be disturbing.

I'm so over creative nonfiction.

r68 yes, he's super cute and EXTREMELY gay.

I haven't read it, but the current issue of Elle magazine has a story on the Sedaris family. Has anyone seen those ads for the Masterclass in writing that Sedaris is promoting over the internet? I think it involves DVDs or such for $90. The ads starting appearing before Christmas and some saw them as stocking stuffers. Has anyone bought them?

David luckily arrived on the scene when being openly gay was new and a novelty. Gay writing could be funny!

His schtick grew tired rather fast, however the good will he coasted on crashed once the sister died and the essay proved so tone deaf.

While I have always loathed him, I do think he'll always have that unsophisticated fan base of well meaning flyover gays who think "good cookies" are made by Pepperidge Farm. They will keep him going.

Sedaris sounds like a car model name.

[quote] While I'm sure that there are two sides to the story, he has a right to tell what he views as his side. He doesnt have to write a hagiography just because his sister died.

I never get this kind of argument. Did anyone ever say he [italic]didn't[/italic] have that right? You've created quite a straw man there.

Sure: he absolutely has a right to tell what he views as his side. And just as equally, people who read his side have the right to make up their minds about him after reading it, and can decide for themselves if he's cold and self-centered and that they're no longer interested in him.

I listened to his reading of his book [italic] Me Talk Pretty One Day [/italic] on a long road trip last year. I was laughing out loud on the freeway.

I love Seasons Greetings to our Friends and Family!! from Holidays on Ice, it is laugh out loud funny as well.

I also dove into that giant previous thread that someone had linked (thank you). It was like wading into a long hostile family weekend. He certainly has the ability to bring up passionate feelings of love and/or hate in people. It was, however, endlessly fascinating.

No one is going to write book after book that every one loves. Well... except Barbara Cartland and Dean Koontz. If he doesn't appeal to you - forget him. If you liked him occasionally, give him time he may win you back.

For me if someone can make me smile and (like a good movie) take me away for a bit I'm all for them. I have not read everything he has written but I have enjoyed the ones I have. He's also a little off-center. Having a touch of that myself, I appreciate him more.

I blame the Botox addiction for his apathy. His writing has a rhythm so it’s easy to binge.

In his book Calypso he has an essay called @the spirit world” where it describes how Amy went to a famous psychic (which sounds like the Long Island medium )and she connected with Tiffany.

A straight friend watched his Masterclass last week having never heard of him and is raving about it.

He’s very 2004. Are any of his new collections of essays worth a read? I think the one where he went to Singapore was the last I checked out. I have zero interest in his animal fiction.

R83, David Sedaris has a botox addiction? Could you enlighten further please?

Even in the new books there are occasional glimmers of his old self but a lot of that are just kind of mean spirited and smug rich-folk-problems observations. In other words, hard to relate to.

I'm a fan of his writing, but he was interviewed on Andy Richter's podcast and came across as a miserable misanthrope.