The Tamesis
“I never sat down and thought, Oh, I’m going to write a book. Never,” David Sedaris told me.
We sat in his publisher’s office on the first real spring afternoon of the year. He has his legs crossed, lost in thought, wearing gray Comme des Garçons pants. “I don’t have anything to say about anything,” he added.
Yet he has written a dozen books—the latest of which, This land and its people, The book was released this week by Little, Brown, his longtime publisher. In the book, in typical Sedaris fashion, he meanders through topics as diverse as meeting Pope Francis (Conan O’Brien’s wife was “the most perfectly dressed person” for the occasion) and maximizing his Duolingo points (Junior is his favorite character, “but only in German”). One article even told the story of his secret marriage to long-term partner Hugh Hamrick.
“Usually it’s a title that brings everything together,” he said. “So the title does that here because all I have to do is write about anyone and put them in one place.”
Of course, he greatly underestimated the subtle thematic connections that held the entire series together: legacy, death, what the body can and cannot do over time. Sedaris dismissed the theory unconvinced. He said these are just things people start to notice as they get older, and he is one of the great observers we have alive. “If I were awake, I would be making judgments,” he said.
But as the new edition comes out, perhaps he will forgive my urge to talk about something big: namely, his legacy. To what extent did his works penetrate the minds of a generation of comic writers? One day I said it beautifully Too young to listen Santaland Diary It can’t be overstated that he sits in the back of his parents’ minivan every December — and even today, more than 30 years after his first post, people are still singing his praises on TikTok. In a social media video, when asked about the funniest book they had ever read, authors Coco Mellors, Rob Franklin and Orlando Whitfield all responded: “Anything by David Sedaris.”
“David Sedaris was the voice of my entire pre-teen and teenage years,” content creator and Teffy Lecture host Tefi Pessoa told me. “He made me feel like it wasn’t crazy to think the world was bigger than where I was from, and that wanting more was nothing to be ashamed of. I really think subconsciously I moved to New York because of his books. I really do!”
Sedaris was born in New York but grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, one of six siblings. In his early works, he told stories of his childhood – his old age in Greek “YaYa”; his mischievous sister Amy, who later became famous as an actress and comedian. “Even when I was a teenager,” he wrote in the introduction to the 2020 series, The best of me, “I wouldn’t trade my parents for anyone else’s parents, and the same goes for my siblings.”
His breakthrough success began in public broadcasting, when this american life‘s Ira Glass discovered him at a club in Chicago and began incorporating him into her plans – first wild roomThen morning edition. 1992, Sedaris’ article “The Santa Claus Diary”,“A series of snaps from his days as a Christmas elf at Macy’s took the country by storm and earned him his first two-book contract. Almost overnight, he went from making ends meet by doing odd jobs to publishing best-selling books.
