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, his Greek heritage, homosexuality, jobs, education, drug use, and obsessive behaviors, as well as his life in France, London, New York, and the South Downs in England. He is the brother and writing collaborator of actress Amy Sedaris.
The Sedaris family moved when David was young, and he grew up in a suburban area of Raleigh, the second oldest child of six. His siblings, from oldest to youngest, are Lisa, Gretchen, Amy,[11] Tiffany,[12] and Paul ("the Rooster").[13] Tiffany died by suicide in 2013, a subject David discusses in the essay "Now We Are Five", which was published in The New Yorker and included in his 2018 essay collection Calypso.[14]
After graduating from Jesse O. Sanderson High School in Raleigh, Sedaris briefly attended Western Carolina University[15] before transferring to, and dropping out of, Kent State University in 1977. In his teens and twenties, David dabbled in visual and performance art. He describes his lack of success in several of his essays.
While working odd jobs in Raleigh, Chicago, and New York City, Sedaris was discovered in a Chicago club by radio host Ira Glass. Sedaris was reading a diary he had kept since 1977. Impressed with his work, Glass asked him to appear on his weekly local program, The Wild Room.[16] Referring to the opportunity, Sedaris said, "I owe everything to Ira... My life just changed completely, like someone waved a magic wand."[17] 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 purported experiences as an elf at Macy's department store during Christmas in New York.
"Santaland Diaries" was a success with listeners[18] and made Sedaris what The New York Times called "a minor phenomenon." He began recording a monthly segment for NPR, which was based on his diary entries and was edited and produced by Glass, and he also signed a two-book deal with Little, Brown and Company.[16] In 1993, Sedaris told The New York Times he was publishing his first book, a collection of stories and essays, and he 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'."[16]
Me Talk Pretty One Day was written mostly in France, over seven months, and it was published in 2000 to "practically unanimous rave reviews."[21] For that book, Sedaris won the 2001 Thurber Prize for American Humor.[22]
In April 2001, Variety reported 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.[11][23] Wang had completed the script and begun casting when Sedaris asked to "get out of it," after he and his sister worried how their family might be portrayed. 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 reached number 1 on The New York Times Nonfiction Best Seller List in June of that year.[25] 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's next book would be a collection of animal fables;[26] during that year, Sedaris included several animal fables in his US book tour, and three of his fables were broadcast on This American Life.[27][28][29]
In September 2007, a new Sedaris collection was announced for publication the following year.[30] The collection's working title was All the Beauty You Will Ever Need, but Sedaris retitled it Indefinite Leave to Remain and finally settled on the title When You Are Engulfed in Flames.[31][32] Although at least one news source assumed the book would be fables,[citation needed] Sedaris said in October 2007 that the collection might include a "surprisingly brief story about [his] decision to quit smoking," along with other stories about various topics, including chimpanzees at a typing school, and people visiting [him] in France.[31] The book was described as his darkest, as it dealt with themes of death and dying.[33][34]
In April 2010, BBC Radio 4 aired Meet David Sedaris, a four-part series of essays, which Sedaris read before a live audience.[36] A second series of six programs began airing on BBC Radio 4 Extra in June 2011, with a third series beginning in September 2012.[37] In July 2017, the sixth series was aired on BBC Radio 4 Extra. In 2010, he released a collection of stories, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary.[30][31][38] Sedaris released a collection of essays, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, in 2013 and, in 2017, published a collection of his 1977–2002 diaries, Theft By Finding. Also in 2013, the film adaptation of an essay from Naked was released as a feature-length movie, C.O.G.
In July 2011, Sedaris's essay "Chicken Toenails, Anyone", published in The Guardian,[39] garnered some criticism over concerns that it was insensitive towards China and Chinese culture.[40][41]
In 2022, he published Happy Go Lucky, where he reflected on his relationship with his recently deceased father.[48]
Truth of nonfiction work
In 2007, in an article in The New Republic, Alexander S. Heard stated that much of Sedaris's work is insufficiently factual to justify being marketed as nonfiction.[49] 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,[50] while others used the controversy as a springboard for discussing the liberties publishers are willing to take when calling books "nonfiction".[51]
Subsequently, in the wake of a controversy involving Mike Daisey's dramatizing and embellishing his personal experiences at Chinese factories, during an excerpt from his theatrical monologue for This American Life, new attention has been paid to the veracity of Sedaris's nonfiction stories. NPR labels stories from Sedaris, such as "Santaland Diaries", as fiction, while This American Lifefact checks stories, to the extent that memories and long-ago conversations can be checked.[52]The New Yorker already subjects nonfiction stories written for that magazine to its comprehensive fact-checking policy.[53]
The Talent Family
Sedaris has written several plays with his sister, actress Amy Sedaris, under the name "The Talent Family". These include Stump the Host (1993), Stitches (1994), One Woman Shoe, which co-starred David Rakoff (1995)[54] and The Little Frieda Mysteries (1997). All were produced and presented by Meryl Vladimer while she was the artistic director of "the CLUB" at La MaMa, E.T.C. The Book of Liz (2001) was written by Sedaris and his sister, Amy and produced by Drama Dept. at The Greenwich Theater in New York.[55]
The New Yorker
Sedaris has contributed over 40 essays to The New Yorker magazine and blog.[56]
Personal life
Sedaris lives with his longtime partner, painter and set designer Hugh Hamrick. The two met in New York City in 1991 and in 1998, they moved to France together, later relocating to England.[57] Sedaris frequently mentions Hamrick in his stories, and describes the two of them as the type of couple who will not be married.[58][59][60]
Sedaris currently divides his time between Rackham, West Sussex, England, and New York City.[61] In 2013, he purchased a beach house on Emerald Isle, North Carolina; many of the stories in his 2018 collection Calypso are set there.[62]
Sedaris is known for regularly spending hours removing litter from roads and highways near Rackham.[60] Because of this hobby, he is known locally as "Pig Pen"; he also has a waste vehicle named after him.[63][64]
^Moore, Jina (August 15, 2004). "Sister in a glass house". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on November 11, 2020. Retrieved June 2, 2019.
^Weisbecker, Lee (May 23, 2005). "Built from the floor up". Triangle Business Journal. Archived from the original on November 9, 2020. Retrieved June 2, 2019.
^Sedaris, David (October 21, 2013). "Now We Are Five". The New Yorker. Retrieved November 5, 2022.
^Glass, Ira. Chicago Public Radio pledge drive, March 24, 2006.
^Sedaris, David (December 23, 2005). "An Animal Farm Christmas". This American Life. Episode 305. WBEZ. Archived from the original on March 14, 2016. Retrieved January 31, 2016.
^Sedaris, David (February 24, 2006). "Hello Kitty". This American Life. Episode 309. WBEZ. Archived from the original on March 8, 2016. Retrieved January 31, 2016.
^Fedor, Ashley. "2019 Newly Elected Members". American Academy of Arts and Letters. Archived from the original on August 7, 2020. Retrieved January 8, 2020.
^Gutman, Les (March 28, 2001). "A Curtain Up Review: The Book of Liz". CurtainUp.com. Elyse Sommer, CurtainUp. Archived from the original on July 14, 2022. Retrieved July 1, 2022. A production of Drama Dept. ... Opening 3/26/01 Closing 5/20/01 --several extensions, to 6/01/01
Interview with David Sedaris by Wim Brands, filmed summer 2013 at Sedaris's West Sussex home. 25-minute interview in English with Dutch subtitles, discussing his writing methods.
Go Carolina at the Wayback Machine (archived July 23, 2011), the opening chapter from Me Talk Pretty One Day
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