David Sedaris
Oct. 8th, 2016 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraDavid Sedaris is #25 on the list maintained by the delightful blog Stuff White People Like. (Regrettably, that blog hasn’t been updated in quite some time, from which I must conclude that white people have all succumbed to depression and general angst.)
And it’s true, there wasn’t a single person-of-color in attendance at the David Sedaris reading at Bard College that BB and I attended last night.
Well. There was one. She was an usher. Does that count? I assume Bard College recruits its ushers by promising them free access to events they would otherwise have to dole out $45 to attend -- difficult on a student budget. This usher performed her duties with grace and aplomb, but I noticed when BB and I snuck out – early – that she’d decided to sit this one out with a book. Did not notice the name of the book.
The reading was kind of a mixed bag. I love-love-love Sedaris’s stuff about his family and about his misadventures as a young man with drugs, bizarre jobs, and weird landladies, floating through Raleigh and NYC. But I am meh on the animal adventures.
And I actively dislike what I guess would have to be called Sedaris’s fictions. Last night’s reading, for example, began with a letter to Santa from a kid who was thanking Santa for offing his odious stepfather. No, it’s not the mordant subject matter that turns me off; it’s the obvious pandering to what someone -- the publisher's marketing department? Sedaris himself? -- seems to have decided is the Sedaris Audience. This might be fallout from that decade-old piece in The New Republic in which some ass decided to fact check Sedaris’s memoir stuff. I dunno.
When Sedaris is brilliant, he is very brilliant indeed, and he’s brilliant more often than most people are brilliant. His language is so simple; his juxtapositions, so subversive, so true. (Of course, there is a difference between "true" and "truthful.") You laugh – but guiltily. Part of the appeal of a David Sedaris public event, in fact, is that you're mingling carbon dioxide molecules with other people who, presumably, find the subversive just as hilarious as you do.
His story about slamming the Carnegie Hall stage door on Tiffany’s face – she’s the sister who committed suicide – is just so amazing and the ending is so powerful. Not available online unfortunately, so I can’t point to it and say, See?
But the Q&A at the end of the reading – I guess this is Sedaris’s equivalent of the Inna Gadda Da Vida encore, right? – was kinda lame. I read somewhere that he gathers new material for essays from his own extemporaneous responses to weird audience questions, so I guess they’re useful. To him. But not to me. Plus BB’s squeeze was coming in on the night train. We beat a hasty vamoose.
David Sedaris writes No Photographs! into his contracts. But I got one anyway. For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lifeinroseland. Of the top of his shiny head:
And it’s true, there wasn’t a single person-of-color in attendance at the David Sedaris reading at Bard College that BB and I attended last night.
Well. There was one. She was an usher. Does that count? I assume Bard College recruits its ushers by promising them free access to events they would otherwise have to dole out $45 to attend -- difficult on a student budget. This usher performed her duties with grace and aplomb, but I noticed when BB and I snuck out – early – that she’d decided to sit this one out with a book. Did not notice the name of the book.
The reading was kind of a mixed bag. I love-love-love Sedaris’s stuff about his family and about his misadventures as a young man with drugs, bizarre jobs, and weird landladies, floating through Raleigh and NYC. But I am meh on the animal adventures.
And I actively dislike what I guess would have to be called Sedaris’s fictions. Last night’s reading, for example, began with a letter to Santa from a kid who was thanking Santa for offing his odious stepfather. No, it’s not the mordant subject matter that turns me off; it’s the obvious pandering to what someone -- the publisher's marketing department? Sedaris himself? -- seems to have decided is the Sedaris Audience. This might be fallout from that decade-old piece in The New Republic in which some ass decided to fact check Sedaris’s memoir stuff. I dunno.
When Sedaris is brilliant, he is very brilliant indeed, and he’s brilliant more often than most people are brilliant. His language is so simple; his juxtapositions, so subversive, so true. (Of course, there is a difference between "true" and "truthful.") You laugh – but guiltily. Part of the appeal of a David Sedaris public event, in fact, is that you're mingling carbon dioxide molecules with other people who, presumably, find the subversive just as hilarious as you do.
His story about slamming the Carnegie Hall stage door on Tiffany’s face – she’s the sister who committed suicide – is just so amazing and the ending is so powerful. Not available online unfortunately, so I can’t point to it and say, See?
But the Q&A at the end of the reading – I guess this is Sedaris’s equivalent of the Inna Gadda Da Vida encore, right? – was kinda lame. I read somewhere that he gathers new material for essays from his own extemporaneous responses to weird audience questions, so I guess they’re useful. To him. But not to me. Plus BB’s squeeze was coming in on the night train. We beat a hasty vamoose.
David Sedaris writes No Photographs! into his contracts. But I got one anyway. For
lifeinroseland. Of the top of his shiny head:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2016-10-08 10:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-08 11:51 pm (UTC)I wouldn’t hold an artist accountable for the demographic of their following (assuming there isn’t anything blatantly racist about what they’re producing.) I don’t get Kat Williams at all. It’s not his fault; he’s just doing his thing.
no subject
Date: 2016-10-09 12:23 am (UTC)So he's bald now huh?
I have few regrets, but one of them is not going to see him read at an indie bookstore in Chicago steps away from my place, out of laziness! And in NY everything's so crowded. I'm so curious about the essay you mentioned, where is it?
Incidentally, last night I was at Carnegie Hall. Following are the live observations made to my bro,
Oh, hi there, I just wanted to say a quick hi and tell you that the symphony and Carnegie Hall is one of the weirdest places I've been to. As I write, an hour early to the show since I have no life, I sit between a, let's say extra large man, eating a soup, and "lovey," half of an old couple. His shoulder and arm is practically on mine. Oh, I should mention we're not in the theater yet, just a row of about eight chairs they placed along a rail. It is reminiscent of both the subway (at least I got a seat), the cafeteria at the hospital (slurping sounds), and the pre-menstrual syndrome that afflicts me every month, although I am not on those days.
So far, only septuagenarians and octogenarians accompany me, and a young man dressed for the rain forest, who obviously already freaked me out and I deemed the shooter and/or terrorist. Someone smells. In fact, I'm pretty sure I smelled homeless person.
Woody Allen accents. And all the attendants are African American and seem to have employee-drama anger issues that they keep subdued, like kids who were told to be on their best behavior.
Okay house is open. To be continued...
Talk about CO2. Good show though. I also love Stuff White People Like! I bought it twice (gave one to a Japanese friend). I can't believe he got away with a second version. I bet he could write a third. I'd buy it. But yes, in terms of funny and brilliant (and so endearing!), David is the best. I do have to see him some time.
no subject
Date: 2016-10-09 02:00 pm (UTC)He reads in this part of the Hudson Valley on every tour and recreates the bookstore signing experience, too. So maybe next time he's here, you should come visit me! It's only an hour and a half MetroNorth ride from Grand Central Station.
He said the Tiffany story was the last in a book with eight stories. The first in the book is Now We Are Five. It's a book I either have not read or that has not been published yet.
no subject
Date: 2016-10-09 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-09 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-09 03:56 pm (UTC)Hm. I've been out of the loop since the animal essays. I'll have to binge on the rest some time soon.
no subject
Date: 2016-10-09 06:50 pm (UTC)I was referring more to the lack of diversity at David's reading. But the African American community has been rather anti-gay, too. So David's dealing with a double whammy.
Refrigerator magnets: agreed! I have The Beatles and Star Wars refrigerator magnets - don't get much more white boy than that. I do not, however, have the refrigerator poetry starter kit.
no subject
Date: 2016-10-09 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-10-09 11:16 pm (UTC)I would leave obnoxious doggerel on friend’s refrigerators, assuming they had the good sense to purchase the Sexual Innuendo Extension Set.
Trump: The Shitty Poem
Recordings of foul language germinate
So, yeah, I’ll lose tonight’s debate
My life, my planes, they’ll are real cushy
But I’m so sorry I grabbed her pussy
no subject
Date: 2016-10-10 02:12 pm (UTC)I used to read that blog and crack up especially the Halloween stuff.
no subject
Date: 2016-10-10 03:22 pm (UTC)