David Sedaris!

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a reading by David Sedaris, one of my favorite living authors. I’ve seen him read live before, and I will take every opportunity I ever have of seeing him read live again. Before the show, he walked right past me in the lobby and it was all I could do to stop myself from throwing my arms around him and telling him that I wanted to wrap him up and put him in my pocket. Better to be escorted out by security after the reading, I thought.

If you’re not familiar with his work, go now, run, and download any and all episodes of This American Life that he’s contributed to. Then go and get some of his audiobooks. Normally, I would suggest the print version, but there’s nothing quite like listening to David Sedaris read his own work (see also: David Rakoff, Tina Fey, and Mindy Kaling). His cadence and delivery will have you in tears of laughter, just as I was last night.

This is a good one, too. His live recordings are the best.

I managed to snag a front row ticket and was seated about ten feet away, which was awesome. Mr. Sedaris read some essays from his upcoming book, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, the title of which is taken from a tale of an excruciating conversation in Greek by the author, who speaks very poor Greek. He also read a few of his diary entries. I love when he does this. He regaled us with the story of telling a Willie Nelson joke to a ticketing agent at the airport and it had me laughing so hard, I started to feel dizzy. I thought  "Oh, if I pass out and fall out of my chair, that will be so embarrassing."

On every book tour, David Sedaris recommends a book to the audience. This time he told us to read The Bill From My Father, by Bernard Cooper (and also everything else by Bernard Cooper). He said from a writing standpoint this book is especially interesting because it’s filled with lots of page-and-a-half essays. David loves this because a 1½-page essay is far more difficult to write than a ten-page essay, and every word in the book is so carefully chosen, but not in a way that makes it precious. He then declared that he will never write anything as fine as Bernard Cooper’s work, which is about the greatest compliment I can imagine receiving from David Sedaris. I immediately put all of Cooper’s works on my reading list.

And then I drove home, chuckling about Willie Nelson all the way.