Last night I attended “An Evening with David Sedaris.”
Without question, he's a storytelling genius. And it was a
treat being in the audience as he made his stories come alive.
The majority of the performance was Sedaris reading selected
stories … a stack of papers in his left hand … a pencil in his right.
“When the audience laughs, I make notes. And when the audience coughs, it’s like they’re throwing skulls at you. They’re telling you that if this was on the page, they would be skimming now. At the end of the night I’ll lay my story out on the hotel bed and look at my notes, and I’ll notice the flow of the laughter. I want there to be a rhythm to it. I want it to be like a roller coaster that the audience is strapped into.”
He didn’t say this last night … it was one of the quotes I
found this morning, along with:
“The danger is writing something that just stops, instead of something that ends.”
“You need to be in the world and you need to be engaged with the world. It’s my job to collect jokes. It’s my job to collect startling images. And so when I’m out in the world, I’m at work. And I’m a professional.”
“You need to do the best that you can do, and then you need to take the best that you can do and you need to rewrite it, and rewrite it, and rewrite it.”
If he is appearing in your area, grab a ticket. You won’t be
disappointed.
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David Sedaris (1956-) is an American humorist and
essayist best known for his sardonic autobiographical stories and
social commentary, which have appeared National Public Radio and in numerous
best-selling books including “Barrel Fever” and his first New York Times Bestseller
“Naked.” He has contributed over 40 essays to The New Yorker magazine
and blog.
