September 18, 2001
Contact: Susan Gwynne
(805) 893-2098
e-mail: gwynne-s@sa.ucsb.edu
Best-selling humorist David Sedaris
to read at UCSB
Summary Facts:
- Writer David Sedaris reads his work at UCSB
- Author of bestsellers Me Talk Pretty One Day and Naked
- Acclaimed for his appearances on This American Life and Morning Edition on National Public Radio
- Sunday, October 28
- 7 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
- General: $20/$15, UCSB students: $15/$13
- Tickets/information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535
David Sedaris, one of America’s wittiest and most irreverent voices, will read from his work on Sunday, October 28 at 7 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. Sedaris’ most recent book, Me Talk Pretty One Day, has topped numerous national bestseller lists and earned him raves. A starred review in Publishers Weekly claimed, “Sedaris is Garrison Keillor’s evil twin: like the Minnesota humorist, Sedaris focuses on the icy patches that mar life’s sidewalk, though the ice in his work is much more slippery and the falls much more spectacularly funny.”
Unlike most writers, Sedaris came to prominence reading his work aloud. In 1992 his self-admittedly high-pitched nasal whine brought National Public Radio listeners “The SantaLand Diaries,” his droll tale about working as an elf in New York’s Macy’s. Morning Edition received more mail about that essay than any piece it has ever aired. Offers from film and television came pouring in, but Sedaris continued to work as an apartment cleaner in New York by day, as he could—and still can—write only at night. In 1994 “SantaLand Diaries” ended up as the capstone piece in his first collection, the bestseller Barrel Fever.
A friendship with Ira Glass, host and creator of NPR’s This American Life, has led to Sedaris becoming a fixture on that show. As fellow This American Life star and author of Take the Cannoli Sarah Vowell has said, “[Sedaris] can not only tell a story, but tell a story you’ve never heard.” His material often begins with his large and whacky family, from his Greek grandmother Ya Ya, who cooked meals in what appeared to be witches’ caldrons, to his sister Amy, who comes home for Christmas one year wearing a fat suit just to annoy their body-conscious father. But each essay is centered by his own sardonic point-of-view; Sedaris almost always feels alienated and is more than willing to let the reader know precisely how alienated.
Since Barrel Fever Sedaris has released Holidays on Ice, a collection of Christmas related stories; Naked, which culminates in a visit to a nudist colony, although Sedaris admits he doesn’t like being naked in his own apartment; and Me Talk Pretty One Day, half of which is devoted to his time in France, where he learns that language, and French teachers, too, fight back. “Sedaris brings X-ray vision to this strip search of the human psyche, sparing no one—including himself,” enthuses Entertainment Weekly. “His work is characterized by a brazen candor, a heart of gold, and the sort of blithely sophisticated, loopy humor that might have resulted if Dorothy Parker and James Thurber had had a love child.”
Sedaris and his sister Amy (best known for her Comedy Central show Strangers with Candy) collaborate under the name The Talent Family and write plays produced at La Mama and at Lincoln Center in New York City. These plays include this year’s The Book of Liz, a unusual comedy about a woman with an enchanted cheese-ball recipe who gets a job at a pilgrim theme restaurant thanks to a Ukrainian pal who speaks with a cockney accent. Other Talent Family productions are Stump the Host, Stitches, Incident at Cobbler’s Knob and One Woman Shoe, which won an Obie Award.
David Sedaris is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures. His reading is sponsored by KCBX Public Radio and Borders. Arts & Lectures presented David Sedaris once before in November 1998.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.
Editor: For photos, please call
Susan Gwynne at (805) 893-2098.