Dear Diary ... I have a secret

BOOK REVIEW Sedaris, and a little rawer, it is all the more engaging.

A typical entry from 1978 finds him homesick, and stuck between the sexual advances of a co-worker in one job and the evangelical advances of his boss in another: “I want to be with my friends,” he writes, “not going to church with John or staring down a dildo collection at Tom’s.”

Even the darkest events offer material for trademark Sedaris turnarounds. Shortly after 9/11, a saleswoman in a Parisian sofa showroom launches into a terrified 20-minute monologue about the dangers unleashed by the “War on Terror”: “They’ll poison the earth and the water and there’ll be chaos and rioting and we’ll all die,” she tells them. “I understood her fear,” Sedaris records, “but is that really the way to sell a sofabed?”

Sedaris fans will not be surprised to know that he can do darkness and profundity as well as humour. Theft by Finding is full of all three, but what makes it so good is Sedaris’s gift for sidling up them all from the least expected angle. Success, when it finally comes, is all the more satisfying for knowing what it took Sedaris to get there but, whatever else you might say about him, you cannot accuse Sedaris of earnestness.

Only he could experience his breakthrough moment as being recognized by a drug dealer delivering pot to his apartment: “I was so flattered,” the diary records. “I mean, here he was, a big-time pot dealer, and he wanted my autograph?” Or record his hard-won sobriety with this two-sentence entry: “Today I saw a one-armed dwarf carrying a skateboard. It’s been 90 days since I’ve had a drink.”

By the time these moments came, I was ready to cheer but, of course, I was too busy laughing.