David Sedaris live is just as funny as his books
PAYING to hear an author spend nearly an hour reading from his published works might seem like you are not getting your money’s worth.
But not when that author is David Sedaris.
For an hour at the Singapore Writers Festival last Saturday, the American essayist and master of satire regaled the crowd with funny observations about love and life.
The sold-out show saw him read from “Your English Is So Good”, a semi-autobiographical essay from his latest collection, Calypso (2018), whose narrator deviates from the usual script while talking to cashiers and hotel counter staff; “The Ones That Got Away”, a piece where he (unwisely) asks his partner Hugh Hamrick how many people he has slept with; and the darkly comic “Just A Quick Email”, from Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls (2013), where a woman called Ronda writes an e-mail to her paraplegic sister.
Asked by a member of the audience if he enjoyed reading his books out loud – Sedaris’ recording series on BBC Radio 4, Meet David Sedaris, involves him doing just that – he said: “If I lost my voice, I might lose my will to write.
“Reading out loud is really the laziest form of show business,” he added, to much laughter from the audience.
When he returns to his hotel room while on tour, he often re-writes his work based on the audience’s reactions.
“I learn a lot from the audience. It’s actually me being paid to use the audience,” said Sedaris, who was speaking in Singapore for the first time; he was participating in the ongoing Singapore Writers Festival, which concludes on Sunday.
The 61-year-old author’s books have been translated into 25 languages and there are more than 10 million copies in print.
Sedaris is nothing if not self-deprecating, recalling that there are people who think he is a woman when they hear him narrate his own audio books.
One teacher told him that she made her students listen to them, only to have one of them tell her: “I didn’t like it at all. Who I feel sorry for is that old lady.”
Writer Anita Thomas, who attended the talk but declined to give her age, said: “What struck me was how quickly he answered the questions with acerbic wit. It was not so different from what he was reading.” – The Straits Times/ Asian News Network