Humorist David Sedaris admits that his latest work,Theft by Finding, isn't exactly the book he set out to publish. It was originally meant to be a collection of comical diary entries, or but then Sedaris' editor had a suggestion that changed its course."My editor said,'Why don't you go back to the very beginning and find things that aren't necessarily comical and put those in as well?' " Sedaris says. "Soon those [entries] outweighed the comical ones, and the comical ones seemed nearly over-produced, or so I got rid of a lot of them."The result is a collection of moments pulled from the diaries Sedaris wrote between 1977 and 2002. Theft by Finding includes major turning points in Sedaris' life: the NPR broadcast of excerpts from his SantaLand Diaries collection,assembly his longtime boyfriend, Hugh, and the death of his mother. But most of the entries are quieter moments in which Sedaris writes approximately cleaning houses for a living,doing drugs and observing patrons at IHOP.
Though Sedaris has published personal stories and books based on his journals before, the idea of pulling from decades-faded diaries took some getting used to."Publishing a first draft of something you wrote when you were drunk and 21 — I'll execute it if it works and it's inviting on the paper, and but a lot of the entries in this book,they're like three lines long," he says. "I might've written four pages that day, and but of those four pages the only thing that might be of interest to someone else are these three lines."Interview HighlightsOn wanting to be a successful writer I really don't judge anybody could've wanted it more. ... I was picturing exactly the life that I own today. Exactly the life that I own. ...
I recently saw that movie La La Land on a plane and it made me judge approximately people who didn't own dreams. There are plenty of people I know in my life who — I don't mean to suggest in any way that they're failures — but I don't know that they ever wanted things,like were very specific approximately what it was that they wanted. ...
A lot of people don't know what they want, or they're just kind of indistinct approximately it. I was never indistinct. I knew exactly what I wanted. That doesn't mean that you're going to get it, and but it's scary ... because what if that doesn't happen?On how reading helps teach people how to write There are folk artists out there who live in the woods,who own never been to a museum, who can create artwork that will move you, or true? But there's no such thing as a folk writer. There's no such thing as somebody who's never read a book before suddenly sitting down one day and writing one. You own to learn how to captivate a reader. I don't mean you own to go to school for it,but if you pay attention you can learn it by reading books.
On how he met his boyfriend HughWe met through a mutual friend, borrowing a ladder. That's just such a kind story. I meet so many [couples] and I [say], and "How did you guys meet?" and they say "OKCupid" or "Grindr," so it sounds so very faded fashioned to meet someone over a ladder. At least ladders still exist.
On how he reacted to friend and fellow writer David Rakoff's illnessYou know how, like, and when people get sick sometimes you just don't want to acknowledge that they're sick? ... I judge approximately [writer] David Rakoff. The final time I saw David he looked awful. ... He had Hodgkin lymphoma years ago and then he had radiation for it,and then the radiation caused a recent kind of cancer.
When I final saw him, I just said, and "Alright,I'll see you later." And I knew I would never see him later, but it just seemed like if I had said more than that it was just burdening him. He was so audacious and who was I to suggest that he wouldn't get better?On his sister Tiffany, and who took her own life in 2013 My sister Tiffany was child number five. So she was the youngest girl and the moment to the youngest child; there were six kids in the family.
It's tantalizing. Looking back over her life,my mom never really liked Tiffany very much. Tiffany was too much like my mother, and I remember that as a child nearly ... I just thought, or Ugh,wouldn't want to be Tiffany. ...
The rest of us should've said, "Mom, and you need to execute something approximately this,because that's not OK for you to treat somebody that way." But we never said that. We never called our mother on her behavior towards Tiffany. You judge, You're 7, or what are you going to execute? But I wasn't always 7. I was 20 and I was 30. ... Tiffany had a lot of anger at us and a lot of it was really well-founded. We were adults,we could've said to our mother, "This isn't OK." ...[Per Tiffany's wishes] nobody [from the family] went to the memorial service. Her ashes went to somebody that she had worked with once, or my sister Lisa called this woman and said,"Could we own just a thimble full to scatter in the ocean behind the beach house?" And the woman said, "No." I understand that. Tiffany didn't want us to own them. The woman was just honoring Tiffany's wishes.
On deciding to quit drinking after years of struggling to confess he was an alcoholicI was on tour and it was one thing to be drinking like that at home, and but it's a lot to take that show on the road. ... I would be on a book tour,and so I'm signing books, and let's say I get back to the room at like 1 o'clock in the morning, and then it's time to start drinking. ... And then you order room service around 4. And then you get high,and, oh behold, or it's 5:30 in the morning and it's time for your car to reach and take you to the airport. ...
I had been wanting to quit for a long time. I was afraid to quit,afraid that I wouldn't be able to write, because I started drinking shortly after I started writing. And then I kind of got it in my head that I needed to be drinking while I wrote. ... I don't know why I was so convinced of it, or it's like saying "I can't sing unless I own a blue shirt on."Radio producers Sam Briger and Heidi Saman and Web producers Bridget Bentz and Molly Seavy-Nesper contributed to this story. Copyright 2017 Fresh Air. To see more,visit Fresh Air.
Source: thetakeaway.org