SANTA CRUZ — More than 30 years after making his NPR debut and publishing his first essay collection, David Sedaris has no shortage of things to write about or humorous ways to describe them. The best-selling author and essayist’s writings are so revered that he can even go on tour and sell out venues by reading his works without resorting to just playing, or rather reading, the hits.
“If I were to read things from a book or to read old things, the audience would think, ‘God, haven’t you done anything since we saw you three years ago?’” he said in an interview with the Sentinel.
Thus, Sedaris’ current tour consists of essays he recently wrote but has not yet published, inspired by his travels and other topics. His sardonic wit and way with words will be front and center when he stops by UC Berkeley, Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa this May.
Sedaris grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, as the second oldest of six siblings — including his sister Amy, a comedienne and actress with many credits — and his upbringing is a frequent subject in his writing. In the early ’90s, future “This American Life” host Ira Glass saw Sedaris reading a diary he had kept since 1977 at a Chicago club and asked him to appear on his local radio show “The Wild Room.” That led to his first NPR appearance in 1992, where he read his essay “The Santaland Diaries” about his experiences working as a Christmas elf at Macy’s iconic Herald Square location in New York City.
The reading was a success, even going so far as to be adapted into a one-act play at New York’s Atlantic Theater Company with Timothy Olyphant in the starring role. It also launched Sedaris’ writing career, propelling him to write 11 essay collections, including “Barrel Fever,” “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim,” “Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls,” “Calypso” and “Happy-Go-Lucky.” Many of his books have topped the New York Times Best Seller list, and he is also the recipient of two Lambda Literary Awards and two Audie Awards for his audiobook readings.
Sedaris’ newest book, “Pretty Ugly,” is his first children’s book. Illustrated by the late Ian Falconer, it tells the story of an ogre girl whose attempts to gross out her family backfire so she becomes stuck with a face that her ogre peers consider hideous: that of a picturesque, rosy-cheeked human girl.
The story was actually first published in 2001 in Francoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman’s comic book anthology “Little Lit: Strange Stories for Strange Kids.” Mouly, the art director for the New Yorker, recruited well-known illustrators such as Jules Feiffer, Crockett Johnson, Barbara McClintock and Maurice Sendak. She paired Sedaris with Falconer, best known nowadays for his “Olivia” series and for creating the covers for 30 New Yorker issues, who also previously worked with Sedaris on the set design for “The Santaland Diaries” and later did the illustrations for Sedaris’ short story collection “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk.”
The story was republished in February as a standalone book by Mouly’s Toon Books. Sedaris said he never expected to write a children’s book, as he never had any interest in it, but it took him five minutes to write the story.
Falconer never got to see the story’s wider publication as he died in 2023. Sedaris praised him as a brilliant artist and loved the way the book turned out, despite the story and illustrations being worked on separately.
“I handed (the story) over to Ian, and he came up with the drawings and I didn’t question them,” he said. “We just completely left each other alone, and it worked out great. I don’t know what the experience is like for other people — I don’t know if there’s a big back and forth between the illustrator and the author — but there have been times in my life when I’m working with a professional, and I figure this is what they do for a living, and they’ve made a name for themselves, and I’m certainly not going to tell them what to do, and that was the case with Ian.”
Sedaris hasn’t gotten many reactions from kids to “Pretty Ugly,” except for the goddaughter of his partner Hugh Hamrick who said she wanted to have it read to her over and over again.
“That seems like a pretty good endorsement,” he said.
Apart from that, children’s books are a new world for Sedaris.
“As a rule, I’d say it’s a pretty bad idea to write books for people that don’t have any money,” he said. “It’s not like children can go out and buy the books themselves, so I guess the real audience are parents and grandparents.”
Sedaris will not be reading from “Pretty Ugly” on his tour, nor will he read from any of his other published books. Instead, he will be reading from essays he recently wrote.
“Some of them I wrote a few months ago, and then I just put them in a file called ‘Spring 2024,’” he said. “I’m looking back on them and saying ‘Hmm, OK, this ending isn’t strong enough’ or ‘Wow, this really works’ or ‘Maybe I need to scrap this.’”
Sedaris said the process allows him to test out and tinker with his essays if they ever do get published.
“I had an essay in the New Yorker in January,” he said. “It’s one of the ones I brought with me on my fall tour, so I read it out loud, I don’t know, 30 times? Every night, I would change it, even if I was just changing a word or two, but I had the audience in front of me, so I thought, ‘Why would I waste this opportunity to discover if this word works better than this one?’ By the time I gave it to the New Yorker, the rewriting was really minimal.”
Most of the essays Sedaris is reading on his tour are about places he has visited, such as France, England, Kenya, Tanzania and Pakistan. He said these essays have taught him why he does not write for travel magazines.
“Travel magazines, you can never say anything bad about a place because the hotels and the restaurants and such are the advertisers, so they simply don’t allow it,” he said.
Thankfully, Sedaris had positive experiences in all the places he visited, especially Pakistan.
“I’ve never been to Disneyland, but it would really have to work to outdo Pakistan for the title of ‘The Friendliest Place on Earth,’” he said. “It was insane how friendly people were, how welcoming they were, complete strangers stopping you over and over and over in the street: ‘Can we get a picture together?’ ‘Can you talk to my wife on the telephone?’ … They don’t get any visitors, so when you bother going there, they’re just so friendly and honored.”
In addition, Santa Cruz audiences might hear some essays Sedaris had written during the previous tour alongside stories he wrote for this tour.
“Depending on how the new stuff goes, I might find myself reading things from the last tour at this show as well, but none of it will have been published in a book,” he said.
BAY AREA TOUR DATES
MAY 5: BERKELEY | CAL PERFORMANCES, UC BERKELEY
MAY 6: SANTA CRUZ | SANTA CRUZ CIVIC AUDITORIUM
MAY 7: SANTA ROSA | LUTHER BURBANK CENTER FOR THE ARTS