David Sedaris imagines that if he were publishing his first book, he would be asked to write essays with a particular theme. But the acclaimed American humorist, whose latest book, The Land and Its People, is a collection of essays on a range of topics, says he doesn’t have that much to say about anything.
“Every book is just what happens since the last one,” he says with a laugh. “That’s what this is, shit that happened since the last one.”
Sedaris’ latest Australian tour kicks off in January.
What’s your worst habit?
Picking my nose. It brings me so much pleasure. I don’t do it in public; I know it’s a bad habit. But I don’t drink or take drugs any more, and it’s just so satisfying, especially after a long plane ride or something. My nostrils are really big and I can’t help but think I’ve stretched them out over the years.
What is your greatest fear?
Hugh [partner Hugh Hamrick] and I just went back to Normandy and visited some friends who are in their mid 90s. Two of them are blind and can’t see anything. They can’t read and they can’t watch anything and they have people come and check on them during the day, and they just sit there. They have trouble walking. I think that’s my biggest fear: being enfeebled. Is that a word? Enfeebled. At least I’ll still know where my nose is.
What’s the line that has stayed with you?
“And then they were upon her”, which is the last line of the story The Lottery by American writer Shirley Jackson. We had to read it in high school. It’s such a good story. It ran in The New Yorker in the 1950s. I remember reading it and just being shocked and thinking, ‘Wait, that can’t be’. I read it regularly. It’s about a woman who, at the end of the story, is stoned to death. That last line is just perfection: “And then they were upon her”. I remember Jackson kept a stick of butter next to her typewriter and ate it like a popsicle, a stick of butter every day.
What is your biggest regret?
My mother wanted to take everybody to Disneyworld to stay in a treehouse in 1980; it meant so much to her. I was just a meth addict then. She didn’t know that. Everyone would have been there if it weren’t for me, which would have made her so happy. I was always nice to my mother but meth makes you just this horrible person. It wasn’t like I stayed home because I had to do something important, like I had a job that wouldn’t let me leave. The reason I didn’t go was just because I was doing meth and I needed to be a drug addict. I think about it a lot.
Tell us about your turning point.
I worked for this guy in Raleigh, North Carolina, named Dean, refinishing furniture. Dean was a wonderful guy but he would talk about all the things he was going to do, and he didn’t really do any of them. I saw that in myself. One day, he decided he was going to go to graduate school, and so he went to the university library to look at [courses] and I went with him and I applied to go to college. [It was] mainly because I was living in Raleigh, and all of my friends had left, so I was like the last one in town, and I just hated myself. They would come back to town, and I would just feel so embarrassed.
I wanted to live in New York but I knew that I wasn’t ready, so I applied to the Art Institute of Chicago, which seemed like a good midway point, a good stepping stone to New York. So I went to college and took some creative writing classes, and it just changed everything for me. But it was going to the library with him that day ... and actually doing it instead of just telling myself that I was going to do it that just changed everything for me.
Which artwork or song do you wish was yours?
There’s this little Picasso self-portrait at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and if I could steal one thing from the museum, it would be that. It’s not much bigger than an iPad. I don’t know what it’s called, maybe just self-portrait. But I often tell myself I would be so happy if I owned that. It’s early Cubist. You can still see the figure, it’s not all broken up. He looks in it like he was 20 years old. You can see how shocking it was at the time, what a stir it would have created because nobody painted like that then. You just also see a young man at the beginning of his career who I don’t think would have been surprised if you said to him, “You’re going to have this massive career”.
I bet you anything he would have said, “Yeah, I know” because I don’t think you do what he did tentatively, and I don’t think you do it insecurely. Maybe you’re an asshole about it, you’re so arrogant. I don’t know but I don’t have to like him. I just like the painting itself, though. I would love to own it. I’d like to wake up and look at it.
If you could time travel, where would you go?
I would go to the 1950s in New York City and I would buy so many paintings. I would buy paintings by Philip Guston and Franz Kline; I would buy abstract expressionist paintings. I don’t have to live then, do I? I couldn’t have had a writing career then ... and I couldn’t have lived with my boyfriend, it would have been too dangerous. So I don’t want to live then, I just want to shop then.
David Sedaris is in Canberra on January 14; Perth, January 15; Adelaide, January 16; Hobart, January 17; Sydney, January 18; Brisbane, January 20 and 21; and Melbourne, January 22 and 23.
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