“It’s not a skirt. It’s a pair of culottes,” David Sedaris said as he strode onto the stage at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Performing Arts Center Tuesday. He was referring to his own pants, a shimmering bronze garment draping down to his mid-calf. Combined with a dapper white dress shirt, the flamboyant culottes created quite the effect.
The eccentric clothing choice should surprise no one familiar with Sedaris’ work. Over the last 20 years, the essayist has developed into one of the sharpest voices in contemporary humor thanks to a mischievous, often macabre wit and an impeccable eye for detail. He has published nine book-length essay collections and been featured in The New Yorker countless times, as well as contributed regularly on NPR’s “This American Life.”
Though he performs by himself, Sedaris is not a stand-up comedian. He doesn’t take the stage with a microphone in hand, but rather perches behind a podium with a leaflet of pages to read from. The essay format allows Sedaris to jump from his childhood in Raleigh, N.C. to his adult life in France or England, from the Atlantic seashore to an orchard in Oregon. Though he rambles, each Sedaris story always stays coherently connected to a common thread, be it innocence, friendship or love for his family.
Sedaris performed four essays Tuesday. The third essay, a story about the fox who lives in his backyard, evokes quintessential Sedaris. He names the fox Carol, and in Sedaris’ hands a series of innocuous night-time visits from Carol becomes a comical odyssey about a tender friendship developing between the writer and the animal. Carol isn’t the only animal in Sedaris’ yard with a name — he also told about Galveston the hedgehog and Lane and Courtney the toads. These are the details which Sedaris never omits, and which define his sense of humor.
The story culminates in an emotional nighttime stroll — Sedaris and Carol walking together down a country road. Sedaris’ obsessive, doting relationship with this little fox is self-deprecating and droll, but the story of friendship he presents is heartwarming.
The first essay the author read presents a slightly different, less uplifting side. Entitled “The Spirit World,” the story centers around the suicide of his sister Tiffany, while also showing Sedaris at his most bitingly funny.
Sedaris wryly parodied his family, writing about his brother Paul’s adoption of the recent health fad of taking “coffee enemas.” “Up the a— is the only way Paul will take coffee,” Sedaris said in his squeaky, wavering voice.
Sedaris joked about his 93-year-old father’s locker room insecurities, relaying how his dad complains another man in the locker room “undresses me with his eyes,” before Sedaris points out that his father, at this point, would have already been naked.
Like in his other stories, however, Sedaris pivoted seamlessly to more serious subjects, obliquely detailing his strained relationship with his late sister. When a Dutch film crew asked Sedaris what he would ask his sister were she still alive, Sedaris hesitated before answering, “Can I have back the $6,000 I loaned you?” He detailed shutting the door in her face when she tried to come visit him. He admitted he hadn’t spoken to her in years before her death.
And then, seconds later, Sedaris reminds the audience the beach house his family gathers in every summer is called the “Sea-Section,” and the darkness fades.
This is the magic of Sedaris. He jerks his audience from laughter to love to tears, in turns manic and wry and touching. Sedaris shows there is humor even in the smallest toads and hedgehogs. He shows there is humor even in the darkest and most confusing of times.
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