20 Questions: David Sedaris

Everyone's favorite essayist on the absurdities of life—and why he still hates to be nude.

A couple days after I spoke with iconic essayist David Sedaris about his new book, The Land and Its People, a postcard—the first I’ve received in maybe 20 years—arrived from him in the mail. It was a stylish piece of John Derian stationary, one side of which bore an illustration of mushrooms while on the other he thanked me for the chat and provided an unsolicited recommendation for a shop in my city that he described as “not the best...but they have nice things.”

The king of wry and often mentioned as peer to other great essayists and humorists of the past 40 years, Sedaris is unparalleled in many realms, including finding amusement in the most improbable of scenarios—like, say, a “not the best” store in a city that’s not his own. In The Land and Its People, he also finds it in purchasing underwear while reflecting on his father’s death. In his disdain at having to care for his partner following surgery. In Duolingo and throat cancer. In strategizing how to best eat a truck tire.

After the release of his latest essay collection, Playboy caught up with Sedaris to run through those unlikely joys.

One of your reviewers said that in your new book, the world seems weirder to you than ever. Would you agree with that? Does the world seem weirder to you?

I think so. I don’t think I’m alone in that. I think the world probably seems weirder to a lot of people. The majority of people, I would think. Even if you set aside politics. I mean, five years ago, if you were talking about AI, nobody would know what you were talking about.

What is the hardest thing about writing about your own life?

Gosh, the hardest thing about writing about my own life is I don’t think that I’m interesting, you know? But I have to be interesting for someone to turn the page. So I suppose it’s believing that I’m… on some level, interesting.

What’s the hardest thing about writing about people who are close to you? Because you can be pretty, kind of, gloves-off sometimes.

My stories would be so much richer if I could include certain information that I just can’t include, because it would hurt people’s feelings, or it would expose them. So often I think of what it would be like if we were living in one of those science fiction movies where everybody was dead. Everybody died except me. I would get so much good writing done.

You write in this book about meeting Pope Francis. What was the strangest thing about meeting the Pope?

Meeting Chris Rock. Chris Rock, the night before I met the Pope, there was a dinner. Chris Rock was there at the dinner, and that left me tongue-tied and terribly, terribly impressed—much more than meeting the Pope. I couldn’t believe I was in a room with Chris Rock.

That doesn’t say much for the Pope’s entertainment skills.

No. I mean, I could believe I was in a room with the Pope, but I couldn’t believe I was in a room with Chris Rock.

A lot of your stories involve travel. What have been some of your favorite and least favorite places to visit?

Best place visited… well, Japan. I go to Japan every other year. I go to Tokyo, and that’s just the best place. The worst place was probably… golly. The worst place I’ve visited. Tanzania, probably. It was just really hot and humid and, you know, everybody was just trying to rip you off. Egypt was pretty bad, too. Like in Egypt, everybody’s running a game, you know? And it’s just exhausting. It’s certainly not boring, but it’s really tiring.

In one of your new stories, you talk about learning that your father had lied to you over a series of many years. How did it feel to realize that someone so close to you had lied to you for so long?

I wasn’t surprised, you know what I mean? Like, I knew it was within him to do everything that he did. I could never respond, “I can’t believe you did that.” I could never honestly say that, because I could believe he did everything that he did. What was embarrassing was that I wrote him thank-you letters every year, and I was the only one to do that, and he accepted them. Like, he wanted the thank-you letter, he just didn’t want to give me anything to thank him for.

You’re a comedic writer, but you also deal with some heavy subjects. What’s the hardest thing about writing about these serious things, like grief and loss?

I think it’s probably avoiding clichés and not being sentimental. I think those are the hardest bits. Did you ever read Calvin Trillin? He wrote for years about his wife, Alice, right? She was like, the reasonable one in their relationship, and he wrote about her in book after book, and then she died, and he wrote a book about her dying. And I so admire it, and I read it every year. It’s not sentimental. At no point does he resort to any cliché you’ve ever heard about death. And I just admire him so much for that. The book is good to read just as a masterclass on how to avoid that.

This is your 13th collection. Is there one essay or story over all the years that stands out as your personal favorite?

Gee, I think that changes a lot. I mean, there was an anthology that came out maybe 15 years ago, and it was called This Is My Best. And at that point, I put an essay in there that was from Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim called “Repeat After Me.” And now, if I were to read “Repeat After Me,” I’d be like, oh my God, I can’t believe I did this. So now I would say “H.C. Goodyear,” which is in my latest book, and it’s a story about my friendship with Don Erickson. It’s so hard to write about friendship, but I think I really managed to pull it off. And when I read it out loud—because I’m on this book tour and I often read it—I found two sentences I would cut. But other than that, I feel like I’d be really surprised if I ever wrote anything better than that in my life. I’m already tired of it. You know, I mean, I read it on stage probably 50 times. Ten years from now, I’ll probably read it and be like, ugh, my God, that thing is so bad.

On that note, is there one story or book that you would strike from the record if you could?

Oh, sure. Probably the book Naked, which was my second book. I would strike that from the record. It’s just overwritten. It’s somebody who’s trying too hard, and somebody who’s elbowing you in the ribs. It’s embarrassing. And everything in there is twice as long as it needs to be.

There have been debates over the factuality of certain aspects of your books over the years. When you’re writing about one’s own life, how close should a writer stick to the facts?

As closely as possible. There are people who say you should not be able to write about any time that you’re alone because there’s no one to back it up. Now, we can’t go that far, you know? I mean, when you write for The New Yorker, everything is fact-checked. Like, everything, everything, everything, everything, everything. So I don’t know what else I can do to please people.

Have you ever gotten a negative review that you thought nailed it?

I never read reviews. I don’t think it’s right to read the good ones and not the bad ones.

You don’t read the good ones either?

No.

You’ve expressed a lot of displeasure with the political situation over the past decade. What do you think should be done now?

I think everybody should go to the polls during the midterm, and I think they should vote, and I mean everybody. I blame everything on people who didn’t vote in the last election. People who sat that out for whatever bullshit reason. More than doing something about Trump, something needs to be done about people who sit at home and sit it out, and either feel like it’s rigged, or feel like their vote doesn’t make a difference. I’ve always felt like it’s the least you can do.

Your humor tends to be pretty absurdist. What’s it like to be an absurdist in the era of Trump?

It always just means you’re having a heyday, you know what I mean? It’s just being handed right to you every single day. If you’re looking for absurd…I mean, there are times when you have to really hunt for something, and then there are times when all you have to do is open the newspaper, and this is just one of those times. All you gotta do is open the newspaper.

Is there anything from the news this last year that you thought was particularly hilarious?

Oh, yeah, tons of things. Let’s see… gosh, I mean, the thing is, I was listening to some podcast the other day, and they were talking about things that Trump had done only like four months ago that we’ve completely forgotten about. Sending the National Guard into different cities, you know? I was listening to this podcast, and I thought, oh, right! I would have forgotten all about that. So much has happened, I would have forgotten all about it.

One thing that’s interesting to me in the paper today that I was all caught up in—it’s this guy who’s running for office in Oregon. Or is he just trying to pass a bill? That would make animal cruelty of any kind illegal, so you wouldn’t be able to spray for pests and you wouldn’t be able to hunt or fish. And the article was just saying how Republicans are seizing on this and saying, see, this is how crazy Democrats are. They want to take away your right to hunt and fish. But the guy who’s doing it is not registered with either party, right? So he’s not a Democrat, but then it doesn’t make sense, because he’ll still be painted as one.

You take swipes at people and ideas across the political spectrum. What do you think of the Democrats?

I just get exhausted by the virtue signaling and purity tests. I just find all of that exhausting, and I feel like it hasn’t gotten us anywhere. And I just feel like it’s really important to turn away from that. I mean, isn’t everyone tired of that? The scolding, and the lunacy of renaming schools and concentrating on shit that just doesn’t matter to most people. I mean, I hate the far right and the far left. I hate everybody.

You know Stephen Colbert. What do you think of his show being cancelled and the attacks on Kimmel?

Even though networks can make the case that shows like that lose a lot of money, I don’t think we have any reason to believe them when they say that’s why they’re taking the shows off the air. It seems the shows are disappearing because Donald Trump doesn’t like them, because he doesn’t like being made fun of. And I think it’s kind of naive on his part. You know, the same way that people will ban a book. Like, a school will ban a book, but no kid is getting the idea to transition from a book, you know? It’s such a sweet idea that kids are going to the library and getting their ideas from books. They’re not. They’re getting their ideas from TikTok. And nobody’s watching TV. Very few people watch TV. They watch clips of something on YouTube, but they’re not turning on the TV and running to sit in front of it the way that Donald Trump is. So it’s naive on his part to think that he could ever silence all criticism of him, because hating him is a nice industry. It’s a money-making industry.

Getting back to you, does being funny and having to be “on” all the time ever get tiring?

When I go on a book tour, a lecture tour, that doesn’t bother me any. If you’re around people and it’s your job to entertain them, I do. I can turn it off as easily as I turn it on. But I think it’s called for. If I’m signing books and someone comes up to get a book signed, I completely need to be on, and I completely need to be engaged, and I completely need to be focused on them. They have every right to expect that, and if I don’t deliver that, then I feel like I failed in a really fundamental way.

You’ve done a lot of tours and interviews over the years. Is there any question that you can’t stand?

Yeah. “Are you still picking up trash?” Because I wrote about picking up trash, and I guess the reason it bothers me is, of course I’m still doing it. Do you know what I mean? Like, of course I am. Like, “Are you still walking ten miles?” Of course I am. Unless I’m in a wheelchair—unless you see me in a wheelchair—I’m doing those things. It’s often what people say, like, “Did you pick up any trash in Memphis today?” I just hate that question. So sometimes when people ask, “Are you still picking up trash?”, I’ll just say, “No, I’m a Capricorn,” and then next question.

You wrote about learning to appreciate being naked 30 years ago. Now, three decades on, how do you feel about being naked?

Oh, the same way I felt before I went. I mean, I don’t even like to be naked in the bathtub, if I can help it. You know, I’m completely uncomfortable being naked. I like to be fully dressed at all times. It didn’t work in the long term. You know, just for the time that I was there, it came to work. I stopped noticing other people’s nudity, which meant that I had stopped noticing my own.

Do you have any advice for the young men of today?

Gosh. It’s just tired, old advice, but it’s: get off your phone. I’m the only one paying attention anymore, and all I see are people looking at their phones, so I need something better to notice when I’m noticing things. I worry that it’s just an old-person answer, but I don’t know, I’m 69, so what can I do?