\n<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aI\u2019ve never sat down thinking, Oh, I\u2019m gonna write a book. Never,\u201d David Sedaris tells me.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re sitting in his publisher\u2019s office on the first real spring afternoon of the year. His legs are crossed in contemplation, draped in gray Comme des Gar\u00e7ons pants. \u201cI don\u2019t have that much to say about anything,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
And yet he has written more than a dozen of them\u2014the latest of which, The Land and Its People,<\/em> is out this week from his longtime publisher Little, Brown and Company. In it, in typical Sedaris fashion, he meanders through topics as disparate as meeting Pope Francis (Conan O\u2019Brien\u2019s wife was \u201cthe perfectly dressed person\u201d for the occasion) and maximizing his Duolingo score (Junior is his favorite character, \u201cbut only in German\u201d). One essay<\/a> even tells the story of his secret marriage to his longtime partner, Hugh Hamrick.<\/p>\n \u201cUsually it\u2019s a title that can pull it all together,\u201d he says. \u201cSo the title did that here, because all I had to do is write about any person and put them in a place.\u201d<\/p>\n He is, of course, dramatically underselling the subtle thematic links pulling the collection together: legacy, mortality, what the body can and cannot do over time. Sedaris waves away this theory with an unconvinced hand. These are just the things one starts to notice with age, he suggests\u2014and he is one of our great living noticers. \u201cIf I\u2019m awake, I\u2019m judging,\u201d he has said<\/a>.<\/p>\n But on the occasion of this new release, perhaps he\u2019ll forgive my urge to talk a little about the bigger picture: namely, his legacy. The degree to which his writing has infiltrated the psyche of a generation of comic writers who read Me Talk Pretty One Day<\/em> too young and listened to Santaland Diaries<\/em> in the back of their parents\u2019 minivan every December cannot be overstated\u2014and even now, more than 30 years after he was first published, people are still singing his praises on TikTok<\/a>. Asked in one social media video<\/a> about the funniest book they\u2019d ever read, authors Coco Mellors, Rob Franklin, and Orlando Whitfield all replied, \u201cAnything by David Sedaris.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDavid Sedaris was a voice I carried with me all through my preteen and teenage years,\u201d content creator and Tefi Talks<\/em> host Tefi Pessoa tells me. \u201cHe made me feel like it wasn\u2019t crazy to think the world was bigger than my hometown, and that wanting more wasn\u2019t something to be ashamed of. I genuinely think I subconsciously moved to New York because of his books. I really do!\u201d<\/p>\n Sedaris was born in New York but grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, as one of six siblings. In his early works, he told the stories of his childhood\u2014his senile Greek \u201cYaYa\u201d; his naughty sister Amy<\/a>, who would become famous in her own right as an actor and comedian. \u201cEven when I was a teenager,\u201d he wrote in the introduction to his 2020 collection, The Best of Me,<\/em> \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have traded my parents for anyone else\u2019s, and the same goes for my brothers and sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n His breakout success began on public radio, when This American Life<\/em>\u2019s Ira Glass discovered him in a Chicago club and started putting him on his programs\u2014first The Wild Room<\/em>, then Morning Edition<\/em>. In 1992, Sedaris\u2019s essay \u201cSantaland Diaries<\/a>,<\/em>\u201d a set of dispatches from his time working as a Macy\u2019s Christmas elf, swept the nation and earned him his first two-book deal. Almost overnight, he went from subsisting on gig work to publishing bestsellers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n