Photo Credit: Hugh Hamrick

David Sedaris

Air dates:
WMHT-TV, Channel 17, Saturday, October 10, 1998, 6:00 pm

Taping was done during his February 26, 1998 seminar and reading.

David Sedaris's sardonic humor and incisive social critique have made him one of National Public Radio Morning Edition's most popular and humorous commentators. Sedaris also is the best-selling author of Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays (1994), a collection of stories and essays based on his experiences working odd day jobs, and his personal misadventures as an elf in a department store in The Santa Land Diaries. His most recent story collections are Naked (1997) and Holidays on Ice (1997) . One of his trademarks, in the words of one Newsweek reviewer, is his "nicely nerdy, quavering voice," and the Washington Post observes that, "On the air, Sedaris's shrewd, wickedly funny pieces prick up your ears; his tart voice never gets lost in NPR's Sargasso Sea of sincerity." Sedaris also writes plays with his sister Amy Sedaris, including "Incident," "One Woman Show" and "The Little Freida Mysteries." New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley asserts, "This brother-and-sister playwriting team has an unparalleled ear for American cultural cliches and an equally fine hand for twisting those cliches into devastating absurdity."

In Naked, David Sedaris's message--alternately rendered in "Fakespear," Italian, Spanish, and pidgin Greek--is the same: pay attention to me.

Whether he's taking to the road with a thief, sorting out the fancy from the extra-fancy in a bleak fruit-packing factory, or celebrating Christmas in the company of a recently paroled prostitute, this collection of memoirs creates a wickedly incisive portrait of an all-too-familiar world. It takes Sedaris from his humiliating bout with obsessive behavior in "A Plate of Tics" to the title story, in which he is finally forced to face his naked self in the mirrored sunglasses of a lunatic. "

This remarkable journey into his own life follows a path of self-effacement and a lifelong search for identity, leaving him both under suspicion and overdressed.

Praise for Barrel Fever. . . "On the air, Sedaris's shrewd, wickedly funny pieces prick up your ears: on the page, Sedaris seems even more accomplished. . ." - Washington Post Book World "A satirical brazenness that holds up next to Twain and Nathaniel West." - New Yorker "Uniquely affecting, Sedaris's stories infest the mind as if they were your own dark memories." - Entertainment Weekly "Original, acid, and wild. . .wacky writing par excellence." - Los Angeles Times "Sedaris ekes humor out of the blackest of scenarios, peppering his narrative with memorable turns of phrase and repeatedly uprising double-edged wit. . .suggesting a caustic mix of J. D. Salinger and John Waters." - Publishers Weekly