THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.165 - DAVID SEDARIS

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

Adam talks with American writer and humorist David Sedaris about foul mouthed children, dead dads, killer cows, giving offence, surprising defecation techniques, and why David might not dislike dogs as much as he thought he did.THIS EPISODE CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE AND DISCUSSION OF TOPICS SOME PEOPLE MAY FIND OFFENSIVE This conversation was recorded remotely on the 28th August, 2021Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell and Becca Ptaszynski for production support.Podcast artwork by Helen GreenRELATED LINKSHAPPY GO LUCKY (A NEW PIECE BY DAVID SEDARIS) - 2021 (THE NEW YORKER) CARNIVAL OF SNACKERY - DIARIES VOLUME TWO by DAVID SEDARIS - 2021 (WATERSTONES)GROWING UP SEDARIS (THE AGENDA WITH STEVE PAIKIN) - 2018 (YOUTUBE)Some good insightful moments in this interview with Canadian journalist Steve PaikinDAVID SEDARIS ON DREW BARRYMORE'S CHAT SHOW - 2020 (YOUTUBE)MASTERCLASS WEBSITE (INCLUDING DAVID SEDARIS INTERVIEW) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how are you doing, podcats? It's Adam Buxton here, reporting to you from a farm track in Norfolk, United Kingdom.

It's around about the middle of October 2021. And it's kind of a dreary evening out here, very overcast. It's getting dark. But I had to wait until it stopped raining before I could convince Rosie that it was a good idea that we go out for a walk. But it's all right now. Sort of fresh. A little bit spookalicious.

It's getting to that time of year, isn't it? It's going to be Halloween in a couple of weeks. And then it's Christmas. Yay! But right now, let me tell you a little bit about my guest. For podcast number 165, which features a rambly conversation with American writer and humorist David Sedaris. Sedaris Facts. David, currently aged 64, grew up, along with his five siblings, in a middle-class suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina. He got his break as a writer when Ira Glass,

who later became the host of NPR's This American Life, saw David reading from his diary at a show in a Chicago club and put him on the radio the very next day. I don't know if it was the very next day, but let's say it was. It wasn't long before David had made a name for himself on the American airwaves as a humorous fellow, and his stories, articles, essays, and diary entries consisting of hilarious and mordant anecdotes and observations about his own life, his friends, his family, and the people he encounters on his travels

have since filled, by my count, 12 published collections and have enabled David to make a living travelling around the world, reading to audiences who wait many hours afterwards for the chance to get a book signed and talk with Mr Sedaris, Sedaris, Seduris. Currently, David and his partner, the artist Hugh Hamrick, spend much of their year living in Sussex, in the south of England, where David follows a regular routine of writing before lunch. Then, in the afternoon and sometimes on into the evening, he picks up litter from the

roads and hedgerows around his home. I spoke to David about his rubbish collecting and the royal recognition he's received for it the first time he appeared on this podcast in 2018. Back then, we were able to record face-to-face in London and compare notes afterwards on being short men, which we both are. But this time, my bout with COVID meant that when it came time to record in late August of this year, 2021, we had to do so remotely.

In the days before speaking with David, I'd been reading Carnival of Snackery, his second volume of selected diary entries, this time covering the years 2003 up to 2020. years, 2003 up to 2020. Also, the day before I spoke with David, I read a piece he wrote for the New Yorker magazine about the last time he visited his father, Lou Sedaris, who died aged 98 in May this year. Lou, a staunch Republican who at one point voted against gay marriage, Republican who at one point voted against gay marriage, had a relationship with his son that was certainly tricky, but provided many funny moments as well as a few painful ones in David's writing over the years. To me, it seems there's strong emotion just below the surface of the New Yorker piece, as I feel there is in so much of David's writing. But, I don't know, maybe I'm just projecting. David seldom, if ever, describes deeper feelings directly, and, as you'll hear, he's certainly not ready to get sentimental about Dad just yet.

If you're able to, I'd recommend that you read the New Yorker piece, which is called Happy Go Lucky, before listening to this conversation. It's not very long, and I think it'll add an extra dimension to your listening experience you should find a link to the piece in the description those of you already familiar with david and the uh scope of the kind of things he does and talks about may not be surprised to hear that this episode contains strong language, dark humour and discussion of incidents and topics that some people may well find offensive.

So, you know, if that doesn't sound like your sort of thing, no problem. See you another time. I'll be back at the end for a little bit more waffle, but right now, with David Sedaris, here we go. Ramble Chat, let's have a ramble chat. We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that. Come on, let's chew the fat and have a ramble chat. Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat. Bye. David Sedaris is connecting to audio. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you, David. Can you hear me?

Yes, very well. Ah, good. Am I doing something wrong? One thing I never did, like i don't have zoom yeah well obviously i guess i do right now but um i didn't ever get it because i just wanted to avoid anything that would call for it so do is there something else i need to do i can would you be okay with me being able to see you? I'm not recording the video. I'm just recording the audio.

How do I do that? Down in the bottom left-hand corner of the Zoom window, and it should say Start Video. Yeah. So if you click on that, there you are. Okay. David, I'm so sorry about the technical shenanigans.

This is exactly the kind of situation I always hope to avoid. And I share your distaste for remote communication, Zoom, et cetera, and would obviously much rather have recorded with you in person. But I got COVID last week. How did you know you got it? I tested for it. I was feeling feeling shit and then i took the test oh you were yeah yeah and sure enough had it i haven't had it yet don't get it i don't recommend it it's lousy even if you're all vaccined up which i am huh i'm a breakthrough infectee

you know i'm getting ready to go on uh yeah you're off to the u.s 70 city tour yeah man i feel like if i get it i'm not going to tell anybody about it and i'm just going to proceed because then you're a pariah you know once you get it yeah and so nobody will have anything to do with you and i've been sitting at home I'm ready to make some fucking money. Exactly. It's horrible being at home. And especially for someone like you, whose whole life is about getting out there and reading your stuff to people. And is this the first set of shows you've done since the beginning of the pandemic? Yeah, I did some book signings, right, you know, remote book signings.

And those worked out fine. And I really welcomed the opportunity just to be around people and talk to people. And I felt fine doing them. You know, I wasn't worried. I'm not a hugger. No. So I was pretty comfortable with not having to touch people. And did you find yourself obsessively sanitizing

no because i feel like it pretty quickly people understood that it wasn't on surfaces you know tell you the truth i can go probably years without washing my hands i mean i take a bath and i do dishes and they get clean enough but i don't ever say you know what i'm gonna go wash my hands even if there's something sticky on them or something i just rub them on a wall or wood or something and it usually takes care of it yeah what about if things fall on the floor are you happy to pick them up and eat them yeah i mean it depends it depends on where i am but where was i the other day and something fell on the ground and i thought well oh it was out in sussex and then i just put it in my mouth but then i thought we have so many slugs this year because of the rain. And I thought slugs crawled all over that ground.

You know, is there any culture that considers slugs a delicacy? I don't know. Gosh, that's a good question. I know hedgehogs like them. Yeah. Are they to be trusted as far as what's good to eat? That's the question, isn't it? I can't imagine they would be.

Slugs might be one of those things you could just fry up with a load of garlic and they'd taste of garlic and everyone would be happy. It's like snails. Yeah. They just taste like garlic. Exactly. I mean, is there any sense in which there is such a thing as a really tasty snail? I mean, I enjoyed sna sense in which there is such a thing as a really tasty snail?

I mean, I enjoyed snails when I lived in France, but then somebody showed they got a can of snails and that was just looking at too many. And they said, no, you just get them in the can and then you put them in the shells. But when I saw the can of them, then I just didn't ever want to have one again. Do you know what I mean? Like it was just seeing too many of them for all I know, a restaurant gets it out of a can and puts it into a shell. But once I saw the can, then because I find so many slugs in cans, you know,

like people throw a beer can down and slugs just race the smell of the beer. And then they drown in the can and then they drown in the can. And then they just turn into slime. And so I empty these cans that I find. It's just slug slime. I always wish I could get the person who dropped the can and then say, okay, now you have to drink this. Can you imagine? I mean, you'd certainly never litter again

if you had to drink the slug slime. That would be something for the jackass guys to do. I like it better as a punishment though. Have you had a satisfying confrontation with someone you've caught littering? No. Do you think there is any such thing? A moment of real, of learning for a person who litters?

No, I don't. I mean, the last encounter I had, it was this kid. There were two boys, maybe 12 and 14, standing with men I took to be their fathers in Sussex, in front of a pub in the country. And I was walking by with my trash picker and my bag of garbage. And the 12 year old threw a piece of paper down in front of me. And I said, why would you do that? I said, why would you litter like that? And his father said, Oh, he's a bugger, you know, said that proudly. And I thought, No, I'm a bugger. He's an's an asshole and i wasn't gonna bend down and give this kid the satisfaction and the other kid said he wants to watch you bend over and get it and then the men are just smirking like this funny to them so i just thought well just i wasn't gonna

have anything to do with these people but so i walked past him and then the boy said oh sir sir can i put this in your bag and i turned around and he had another piece of rubbish and he threw it on the ground and they all laughed. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. And there's nothing I could have said or done to them to change their minds, you know, to change them. But it was funny because I walked up the road and this man stopped me and he said, are you David Sedaris? the road and this man stopped me and he said are you david sidaris and he was the last person i would have expected to have listened to me on the radio but he knew me from the radio

and he was lovely and he got out and we started talking ben his name was and we started talking and then i said is that your car and he said yeah and i said could you do me a favor i said there are two men and two boys back at the pub would you go and run them down and kill them for me and he didn't do it but it would have just been a perfect day if he'd said god yes no problem it would have been beautiful to me when i think about that i mean my father if I had talked to a grown-up that way, never would I have been able to get away with something like that. Similarly, I was at a store in Sussex, and this kid looked at me and said, Are you crazy?

And he was with his dad in a store, and I said, Excuse me? And he said, Oh, you're a wanker. What, did he just toss your load, wanker? And his dad was right there with him. And I said, Who do you think you're a wanker would he just toss your load wanker then his dad was right there with him and i said who do you think you're talking to and his father said yeah someone should talk to his father right i just i was so i it would just knock the air out of me i just wasn't used to being talked to that way by a child i never would have had the nerve to do that why did he call you? Were you being a

wanker? No, I wasn't doing anything. I was in the Tesco and I was looking at pre-packaged sandwiches. And then two boys came up to me just a couple of days ago and one of them jumped up and he hit this for sale sign as hard as he could with this fist. And it really, it had to hurt, you know, but he was just right in front of me. And then I saw him do that. And I looked at his hand because I thought, oh, that must've hurt. And then he just got right up in my face. And you know, those they're made out of nylon, I guess they're kind of figures and they have them in front of gas stations in the United States and they blow air into them. So it's almost like a noodle with a face and arms that just is kind of crazy and shimmering and scooting around in space. And then he got right up in my face and he did that.

And again, I never would have done that to a grownup, ever. What is it about you that... I'm small. You're small. We established the last time we met, which was about three years ago, was we're about the same sort of height. I can't remember if I told you the last time we spoke about a similar thing that I had. I get stuff on my bike because I cycle everywhere.

And people are regularly irritated by cyclists. And it could be that I am sometimes an irritating cyclist, but I was cycling in traffic. It was quite heavy rush hour traffic in Norwich. And I joined the road and just as a truck was pulling up and he didn't like the fact that I hadn't waited for him to pass before I joined the road. The traffic was moving very slowly though. So I didn't think I needed to. And I was being perfectly safe. I didn't get anywhere near him.

Anyway, he didn't like it. Honked his horn really, really loudly. And as he passed, shouted something out of the window of the truck. I think made a wanker gesture he was obviously very upset and sitting next to him were these two boys his sons i presume and um they just gave me this look of utter contempt the whole family and then i couldn't stop myself and just pulled up next to the window and said, what's the problem? With a big smile on my face. And he said, stay out of the fucking road or

something like that, you know. And then I looked at one of the boys who was giving me this very cold stare. And I said, your dad's nice, isn't he he which is a stupid thing to say and the boy just looked at me and he must have been about 10 I would think but he looked at me with this look of absolute icy coldness and just said go fuck your mum oh and I just thought this isn't going to end well so at that point i just um gave up but i did really feel in that moment you know wow this is a cold universe but i don't know when i was 10 i wouldn't have i i didn't would never have said that to a grown-up even in defense of a parent they wouldn't have allowed it i know that's the, especially right next to your dad. I was wondering, like, later on, are they going to get home and the dad's going to say,

maybe don't say, go fuck your mom next time. That's too strong. Is that real melody? Heavy's in my phone charger? I left it right there. Did you see it? Have you got it? Where's my charger gone?

Where's my phone charger? The battery's about to die. It was on the table. Round and round in their heads go the chord progressions, the empty lyrics, and the impoverished fragments of tune. And boom goes the brain box.

At the start of every bar. at the start of every bar. Boom goes the brain box. now david we were speaking before about the fact that i hoped that i was gonna see you face to face but couldn't do so because i've got covid and even though i don't think i'm contagious any longer i still feel fairly rubbish. So I'm, you're in London. I'm out here in Norfolk, but I'm very excited to be talking to you anyway. You have avoided COVID.

Do you know anyone who had it and has suffered with it? Yeah. Yeah. Lots of people. My dad had it and he was 98 and he recovered. He didn't even go to the hospital. Right. But like my friend Ingrid had it and she had Lyme disease so she had a lot of complications from it she had a pretty bad case of it i know a couple

of people who died i wanted hugh to get it so i could write about it i didn't want me to get it because i wanted to be healthy enough to write about it but he didn't get it either but he stubbornly refused to get it i wanted him to get it like respirator variety don't mean and so i could be at his bedside and i could write about it and but it hasn't happened yet good well i'm glad about that hey speaking of your dad i'm so sorry that he passed away earlier this year i read your piece in the new yorker the other day. It was really a great piece. And when I got to the bit about his last words, oh dear, I completely lost it. Do you get emotional when you're writing that stuff? My father died. I was in a restaurant in

North Carolina with my oldest friend and Hugh and a friend of his and my sister Lisa and my brother-in-law when we got news that my father died. By the time the check came, we were talking about other things. A funny vampire show that's on TV and my sister Lisa was telling a story about the time she ate a tub of ice cream with her bare hands coming home from the grocery store. She didn't wait. I mean, I didn't really, I didn't really care that my father died. Like, I don't care that he's dead. I don't. He was a wonderful person. The last few months of his life. I don't know what happened. He just, everything else burned away and he was absolutely lovely. But before that he was a dick and he kept living. You know what I mean? Like he got COVID and he lived, he just kept living. So when he died,

I was fine with that. And I know how brutal that sounds. You know, I mean, I delivered his eulogy at his funeral. I didn't say one nice thing about him. I mean, I said it in a funny way. But if you want nice things to be said about you, then be a nice person. And there'll be plenty of nice things. I did the best with what I had. You know, and I know that sounds weird when you talk like that after a parent dies. People then they they're like, how can you be so disrespectful? And that's awful. And you're a monster. But he just wasn't. He wasn't a good person, you know, and. He never liked me, you know, and he was always even when i was a child he just didn't like me

and you know when you're a kid you just take it you know there's nothing else you can do and you you're hurt by it and you're confused by it and it could be worse i mean my mother liked me but my father just could never stand me and then when I got old enough I just he would do something shitty to me and I would write about it and then I would get on stage and I could make an audience of howl at what a buffoon he was and then it was beautiful because then I was like oh please be mean to me again, because it's such good material. And so he would just be mean to me, and I would turn it into money. And then there were people who said that, how dare you, and you're invading, how dare you do that? But look, I got to deal with it. It's none of your business how I deal with it. Do you know what I mean? I'm not going to, I mean, I spent my

childhood absorbing it and taking it and not being able to do anything about it and so however i deal with it that's my business you know sure and so really when my father died i thought oh there goes that material but i mean i still have plenty that I never wrote about, you know, so I have a backlog. Yeah, there's always memories that you can raid. And yet there is real feeling in there in that New Yorker piece. How do you think about it then? Because it really is an affecting piece, the way you wrote it. That must have been said to you before by other

people that they found it very moving yeah but i mean my father like i said before he died i don't know he he developed like it was mild dementia you know and he was a wonderful person he turned into a wonderful person and so his last words to me we're at the assisted living center. And he said, don't go stay. He wanted me to stay and have dinner. Don't go, don't go. And my last words to him were, we have to get to the beach before the grocery stores close. And I can see how maybe someone said to me, oh, is that going to haunt you for the rest of your life? I said, no, it was said to my father that he would have been the first person to say that to me. I don't feel bad about it at all.

I think it's interesting that his last words to me were don't go, please stay. And that mine where we have to get the beat for the grocery store is closed. But I don't that's all. It's just interesting to me. but I don't, that's all. It's just interesting to me. Even though you say elsewhere in your recent diary collection that, well, it's an observation about the father of a colleague and who had dementia and towards the end of his life was also sweet. Um, and you say then that dementia sometimes brings out the essence of a person. So did that make you think, oh, well, maybe there was a sweet guy under there all along?

Yeah, maybe. And I don't know what happened to that sweet guy. And I don't know why everything else got piled on top of it, but it did. But I also, you know, my dad was the kind of person you would ask about his childhood, you would ask about his parents, he never said anything. So don't blame me for not understanding you if you won't answer any questions. I met a woman in Australia, and I was signing books. And I said, when was the last time you cried? Which is always a tricky question for people. But she had cried because she was with her dad and her dad had gotten dementia and they were at a playground and there was a little girl at the top of the swing set and she

wouldn't let anybody buy her so none of the other children were allowed to go down the swing set and eventually the girl went down and this woman's father said it's about time that little bitch got out of the way. And then the daughter cried. And I said, that made you cry? And she said, well, he called the little girl a bitch. I mean, I love that story, though. But you didn't answer my question. Did you get upset when you wrote your New Yorker piece? No.

I started the New Yorker story before my father died and i wanted to write about uh how he turned but how great that visit was that last visit with him was and it's the kind of an there's so many tropes to fall into you know you're writing about death or you're writing about visiting somebody in an assisted living center. So I wanted to avoid them all. And I had other stuff to do too, but I made sure every day I went back and put my hand in this story, right? This essay. And so I worked on it for really a couple of months because I didn't want it to be sentimental and I didn't want it. And I wanted it to be honest and I wanted it to be, I mean, so what I felt was I felt incredibly lucky to have visited my father that day. It was the only time in my life that I thought I wanted to return with a bunch of people.

And I thought they got to meet my father. You know, people got to meet my father. I can't wait. You know, they're going to get such a kick out of it. And, you know, then he died. going to get such a kick out of it. And, you know, then he died, but, and it's better than nothing, you know, to see him like that once. And I wish that I'd seen that person more than once, but, you know, if once was all I got, then that's the way it goes. And I hate to sound so mercenary but i feel like i got a pretty good essay out of it i know what you mean i think my dad's last sort of coherent words to me were oh thank god

when i told him that my brother was coming to take over the sort of caring duties for a day that's great he'd be living with us for a few months and i'd turned into i'd basically turned into nurse ratchet you know and he was fed up with me and then when i said that david was coming he was delighted it wasn't um like his last week he was kind of in this kind of comatose state but other than that he didn't have it too bad no it sounded that was one thing i did take from it actually was gosh there's a lot worse exits than this one i had not an argument exactly but a moment of tension with my wife the other day or a moment of kind of missing each other. And she was telling me about someone whose father had died after being kicked by a cow. And the father was 85 years old. And so I said, God, that's terrible. How shocking. Still, a lot worse ways to go,

which I thought was going to be an uncontroversial statement. And she just looked at me like, who the hell are you? And why have I married you? And she was like, I don't think that is what his family would have been thinking. And I just said, oh, of course not. But I bet they will at some point, you know, I bet they will count it as one of the very meager compensations of that departure that he didn't have a long, drawn out, painful period of deterioration. You know what I mean? Which so many other people do. Did the cow kick him in the calf? Did the cow kick him in the calf? I don't know exactly how.

I don't know if it was just one kick that did for him or if it was a trampling, you know, like, because it happens quite a lot. I'm sad to report in the countryside that every year there's quite a few people that get killed by cows. Every year, there's quite a few people that get killed by cows. And sometimes it's described as being kicked to death by a cow, which makes you think of like a beating, a sustained period of like being bashed in rather than falling over and maybe receiving one swift kick in the head or something which would probably be enough in um sussex we have a field behind our house a pasture and so a local shepherd was looking for places to keep his rams and so we offered our pasture and so we have rams back there now and one of them he said the shepherd said well don't go into the pasture because he's come into musk, like Igor has come into musk. And so he'll charge you. I don't know that he would kill you, but it definitely hurt, because he's got a big,

hard set of horns. But it's interesting to spend time with nature like that because they're such assholes you know like his own son he'll butt and bully and push away and so he can take his food and it's like that it's not fair and look at how big you are and that's your son and you're doing that to him for just, what, a little extra food? You should be ashamed of yourself. But, you know, he's an animal. Right, let's go again. What don't you fucking understand?

Kick your fucking ass. Let's go again. What the fuck is it with you? I want you off the fucking set, you prick. No. you're a nice guy. The fuck are you doing? No, don't shut me up. No, no. I like this. No, no. Don't shut me up. I like this. Fuck sake, man. You're amateur. Seriously, man, you and and me we're fucking done professionally i saw you appearing on drew barrymore's chat show towards the end of last year 2020 and she has a very unique delivery as a host i don't think i've ever seen anyone with that sort of energy before and i guess that's part of the reason she got the gig is she's always been eccentric right she was always a big chat show a good guest again on a chat show because she was

quite um unpredictable she cried four times during an interview four times i mean she's genuine person yeah you know she's a completely genuine person but yeah four times and one time i said well what are you doing on thanksgiving well she's going to be alone for thanksgiving and she wasn't going to be with her children so that was one of the times that she cried and then you're on television and then you're just feeling bad because you made somebody cry and you're thinking, how can I fix this? It's this funny way to be on television, I think. Yeah, I mean, God, it must be incredible being her, though, living at that emotional pitch the whole time. Yeah.

Because she's veering for in her intro. I wrote her intro down and she says, when I was lucky enough to concretely solidify that this show was happening, you get asked a lot, who would you like to have on the show? Who would be your dream? He's my, and this is with you sat right in front of her. He's my favorite writer. He's one of my favorite humans. He's brought more to my life than most people. Honestly, I just, I'm freaking out. It's like you talk about something and then it actually comes true. He's a best-selling author.

And then the introduction gets a little more conventional. But I was like, wow, I was really impressed. I didn't know what to do with my face. Yeah. Because, you know, when you're on television and I'm not an actor and I'm not used to being on television and I'm not necessarily comfortable on television, but, you know, if you're listening,

then you need to look like you're super listening. Or maybe that was my understanding, you know, because you want to prove that you're paying attention. But it's so weird. Like if someone says something nice about me if i meet someone in real life and they say something nice i try to change the subject as quickly as possible you know so we can talk about something else but it's different when you're on tv and then they're saying nice things about you for that long and you just you don't want to seem rude you know by interrupting or changing the subject but

uh yeah I'd never had a television experience quite like that and I preferred it to let's say times when I went on Letterman um because I felt like she was really there, you know, she was definitely there right in front of me. It wasn't like looking at the host and then realizing that there's nobody home. Right. David, are you okay to read a few things while we talk? Sure. That would be great. And I'm assuming that you would read from the diaries. Sure. That would be great. And I'm assuming that you would read from the diaries.

Sure. November 16, 2004, Maui, Hawaii. Hugh and I had dinner with his old friend Alan, who lives on Maui and does some sort of computer-type job at the island's one remaining sugarcane plantation. While eating, the two of them reminisced about their childhoods in Ethiopia. Hey, Alan said as the dessert menus were handed out. Remember the time our guard and his buddy dragged that man from behind a horse? Hugh squinted into space saying, hmm. They tied his feet together and dragged him. Oh, it must have been a good quarter of a mile, Alan continued.

Then they jumped up and down on his body. I was only 10, but I remember hearing the guy's bones crack. He was a little fuzzy on the event, which surprised me. That seems the type of thing a person might recall. Why were they doing that? Alan set down his men here. He'd stolen a jacket and then tried feeding it to a horse, if you can believe it. The guy was mentally ill, I guess. And so they dragged him a quarter of a

mile over sharp stones, I asked. Preoccupied with their menus, Hugh and Alan nodded as if to say, of course, or how much more reason do you need? I thought for the umpteenth time that evening how different my upbringing was from theirs, and then I ordered the pineapple. June 13, 2005, Anchorage, Alaska. Sometimes things happen, and I don't know what to do with my face. Take Laura. I met with her a year ago in Australia and learned over dinner that she and her husband had just taken part in the world's largest tractor pull. There were over a thousand of us in an amplified field and you could see the dust from space, she said. I sat there with my mouth open wondering how I was supposed to react. Do you say great or big deal or I was in space and I didn't see any dust?

Do you laugh or cry or pass out on the floor? I honestly had no idea. A similar thing happened during last night's book signing. A man approached my table with a couple of paperbacks and told me I should visit this bar. It's in the Yukon and serves something called a sour toe cocktail, which supposedly comes with a frostbitten toe lying like an olive in the bottom of the glass. Now, what do you think of that? He said. And again, what do you say? Can you order a virgin sour toe? I asked. What? Say you don't drink alcohol, I said. Could they make it with ginger

ale or something? The man looked exasperated. I guess so. Then I said, oh, all right. July 3rd, 2006, London. Printed in yesterday's Independent magazine was this parody of the current MasterCard ad. One tube of Vaseline, $3. One box of condoms, $6. Three gay porn magazines, $24. Making your parents think your brother is gay, priceless. Is that a real ad? It was a parody of one of those MasterCard. Oh, yeah, yeah. But that's a weird parody, isn't it?

Wow. Yeah, I thought it was a really good one. August 18th, 2008, Sydney, Australia. Before dinner, I found Hugh drinking from a bottle of Avion that had been sitting on the dresser in our hotel room. How much did that cost? I asked. When he shrugged, I looked at the little bib hanging from around the neck and saw the price written in small, light-colored letters. This water is nine dollars. So, Hugh said, so you should have opened one of the waters next to the bed, the ones with bibs reading with our

compliments those bottles weren't avion but something called mount franklin and their packaging amounted to the oldest trick in the book the hotel assumes you'll think that because that water is free this is as well and you fell right into their trap i. Hugh refilled his glass. So what? So we just paid nine dollars for a little bottle of water. We're not the ones paying, he said, but that was not the point. Then what is the point? The point is that you should have read the bib before opening the bottle. I hadn't meant for this to turn into a fight, but that's exactly what it did turn into. By the time we left for dinner, he was no longer speaking to me. Walking in silence to the restaurant, I wondered why I'd gotten so bent out of shape about it. Water is precious, you can't deny that. One day it will,

in fact, cost nine dollars a bottle. But this is not that day except that it is that really struck a chord with me when i read that entry well you know how you can have a little flash fight out of nowhere yes i do know that this is this is you're just gonna have to forgive me for this but September 16th 2006 Glasgow Scotland at last night signing I met a Scotsman named Stuart a social worker with short slightly graying hair there was a great tragedy in our district recently and I went last Sunday to tell my mother about it he told me this woman was on the second floor of her house, bathing her toddler in the sink. We don't know how long she'd been at it, but at some point her doorbell rang. She must have thought the baby could be left alone for a minute, so she went to the stairs, tripped over the laundry basket,

and broke her neck in the fall. Her child, meanwhile, slipped under the bathwater and drowned. We shared a mournful pause. So I told this to my mother, Stuart continued. And when I'd finished, she asked, so who's at the door? My Scottish accent is so bad. What kind of a person would react that way? Who's at the door? To the most appalling story ever in the world how did it feel to look back over those entries did you find yourself

thinking god i'm i'm quite a different person now or did you feel as if actually you hadn't changed that much um the first volume of the diaries was 1977 to 2002. And that was hard. You know, that was, I was embarrassed a lot when I was reading through the old diaries and I cringed and I, but because I was a young writer and I could see myself pretending to be other people, you know, I was writing like Raymond Carverver i was writing like um joan didion you know i could tell who i was reading at the time just by reading my diary and my diaries were never about my feelings i don't write about my feelings so i didn't have to be embarrassed about that like why doesn't chip notice me you know there was no um none of that right i was interested to know if there was

any of that that you just never include on principle or you just never even wrote about that stuff at all it's pretty rare for me too i don't know i'm even bored with my own feelings you know but a lot of times it might not be about my feelings but it's still boring you know quite often and i didn't want to include that because it's boring you know like one of the things i wrote about this morning is hugh and i were walking through hyde park yesterday and i pointed to like a big plain tree and i said how long do you think it would take you to cut that tree down with an ax? And he said, well, I could never do it. And I said, well, what if they said, we're going to torture David until you cut that tree down? Then he said, then I just would never do it. And then I said, how long do you think it would take your mother to cut that tree down?

And his mother is 90 and she has a blood disorder and she's really really weak and it's hard to imagine her even lifting the axe you know but it was just such a nice conversation just picturing his white-haired mother trying to lift this axe to cut this big tree down because she could do it i mean it would just take an awful long time. She could do it. Chopping things down with an ax is hard, man. I mean, it's. But it would, you know, it's a,

that's how you know you've been with somebody a long time. Those are the kind of questions you're asking. How long would it take you to cut down that tree with an ax? And was there stuff you read back and you thought oh blimey times have changed i'm not sure if i'm comfortable including that stuff or the way that i've said that maybe i'll just tweak it so that it isn't quite so jarring for the sensibilities of a reader in 2021 i mean there's an essay i wrote last year that i was reading over this morning and and it already has moved on. Do you know what I mean? Like I was complaining about terminology, and all the terminology I was complaining about has been replaced by even more irritating terminology. But yeah, but that's just...

Does that encourage you to just leave things as they are then? Does that encourage you to just leave things as they are then? No, I updated it. I mean, for the essay, you know, because I'm putting it in my next book. I mean, I would be terrified if somebody else had edited this book and it was going to come out October 5th. I would commit suicide Octoberober 4th right but this is my edit so i'm not afraid to make myself look bad but i mean i have to be able to keep a reader you know you know i mean i could look monstrous completely monstrous but anybody could you know yes if you're looking at their diary from you know 40 year period of. But you're not thinking, oh, maybe I shouldn't use this word here or this description here or this observation about this homeless person here because it might be misunderstood or come across badly for a certain reader. Well, nowadays, when you have a book in the united states right you can request

a sensitivity read yes but you have to request it right now i'm gonna guess within 10 years they just give it to you anyway i'm surprised they don't already actually but a friend of mine well my editor was telling me about an author who asked for a sensitivity reader because she'd written about uh a trip to india right and so they got two sensitivity reads and one was from a young indian american woman and the other one was from an indian american woman who's like 60 years old and the 60 year old said there is nothing wrong this is a beautiful essay i loved every minute of it and the young one was offended by absolutely everything right so i don't know that um

you know i'm often i'm just surprised by the things that people are upset by like i didn't it's not like i'm trying to get away with anything. I'm just surprised that somebody, you know, like I was taking tasks because I said my sister committed suicide. Right. So you're not supposed to say committed suicide anymore because you commit a crime. So that's vilifying the person who committed suicide. And the woman wrote me and it's like, my daughter died by suicide. And I was so disappointed when I read you use the word committed suicide. OK, my daughter died by suicide and i was so disappointed when i read you use the word committed suicide okay her daughter died by suicide well my sister committed suicide i don't i don't know that suicide is something we really want to promote

uh that's a kind of a situation where like when she said well my daughter it's like well my sister you know what i mean like yeah yeah i i've experienced this closely as well and so i'm going to use the terminology that i want and if you don't like it then don't read my book or don't her argument i've no idea what her argument would be but i can imagine an argument that would go something like well you are a widely read author you have whether you like it or not a platform and the way you talk about these things has an influence on the culture and so that would be the argument for keeping abreast of sensibilities and terminologies and all those kinds of things rather than pick uh only 20 years ago you know it's jarring to see the way that those things were discussed in in a modern context and you think actually yeah it was worthwhile moving on from some of those attitudes and some of those

phrases and terminologies yes sure but i think it depends i don't know i mean me anyway i'm affected too by the way that somebody comes at me yeah you know what i mean and it can be personal for people too do you know i mean like not everybody's on board for every change. Like somebody said to me recently, well, as a queer writer, fuck you. I'm not a queer writer a person too. So I don't have to be in lockstep with everything. I just don't have to be. And I think that's bullshit. think that's bullshit so i reject that word and i get really angry every time i see it and then recently i read an interview with the woman who identifies as queer because she's tall what that's all she's tall and so she identifies as queer i don't understand how she what she identifies as queer because she's tall but is she gay no oh no but she identifies as queer because she feels other because she's tall right so queer just as a kind of catch-all description of a sense of being marginalized or different somehow uh i would use the word tall like in her case

i would just say i'm tall and there's a word that's perfectly reasonable yeah i know but she's an outlier i don't believe that um well i know somebody else who's never dated another woman, never slept with another woman. And she identifies as queer because she's open to the idea and she thinks it will help her get a job. I still think those people are the exceptions, though, don't you reckon? Maybe they are. Yeah. But I don't know. they're still i think of them when yes when somebody says refers to me as queer i think no i'm short i'm not queer oh man okay i love your face So like a painting by Picasso,

the eyes to the right, the nose to the left. Other faces make me order, but your features are all in a nice order. when you and i last spoke for this podcast the first time i met you a few years back uh some of the responses i got were people being very alarmed about the extent to which we talked about eyeballs and eyeball torture. A couple of people felt I should have given some sort of trigger warning a bit more explicitly in the intro. So I'll be more careful now. What on earth were we saying?

There was some story about a dog's eyeball falling out and then it ate the eyeball. Oh, yeah, yeah yeah yeah it was a pug who had had an operation and it scratched itself and its eye popped out and he ate it and then that led to some other stories about it's in their diary book about people a guy who ate his own eye yeah and so rather than eyeball torture in the recent set of diaries, some of the things that made me laugh quite a bit, which I guess for some people is getting into more extreme territory, perhaps. I tried this out on my wife last night. I didn't get a good response. Was an entry from October 31st, 2011, Athens, Georgia. And you write, 30 years ago, a house painter and I were eating lunch.

And he told me that the previous evening he'd gotten a call from his father. I really had to go to the bathroom but couldn't get him off the line, he said. So what I did was shit in my hand. And then you sort of think about that. And you're, I mean, well, you tell me your response to that. Well, a good thing about being on tour is that you can just develop little themes you know so i mentioned that to somebody and she said well what i do is she said when i'm in a public toilet i don't want to make like a

ploppy sound so she said what i do is i shit in my hand and then lower it into the water and i couldn't believe what i was hearing. And then I mentioned to somebody else, and she said, Oh, no, what you do is you make a big island out of toilet paper, and you go on that. And then somebody else said, No, what you do is you take a plastic bag, and you fit it, like underneath the seat. And so you defecate onto the bag. And then you I couldn't believe all the stories that people had. And I thought, well, that's why toilets are always backed up. You know, people are flushing plastic bags and putting a mountain of toilet paper in there before they even use the toilet.

Like, I was shocked at the things that I heard from people. And again, you can't go up to people in the grocery store and say, excuse me, I'm doing a survey. No one's going to tell you that. But if I'm signing books and people came to see me, we have to talk about something. And I asked them a question. And then they so it's, it's, it's a great way to conduct little surveys and to really kind of pound on a theme yeah well it's just always interesting i think how things in your body are warm you know you just don't think about it you know but your urine is warm and semen is warm and you just don't really think if your body is like a little hot box like that. But I guess it really is.

Yes, it really is. This may or may not make the cut, that last section. Now, I subscribed to the Masterclass website specifically so that I could see your talks, even though there were many other talks by people I'm interested in on there. people I'm interested in on there. And I want to ask if you've signed a contract for bidding you to reveal some of your masterclass secrets to me on this podcast. No, they asked me not to tell people how much I got paid. Okay. I wasn't going to ask you that. Have you watched any of the other masterclasses on there? No, I've never watched that. I haven't watched my own either. It's good. But I'll say, you know, the people who who when they approached me i said well i don't know anything and they said well clearly you do yeah you just don't know that you know it

so what they did is they got this young man who was kind of an expert on me and he put together a list of questions and they were really good questions. And then I was in a kind of a tent made of light, right? And then I could see his face reflected in the camera and he asked me questions and I answered them. And then they put it together to look like I was delivering a lecture. And everybody I dealt with was fantastic. They were just wonderful people. It was a really good experience. And so I never watched it because I just,

I don't want my regret to come into it. I just want to remember it as a really beautiful two days I spent with great people. And I don't want that to be contradicted by whatever it was that I said. But, you know, I could see it from their point of view that you know more than you think you do. But I don't know how I do what I do. Maybe I do.

But I don't know how to. You don't know how to turn it into a set of instructions. I don't know that certain things can be taught. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? I mean, I think the first thing you need, the only thing you need is passion. Writing has to be what you live for. You know, when if somebody said, do you want to go to this party and take cocaine?

Or do you want to stay home and write? And you say, I'm going to stay home and write. Do you want to go have sex with this person? Or do you want to stay home and you say i'm going to stay home and write do you want to go have sex with this person or do you want to stay home and write i'm going to stay home and write then you're probably on a good track you know or you could go off take cocaine have sex with them and then come back and write about it yeah but but to me from the very first moment i started writing i thought okay i have to do this again tomorrow at exactly the same time. Then if something got in the way of that, I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't be happy.

I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing. There are plenty of... I'm not a naturally talented person when it comes to writing. I have some skills, I think, but I don't have natural talent for it. But I guess all I did have was just, it's all I cared about, you know, it's all I, and then, you know, you got to work with that, you know, then if you're in a relationship with someone who's like, you never give me any attention, you're in the wrong relationship. You got to be with somebody who, like my boyfriend, Hugh, his dad was a writer and Hugh grew up with somebody behind a locked door typing.

And he didn't, that to him, wasn't him being excluded or him being shut out. It was a comforting sound, you know? So that was great that that worked out, but you got to realize, okay, this is who I am. Probably not a good idea for me to have children, you know, because I'm too selfish. I mean, I know other writers who have children and maybe that worked, they found a way to make it work, but it wasn't going to work for me. You know, just like you've always got to realize this is who I am and how can I make this work for me or how can I, you know, what situation should I avoid and who should I keep away from? But yeah, so the masterclass, it was just, I went out with the head of the master class program and i don't remember

this is in the book or not but we went for lunch and he said my grandparents met at auschwitz and that was such a sobering little and i thought how funny it would be to say follow that with yeah they both work there so anyway what because it created such a moment and it would just completely shatter it to follow it up with that well it wasn't quite at that level of shock, but I did. I was surprised when you talked about dogs, because for some reason, I mean, you clearly are interested in and love certain animals. You look after them and you have compassion for certain creatures, but it doesn't extend to all animals. all animals and you make a point of saying that you don't like dogs and you say you say in the master class if you gave me a dog i would get rid of it i wouldn't put an ad in the paper i'd get

it put to sleep because putting an ad in the paper would be too much work that really made me laugh because i apart from me being surprised by that, because I told that to my wife and she said, really, I'm surprised. He seems like the kind of person who would absolutely love a dog. And I was like, no, I don't think he does. But she said, oh, I bet though, he's the kind of person like you, she said about me, who used to really not get the point of dogs, who used to really not get the point of dogs but one day he's gonna find a dog and he is gonna absolutely love that thing and his life will be changed is there any chance of that happening well my boyfriend Hugh does a lot of work for this woman in in Connecticut yeah right who as a client he's worked with for a long time.

And then she started a couple of years ago, raising some kind of a Springer Spaniel, right? And then raising, breeding them and having them in dog shows and, you know, Westminster and all this stuff. And so she sent Hugh home with a dog for the weekend a couple of months ago. And I'll admit it, this dog, it was pretty amazing, this dog. A, because the difference between him and other dogs was huge, right? You'd pass a cafe, all heads would turn. Like he was

just used to being stared at and he would hold his head up really high and he kind of bounced when he walked no interest in other dogs whatsoever he's been trained not to react to anything right really a good walker quick walker but the only thing that bothered me then was he would drink and then just the water would spill out of his mouth i don't know why he had such a hard time keeping water in his mouth. So it was like a steady, you just follow the water trail to the sofa. But other than that,

it scared me that I didn't dislike him. I mean, I guess I had it in my mind. You know what I think it is? I don't, I don't know that i hate dogs so much as dog people yeah you know i mean when i say dog people i mean like you know in new york city everybody's got these leashes that are a mile long right so they get

on the sidewalk and then their dogs have a little sniff fest and they block the entire sidewalk right from one end to the other even on an avenue where the sidewalk's really, and if you make any kind, if you roll your eyes and you say anything, you know, they're just, oh, I know it. Isn't it so off? Aren't dogs just awful? Not like humans who were always so polite, you know, or you're just supposed to understand their dog. Don't look at my dog in the eye. Don't look him in the eye, right? Because he suffers from anxiety. Then don't take your dog out of the house. Or blind your dog.

Then it won't even know if somebody's looking it in the eye. That's one thing. You can talk about hating children. I don't hate children at all. Yeah, yeah. You could talk about hating children and people don't hate children at all yeah yeah you could talk about hating children and people are fine with it but if you hate dogs people just turn on you you know yeah i saw a i was looking at a talk with fran libowitz online that she delivered years ago maybe mid 90s

um she referred to the phrase animal rights as an oxymoron. And there's this loud murmur of disapproval from the audience. And then she, she doesn't flinch and she just says, well, how does the phrase animal responsibility strike you? Wait, this is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success.

Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional. I love browsing your videos and pics and I don't want to stop. And I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop. These are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace. Just visit

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conversation with david sudaris there yeah i want to talk about animal responsibility. Ah, okay. Well, go ahead. Yes, well, I'm responsible for making you feel that someone loves you even when you've been a dick and you don't really deserve to be loved. True. And I'm responsible for world-class welcome homes like you said even just on the last podcast, I think. Also true, I did. And I'm responsible for absorbing household tension

and raising the general domestic mood in the castle. I would agree, yep. And I'm responsible for providing you with, if you don't mind me saying, quite a significant portion of the listeners to this podcast. Yeah, that's true. I mean, that's all true. But I think Fran Lebowitz was using the concept of responsibility

in a slightly different way when she made that humorous remark. You know, for example, you're not facing a life sentence in prison for the murder of those young rabbits are you alleged murder and anyway i'm just going over here bye see you later i love you anyway david sedaris there talking to me and i'm very grateful to him and his team at Little Brown for helping me sort out the interview. You will find in the description of the podcast, not only a link to that article, the New Yorker piece, but a link to David's latest book, Carnival of Snackery, his second volume of diaries.

And what else is there? The Drew Barrymore interview, which I watched again, actually. And I think I felt a bit bad that I maybe characterized her as a bit nuttier in her delivery in the introduction than actually she is. But it's still impressively unconventional see what you think and if you enjoyed my conversation with David and you're curious to hear more of course you can find him speaking to me back in 2018 on episode 79 he's also been on many many other podcasts of course and he's always good value what else would i suggest as far as what book you should start with of his if you've never read any and you're interested to i think the one that everyone says is a good bet is me talk pretty one day from 2000 a lot of very funny stories about his youth and all sorts of bits and pieces. But yeah, that's a good one. I think that'll give you a fairly good sense of where he's at. Oh,

and maybe I'll put a link to the Masterclass series that we mentioned as well. Although that's subscription. You have to pay for that. There goes dog. She's bouncing in the darkness. Hey look, podcats, I wanted to apologise sincerely to those of you who had bought tickets to see me reading from my book in Edinburgh. I was supposed to be there now as I speak the evening of Monday the 18th of October and uh it got cancelled because well you know that it's been a palaver scheduling and rescheduling and rescheduling these shows and dates for this tour

as it has been for every other performer around at the moment i thought that we had a date fixed for edinburgh it was in my diary it was a hard pencil i had bought my train ticket non-refundable. And I was all set. But then I heard from the venue that they were unable to have the event take place in accordance with their current COVID guidelines. You know, it's a seating issue and they've got a, they can only put a certain number of people in the auditorium and all this kind of thing. Anyway, so they said, we can't do it on the 18th, but can we tell people who've bought tickets that you can do another date? All this exchange happened not very long ago, but unfortunately by then my diary for the rest of this year was not flexible.

I wasn't able to do the other dates they were offering. And so we had to cancel. With great regret. I'm really sorry about that. I hope I can make it up to you at some point. If it's an option, you could come along to Inverness at the Eden Court Theatre on Thursday, the 4th of November. But I appreciate that it's not especially easy just to nip across to Inverness if you're in Edinburgh. Anyway, I'll see you another time at some point, I hope. I do love doing these tour dates for the book.

It's been really fun. But it does mean that, you know, I struggle to stay organized at the best of times. And during all the lockdowns, I kind of got used to a slower organizational pace. Having the time just to be at home and get things done as they needed to be done. But now that I'm going out and traveling most weeks, it's harder for me to organize myself. God, this is boring. This is not the kind of story that I generally tell at the book shows. Although every now and again. I do give this kind of boring answer. To a question from the audience.

Anyway. I'm just saying that. That's why the. Release date of the podcast. Fluctuates. But you've got used to that by now. I think. You know that it's not always out.

On the same day every week it just sort of comes as and when everything's just piling up about seven or eight weeks ago I went to use the loo in the barn where I have my office where I do my editing and there's a little kitchen area there and I realized that you know I'm really the only person that uses it or has been using it for quite a while that area and I realized that I hadn't cleaned there for quite some time it was fairly dusty a lot of cobwebs and dead flies and stuff like that. So I did a quick sweep, but then I couldn't find a dustpan. And so I went to look around for a dustpan, but then I got waylaid either by some very important work thing or by, you know, domestic duty that I had to fulfill.

And so I never swept up the dust pile and put it in the bin. It's still there. I see it pretty much every day when I use the loo. There's the dust pile. And I just keep forgetting to get a dustpan and sweep it up. Tell you what, when I get back, I'm going to find myself a dustpan and I'm going to put that dirt mountain in the bin

for you guys. Yeah? Right. I'm going to shut up, get back, get this edited. Watch the first episode of the new series of Succession. Pack my bag. And go to Cardiff. Thank you so much to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his work on this episode.

And for his general production support. Thank you as well to Becca Tashinsky for her production support. Much appreciated. Thanks to Helen Green. She does the artwork for this podcast. Thanks to everyone at ACAST. And thanks very much indeed to you for listening. Let's have a puffer jacket hug. Hey. jacket hug. Hey. Until next time, go carefully. I and subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat when it bumps up. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up.

Nice like a pat when it bumps up. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat when it bumps up. Bye. Thank you. Let's do this. I'm dealing with the dusty mountain. It's been sitting there for weeks and weeks.

But now I got myself a dustpan and brush set And now the dusty mountain can fuck off Nice